Out here in Berlin, where the grass is green and the girls are pretty fugly, Sony has been treating us to a plethora of pleasures. It unveiled to Europe its four latest lines of Vaio laptops -- two aimed at business users, one aimed at families and one aimed at business users with families (no, really).
The most exciting was the Vaio Z Series, led by the top-end VGN-Z11VN/B. This powerful little Intel Centrino 2-powered midget of a laptop comes with a 2.53GHz CPU, 4GB of DDR2 RAM, 320GB hard disk, Nvidia GeForce 9300M GS graphics, Bluetooth, 802.11 a/b/g and Draft-N Wi-Fi, plus an embedded SIM slot for truly mobile broadband, supporting HSDPA up to 7.2Mbps.
At 1.5kg, it's not Sony's lightest laptop, but its specs are incredible for its size. It rocks a true 16:9 resolution, 13.1-inch X-Black LCD screen with incredible colour, up to its native resolution of 1,600x900 pixels. We saw various videos and demos playing on the Z Series and compared to the TZ Series before it, the TZ looked washed out, faded and unrealistic.
There's no Blu-ray drive, though, and although we were told by Sony that it "might be possible" in the future, there's currently no solid-state drive option.
We spent a good half hour playing with this laptop and it really stole the show in our opinion. It's so much fun to use with its amazing specs and a design and build quality we honestly want to describe as 'succulent': so good you want to suck its carbon fibre chassis right off.
We undoubtedly will when it's released later this year, with prices starting at £1,449 for the VGN-Z11MN/B, £1,649 for the VGN-Z11WN/B and maxing out at £1,749 for the VGN-Z11VN/B.
Until we get more UK availability details, click through for close-ups and hands-on snaps galore as we document our one-night stand with the hottest thing to hit Germany since Yvonne Catterfeld. -Nate Lanxon
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