Goondu review: Sony Vaio Z, a new standard to follow

Let’s start by getting the price of this state-of-the-art laptop out of way, because S$3,999 is certainly not everyone’s idea of how much a good laptop should cost.

No, not even with the full works – a Core i7 chip, 8GB RAM, a 256GB solid state drive – encased in an incredibly thin and light frame weighing just 1.165kg, plus a separate desktop dock that contains a Blu-ray drive and a handy AMD 6650M graphics card.

Considering how laptops are costing less by the day, I’m not sure how many of the new Vaio Z – which costs twice as much as many albeit lower-powered rivals – will get sold here in Singapore.

But what makes this Sony machine so impressive is that it might just herald a new generation of devices. While the previous Vaio Z was a well-built, fast machine for the business user, the new incarnation is a whole new class of device altogether, in that it is both a PC on the go and on the desk. …