Vaio is known for making laptops that have an amazing amount of power in incredibly thin shapes. The Vaio Z may be the company’s most ambitious product to date. It even contains the four-core Intel Core i7-11357H – and with a starting weight of 2.11 pounds, it will be the lightest laptop ever to house an Intel H series processor. (Although the models you can buy in Cost 2.32 pounds.)
Part of the reason the Vaio Z is so light is that it is the first laptop to be made of “contoured carbon fiber”. You’ll find carbon fiber in some of the best lightweight laptops on the market, including the Dell XPS line – it’s a tough, lightweight material. But these laptops use carbon fiber sheets that are joined together by metal or plastic parts. Vaio outlined the material around the edges of the Z chassis, so it’s carbon fiber around it.
Vaio says that the device has undergone 26 “surface drop” tests and will provide up to 13 and a half hours of battery life. In terms of other specifications, you can get up to 2 TB of storage, 32 GB of memory, integrated Iris Xe graphics and a FHD or 14-inch 4K screen. There is a backlit keyboard, a webcam with a physical shutter, a full-size HDMI port and two USB-C ports as well. The chassis is a shell, although you can fold the screen 180 degrees.
Of course, it doesn’t come cheap. Vaio Z starts at – I’m not kidding – $ 3,579. So it will not be a practical purchase for most people, but it is still an impressive achievement and an interesting proof of concept. Stay tuned for our full review in a few days, where we’ll see the performance you can expect at this price. You can order units now on the Vaio website.