Vaio replacement

[Dashers]

So I currently have a Vaio SVS13A laptop - and I'm not looking to upgrade today, but it's something I'm starting to consider.

Of course, Sony are no longer in the market (at least in the UK), so what else fits this product slot?

It cost me about £1200 new and I'd want something that ticks similar boxes but with more up-to-date kit (gfx, battery tech etc)

- 13.3"
- ~1.5kg carbon fibre and magnesium construction
- SSD (it's RAID on the Vaio, but I suspect M.2 has done away for the need of that)
- BD-ROM/DVD-RW combo
- Full-power i7 processor (none of this ultra-low-useless stuff)
- Dedicated Nvidia GFX
- Oh, and it looks professional and doesn't have lots of silly red LEDs and aggressive chav-gamer l33t styling

It seems these days you have small and wimpy slow or fast and weighty. Or an Apple.

[scaryjim]

I think you'll struggle to find a 13.3" with optical drive nowadays - was about to recommend a thinkpad T460p which is my work laptop, but there's no optical drive option for it.

[peterb]

The Macbbok air has. 13 inch screen and is available with an i7 processor. If you want to run Windows on it you can run boot camp so it boots to Windows directly, or if you only have a few legacy applications, you could run Windows in a VM. In either case you need a copy of Windows which adds to the cost.

But they are light, small and the small bezel makes the screen look bigger than it is.

And it doesn't have lots of gimmicky leds, and some think it's quite stylish and (to my mind) it looks professional.

Lack of ports may be an issue, and if you need an optical drive, it will have to be an external USB drive.

[EndlessWaves]

It seems these days you have small and wimpy slow or fast and weighty.

Bear in mind that the branding has changed, so a 7500U is now a standard power chip equivalent to the Ivy Bridge M suffix dual cores, and the ultra low power models are those with the 7Y75 type model numbers.

Intel integrated graphics have been coming on in leaps and bounds and dedicated graphics chips have been pushed towards the higher end. If you're stuck with something that requires nVidia but not workstation class drivers then there are a few models around with the GM108 (930M/940M).

The optical drive is dead in laptops. Even some big chunky 17" workstations no longer have them.

Asus do the UX303 and UX310 Ultrabooks that meet your requirements (minus the optical drive) but unfortunately they don't seem to sell the 940M equipped models in the UK at the moment, despite having them listed on their UK website.

There's the Microsoft Surface book which meets you requirement (sans impossible optical drive), although it's right on your weight limit at 1516g

[Dashers]

I was looking at the Thinkpad that got me thinking about the subject.

I could go with a Macbook and blat MacOS, but then the keyboard isn't geared towards Windows, and it would bug me.

I wasn't aware of the branding change on the U processors, that makes much more sense and opens up the possibility far more.

I guess I should really give up on my optical drive, I don't use it frequently as I can use my desktop, but there are occasions when I'm out and about when I do. I guess though it's a dying format and I should probably accept that.

[scaryjim]

I don't think it's so much a branding change on the U processors as that you can now get higher clock speeds at an equivalent TDP, so the old M processor branding was essentially redundant.

For instance, the mobile i7 4600 came in an M variant clocked at 2.9 - 3.6 GHz with 37W TDP, or a U variant at 2.1GHz to 3.3GHz with 15W TDP. The mobile i7 6600 only comes in the U variant, which is clocked at 2.6GHz - 3.4GHz with a 15W TDP. So it's not as fast in clock terms as the old M processors, but it's a reasonable jump on the old U processors. Then again, the old U processors weren't exactly slow, tbh.

If you don't mind carting a little bit more weight, you can get a Thinkpad T460p with quad core i5 or i7, GeForce 940MX and a 256GB SSD within budget. It's not the srubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishy magnesium/carbon construction you're looking for, but it's quite stylish and very powerful. Since I often work from home I cart mine around just in a normal messenger-type bag a lot; it's pretty comfortable to carry...

