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Ultra-mobile Vaio Z with Power Media Dock now official

Teaser
Sony announces the long-rumored high-end Vaio Z with docking station to be released by the end of July

It appears that the leaks reported just a couple of days ago about the new Sony Vaio Z ultraportable are true.

Sony has officially announced the ultra-light 13.1-inch notebook PC with Power Media Dock through a press release today. The 1.2kg (2.64 pounds) and 16.65mm (0.655 inches) thick notebook blends cutting-edge styling with its full flat body made of light carbon fiber. The Vaio Z will not be short on features either, as it will include a backlit keyboard and the ability to support a secondary sheet battery first introduced in the Vaio S series.

Interestingly, its primary battery is mentioned in the press release as “internal”, suggesting that it may not be user-removable. Regardless, the Li-ion battery should last up to 7 hours, but total runtime can easily be doubled to 14 hours by attaching the secondary sheet battery.

Internally, the notebook can be outfitted with a standard voltage Intel Core i7-2620M, up to 8GB DDR3 RAM, Intel HD Graphics 3000 and 256GB SSD (RAID 0). Its screen will be at a high 1600x900 pixel resolution for producing finer than usual images and texts on the sub 14-inch display. Connectivity options include 3G WWAN, HDMI, Bluetooth 2.1, 1x USB 2.0 and 1x USB 3.0.

Additional performance and connectivity options are provided by the Power Media Dock. The docking station includes a discrete Radeon HD 6650M GPU with 1GB DDR3 VRAM, VGA and HDMI-out with 3D support, a DVD or Blu-ray optical drive, 2x USB 2.0, 1x USB 3.0 and a LAN port. According to the press release, the high-speed I/O data transfer interface between the notebook and the dock is based on the Light Peak architecture, suggesting that the connection may not be all that different from the Thunderbolt technology currently in the 2011 lineup of MacBook Pros. Overall, the docking unit weighs in at approximately 0.685kg (1.51 pounds) with a volume of about 148x16.65x220mm (5.82x0.655x8.66 inches).

First hinted at all the way back in March, the Vaio Z with docking station will fortunately be able to make it to market in just a few months. Expect the new 2011 Vaio Z series to be available beginning end of July, although exact release dates for specific regions will vary.

 

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > News > News Archive > Newsarchive 2011 06 > Ultra-mobile Vaio Z with Power Media Dock now official
Allen Ngo, 2011-06-28 (Update: 2012-05-26)