I purchased my last consumer-level notebook computer (it has been my 14th laptop), an Asus N82JQ, back in March 2011. That is a reasonably powerful computer, packed with i7 processor and discrete graphics, at a very reasonable price. The bad, as always, was the constructive quality. The internal design simply wasn't enough.
What Asus tries to do, is basically packing a whole bunch of great features inside a notebook, without bothering to then make them work together.
The core i7 mounted in there, runs at a stunning 45W of power consumption, which together with the mid-range (at that time, at least) GPU and a 7200rpm hard disk, produce heat. A hell of a lot of heat, to be exact. Heat the appearently engineers at Asus couldnt find a smart way to dissipate properly, given the solar temperatures that the bottom of the laptop reaches after few minutes of usage. Not to talk about the battery, which features a not-so-astonishing 1 hour of life. 1 hour! Are you f*$&ing kidding me?
The horrible glossy display is worth to mention also.
And I could go on for hours. The bottom line: even the best of the consumer-level notebooks, is simply not enough for my actual requirements.
I have decided then to dig into the professional-level notebook computers. Those you can't normally find in shops like Euronics. Those of which you can't really explain
the high price tag, considering that "at [name_of_a_pc_store], they sell the same features for half the price". Those that companies buy you when they first hire you.
My choice was a Sony Vaio vpcsb1v9e/b (
check it out here). While at Sony they clearly have not a clue about how to name their products, here's what they feature inside this laptop:
- Core i5 processor, clocked at 2.3ghz
- The usual 4GB of RAM
- Hybrid graphics, joining the power of an ATI HD6470m with the endurance of Intel Graphics.
- A considerably slow hard disk, soon to be replaced by a OCZ Vertex 2 SSD
- A decent amount of ports and interfaces, including 2 USB 2.0, 1 USB 3.0, VGA, HDMI, LAN, two card readers and a Kensington lock.
- Dimensions: 22*33*2.3cm
- Great connectivity, with Wifi, Bluetooth and WWAN, that let's you put a simcard in a small slot and be constantly online.
This lil' toy is currently priced at 1299EUR in Estonia, where I bought it.
the first thing you'll notice, coming from the consumer-level market, approaching this laptop is the incredible quality and level of detail of the chassis. All the components, switches, lids, screws, ports and so on, are well placed and firmly attached to the main body. This computer looks rock solid, and it feels so, too. Despite its size, they managed to pack this small jewel with stunning features. One for all, the built-in optical drive, which simply you wouldnt expect to see in such a small laptop.
A biometric reader, well positioned between the two buttons of the track pad, frees you from the chore of inputing your password everytime you visit a protected website, or log into windows.
The backlit keyboard with integrated light sensor is always clearly visible.
The
glorious 13 inches
matte (yes. Finally!) display is simply beautiful to stare at. It doesn't do anything that laptops from 8 years ago couldn't do, right before some idiot decided that glossy displays look fancy (or they're better for
multimedia , as someone still repeats. Whatever it means.). Ever since, a previously-standard matte display, became a 200 euros extra on every consumer level notebook.
Well thank god at Sony appearently know how pointlessly annoying those glossy thingies can be, and mounted this notebook with a great matte display.
Sony declares up to 7.5 hours of battery life. Let's say that 5 would be a realistic value, and with that, I am more than happy. On a long non direct flight, you have plenty of time to watch a couple of movies, and still do some E-mail while waiting to catch your connection.
A few words must be spent about the unhappy decision of sony to mount a slow 5400rpm disk on this beauty, which is the only real bottleneck in an otherwise almost perfect system. the combination of this and the incredible amount of bloatware that the laptop comes packed with, make it perform way slower than how it should. This mentioned, I swapped in my 7200rpm 750GB hard drive which I got for free from Seagate (yep, they were sorry about that Momentus XT I mentioned in my previous post), and it will take one more week before I'll go solid-state, slipping in an OCZ Vertex 2 (
check it out).
The attention for details is well shown also under the hood: the 4GB of RAM still leave one free slot for future expansions, as well as an incredibly smart cooling system, which stays silent most of the time and when needed, spins on a small fan, which blows air from the back of the laptop.
A future post will describe the user experience more in detail. For that, I still need to wait to upgrade the hard disk.
Bottom line for this notebook is that surely it is well worth the money you'll have to spend on it.
Definitely go for it if you are looking for a rock-solid, reliable and powerful machine. The small amount of extra money which make it look expensive, is a great investment on manifacturing quality and attention to details.
I honestly can't understand how I could wait so long (and so many laptops) before moving to the professional-level market.