first looks BUSINESS
Sony VAIO VGN-Z590 $4,199 direct llllh
Sony VAIO VGN-Z590
Sony’s Winning Ultraportable No other ultraportable line captures the essence of thinking outside the box like Sony’s. Sony was the first to introduce an ultraportable weighing less than 4 pounds with an optical drive and discrete graphics. The company’s latest ultraportable, the VAIO VGNZ590, breaks new ground once again. The dual SSDs, a Blu-ray drive, and switchable graphics are features commonly found on an 8-pound media center, not a 3.2-pound ultraportable. It’s amazing that Sony was able to fit this amount of technology into a small frame. For this accomplishment, Sony retains the Editors’ Choice in the ultraportable category. The Z590 measures 8.3 by 12.4 by 1.2 inches and weighs 3.2 pounds—more compact and at least a half a pound lighter than its predecessor, the VGNSZ791N. It’s slightly heavier than the MacBook Air (3 pounds) but lighter than the Lenovo ThinkPad X301 (3.3 pounds). Clad in carbon fiber, this VAIO’s 1,600by-900 LED widescreen is very thin and bright. Also, you get a built-in Blu-ray burner, HDMI port, dual 128GB SSD drives (or the less expensive 160GB, 5,400-rpm standard hard drive), Bluetooth, and mobile broadband through Sprint’s EV-DO Rev A. Unlike the Lenovo X301 and the Apple Air, this VAIO doesn’t sacrifice fast processors and discrete graphics cards to preserve battery life. With its 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo P9500 processor and 4GB of mem-
ory, this laptop’s score on SYSmark 2007 Preview Overall was more than twice that of the MacBook Air. And its switchable graphics means that you can choose between higher performance and longer battery life. With the nVidia chipset enabled, the Z590 tallied a score of 4 hours 5 minutes on the MobileMark 2007 battery rundown test. The integrated chipset boosted the system to 5 hours 6 minutes. Although our tested configuration is overpriced, this VAIO is nonetheless the lightest ultraportable out there to offer so many features.—Cisco Cheng
Pros Sub 3.5pound ultraportable. Switchable graphics. Great battery life. Blu-ray option. Sleek carbon-fiber chassis. HDMI-out. Mobile broadband standard. Excellent resolution. Extended battery option. Great performance. Very good battery life. Low base configuration price. Cons SSD drives are pricey. System can get outrageously expensive. Click here for more.
Specs: 2.53-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P9500; 4GB DDR3 SDRAM; 256GB SSD; switchable graphics: 256MB Intel GMA 4500MHD/Nvidia GeForce 9300M GS; 13.1-inch 1,600-by-900 LED widescreen; Intel Wireless WiFi Link 5100; 3.2 pounds (4.1 pounds travel); two USB ports; one FireWire port; 58-Wh, 5.4-Ah, lithium ion battery; Windows Vista Home Premium.
PERFORMANCE TESTS L High scores are best. M Low scores are best.
Bold type denotes first place.
MobileMark 2007 L
SYSmark 2007 Overall
MULTIMEDIA TESTS Windows MeDia EncodeR M
Photoshop CS3 M min:sec
Cinebench R10 L
hr:min
L
min:sec
Sony VAIO VGN-Z590
4:05
155
1:00
0:32
5,251
Apple MacBook Air (running Boot Camp)
3:05
67
2:11
0:51
2,483
Lenovo ThinkPad X301
5:37
89
1:47
0:53
2,857
RED denotes Editors’ Choice.
FEBRUARY 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 13