[EndlessWaves]

I don't think it's so much a branding change on the U processors as that you can now get higher clock speeds at an equivalent TDP, so the old M processor branding was essentially redundant.

Same difference. There's been an overall reduction in power/heat with the desire of thinner laptops with longer lasting batteries so if the M series had stuck around then they'd be in a similar place to the U series are now.

For instance, the mobile i7 4600 came in an M variant clocked at 2.9 - 3.6 GHz with 37W TDP, or a U variant at 2.1GHz to 3.3GHz with 15W TDP. The mobile i7 6600 only comes in the U variant, which is clocked at 2.6GHz - 3.4GHz with a 15W TDP. So it's not as fast in clock terms as the old M processors, but it's a reasonable jump on the old U processors. Then again, the old U processors weren't exactly slow, tbh.

The U haswell chips were only low power, the ultra low power haswell model was the i7-4610Y with 1.7Ghz base and 2.6/2.9Ghz turbo with an 11.5W TDP

That turned into the 4.5W Core M 5Y7 for Broadwell while the base clock of the x600 got bumped to 2.6Ghz for Broadwell and Skylake and with the i7-7500U running at 2.7Ghz it's likely to be 2.8-2.9Ghz for Kaby Lake.

[scaryjim]

Same difference. There's been an overall reduction in power/heat with the desire of thinner laptops with longer lasting batteries so if the M series had stuck around then they'd be in a similar place to the U series are now. ....

Not really - the i7 6600U has a lower base clock than the 4600M, so it hasn't outright replaced that line (although assuming Arch improvements of ~ 10% it should perform about the same).

The U branding still indicates a lower power processor with a 15W TDP, in the same way that the Core Y line still represents chips with a < 5W TDP, and the H line represents chips with a 45W TDP. Intel have simply dropped the 37W TDP M line outright, presumably because they reckoned people who wanted more performance than U would happily go for an H. I guess it simplifies their product stack, as well as making it easier for OEMs to develop designs as they only need to address a 15W TDP in mainstream laptops rather than (potentially) 15W and 37W.

But it's plain wrong to say that the U processors are now standard power chips. They're still lower power chips, and it shows in the (lower) clock speeds they achieve compared to the previous-generation's M chips. Intel's simply decided that a standard power processor line isn't worth maintaining. The branding remains consistent.

[HiSJAM]

The new Razer Blade tick all of your boxes, except the DVD.

Price is comparable considering how old your Vaio is.

Screen 14-inch, 3200 x 1800 px resolution, 10-finger multi-touch, IGZO IPS panel
Processor Intel Skylake Core i7-6700HQ CPU, quad-core 2.6 GHz (3.5GHz boost)
Video Intel HD 530 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M with 6GB GDDR5 VRAM
Memory 16 GB DDR4 2133Mhz
Storage 256GB (512GB optional) M.2 PCIe SSD
Connectivity Killer Wireless-AC 1535, Qualcomm Atheros Bluetooth 4.1
Ports 3x USB 3.0, Thunderbolt 3(USB Type-C), HDMI 1.4b, mic/earphone combo
Battery 70 Wh
Operating system Windows 10
Size 345mm or 13.6” (w) x 235mm or 9.3” (d) x 17.9mm or .7” (h)
Weight 1.93 kg or 4.25 lbs
Extras Backlit keyboard with 16.8 million colors per key, 2MP webcam, TPM 2.0

and looks fantastic.

Oh, and you can game on it too.

[Barakka]

I had a similar dilemma having had 3 VAIO's then a Macbook Pro, and I went for the Dell XPS 15

It doesn't have the DVD drive, but what does now ? and to be honest who uses CDs/DVDs any more ?

It's 2 Kg and 15", but thanks to the Infinity Edge (virtually non-existent bezel) is only 20mm longer and 10mm wider than your VAIO, plus it has an i7-6700HQ CPU, and touch screen

I've had mine nearly a year and so far i'm impressed.