Sony VAIO Z Series

The 13-inch VAIO Z is ridiculously thin and light. At 0.7 inch when closed, the body is about as thick as the thickest point on a Macbook Air, though the VAIO Z doesn't taper as Apple's ultraportable does. It's even lighter than the 13-inch Air, too, at 2.5 pounds. This is due in part to Sony's having made the body out of aluminum and featherweight, durable carbon fiber. It looks good, and it feels good. And despite the laptop's incredibly svelte size, Sony crams a full-voltage Core i5 or Core i7 processor into it. Our review model came with a Core i7 2620M and 4GB of RAM. It also carried a 256GB solid-state drive, and the combination powered the system to a very impressive WorldBench 6 score of 138--one of the highest scores we've seen for an ultraportable laptop. Amazingly, the battery lasted for 5.5 hours, about an hour less than the batteries on most recent ultraportables have managed, but quite impressive considering the horsepower under the hood.