Vaio Z Canvas vs. Microsoft Surface Pro 4 & Surface Book Comparison Smackdown 

+Lesley Harrys I have the i5 256 book, and I must add that it is a wonderful device. However I think Microsoft never advertised the screen as a tablet, its advertised as a "Clipboard." Just an easy way to show someone something or jot down some notes, however man I would love at least 4-6hr battery life for the Clipboard portion. I will say though I get about 13hr of battery life in laptop mode.

Fritz Javel I think it's great that youé happy with the Surface Book. And I agree, as a laptop, it's pretty amazing. It's not true though, that Microsoft doesn't advertise it as a tablet. Yes, they call it a Clipboard, but that is just a marketing term. The site absolutely advertises the Surface Book as both a laptop and a tablet and the fact is that it is a really subpar tablet. It wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft intentionally hampered the tablet portion of the Surface Book, just to give people an incentive to buy the Surface Pro 4 for more tablet minded use. If Microsoft had chosen to combine the tablet prowess of the Surface Pro 4 with the fantastic keyboard dock of the Surface Book, there's no doubt that that would be my main computer right now. But no, they HAD to bring out two pretty similar devices, instead of making the ideal device. I think that's a real missed chance, grown out of greed and the need to cater to absolutely everyone with watered down products that are still very good, but could be much better. Having said that, if you don't need it to be a powerful and versatile tablet, the Surface Book is a very well built, good looking laptop that performs well and has the best keyboard and trackpad I've ever used on a Windows device. It's by no means a bad product. In fact, it's a very, very good product. It's just not for me. Not yet, anyway, and I really wanted it to be. So for me, personally, it was a disappointing product. I have a Vaio Z Canvas now. That still isn't perfect, but suits my needs better than the Surface Book does.

Well said! Gotta find what's right for you. I do think Microsoft is intentionally creating a division by using the Clipboard battery life as the argument between the Surface Book and the Pro. However until the Clipboard gets its own stand, like the pro has, it isn't competing with the pro and this they should have increase battery life. Even at the cost of weight.

Fritz Javel True. If I could get the tablet portion of the Surface Book with the stand, battery life, ports and MicroSD slot of the SP4, it's an instabuy for me.

Yeah but I feel like once you add the stand, and the extra batteries, your weight advantage is going to go down.

still waiting! I couldn't wait anymore and just pulled the trigger on the 'current' one... so the new canvas will probably be announced next week.

I dont know the canvas i would kill for

+Bryant Money I think the Lenovo yoga 900 is more affordable in the same specs

+Nawwar Ali The yoga 900 looks good on paper, but imo Lenovo prematurely ... well it's still only a dual-core, has weaker gpu than the above machines, has no pen support, and honestly Lenovo build quality is far behind MS' and perhaps light years behind the Vaio. Having experience with two Lenovo laptops (fortunately company paid - not personally) this year and can say that they have more than one (each) annoying defect in components and drivers. If a crappy product wasn't cheaper I would be really surprised. I think if you're looking for budget oriented machine the new Dell's XPS are much better than the Lenovo (if you don't need the pen support of course, or a larger surface tablet)

good to know thanks 😉

+blueckaym +Nawwar Ali I own a Lenovo now, and their devices are much better now. Durable and much less preloaded shit. That being said, no pen support kinda makes it an unfair comparison. Consider the Spectre X360 instead.

I love the option to draw on the screen though.

I've been looking at the vaio too, but I have a similar problem in that I'll have to import it to the UK. Have you found a solution to importing it? Right now I think I'm going to have to buy from amazon US :(

+LilChikyChan I've got cousins in the US so I might get them to buy it off Amazon for me and send it here as a gift (at least that way I don't have to pay Amazon's shipping fee...) or when one of them comes to visit. Damn it Vaio, there are other countries too :/

are you from Argentina, Argel, ....? where are you from?

+Pablo Ezequiel Gomez I think he is is in Spain Arg!!! is him expressing frustration

+Ze Gogo haha. yeah. I'm in Spain currently.

KentSpain85 GET THE FUCK IN I'M GONNA HAVE A FIESTA!! I GUESSED SOMEONES COUNTRY OVER THE INTERNET BECAUSE THEIR USERNAME SAYS IT XD

+Ze Gogo lol. I never assumed you weren't going to get it xD. I mean, really, it's in the name! haha.

+59seank that's RU-vid taking time to distribute HD video the first like 15 minutes after it is uploaded.

+59seank If that happens always wait a few minutes for RU-vid to finish processing. 1080p working fine here half an hour after your comment.

Thanks gentuxabl and JusSnFan for the explanation.

+Rob “Lunatique” Chang they probably didn't send any review products. But the team can better answer this.

vaio

the pro 4 is silent, unless under load, but even then, Its crazy quiet

+awepecness 101 thanks!

+sami stenman yep!

Also I'm asking from an illustrative designer standpoint as my main worries are with using photoshop for illustration while screen recording with programs like Xsplit Broadcaster at the same time :)

clock speed does not matter these days. its the speed of the SSD that matters

+Derrick Stratton quad core vs dual core, is not much of a competition. As the cpu in the canvas is a desktop grade processor, and the ones the surface line are ultra low voltage ones. or something like that

The 3.4 GhZ processor is the turbo boost speed. Vaio Z canvas also has turbo boost speed to 3.4ghz and 4 core instead of 2 core on surface pro 4.

although the SP4 & VAIO both have intel i7 cpu's and processor speeds might be identical what u have to take into account is that the VAIO 's i7 has 4 physical core's where the SP4's i7 has only 2 physical core's, basically every core is doing 1 process each at the same time so basically the VAIO will be twice as fast when it comes to computational tasks and if the SP4 begins to max out its processing speed its start getting hot and the hotter it gets the cpu in the SP4 will start throttling down to cool down and will get alot slower till temp is good. The VAIO under the same circumstance's will throttle also however it will take approx twice the load if similar hardware also GPU speed matters too so you should keep that in thought but i have the SP4 i7 16g 512g and run autocad with pretty decent sized design's and having no trobles with the iris graphics best computer i've ever had. u need think about what your needs are going to be and shop accordingly but if you can get by with a SP4 then thats what u should get

+Thomas Wong Yes I'll review it.

Great Question. I want to see the HP SPECTRE X2 review

+LENOVOVO I tried really hard to buy a different Type Cover color this time around, but still I came home with that lovely cyan blue :)

+MobileTechReview It's all good Lisa :-) You made the right choice :-)

Get some blue paint and rub it all over yourself then. It's just a type cover it should have nothing to do with your purchase decision.

+Andy Blanchfield It's just like screen resolution. You don't hear people go "this screen has a resolution of one-thousand nine-hundred and twenty by one-thousand and eighty pixels" when talking about a 1920x1080 screen. It just sounds awkward.

sartonnis Good point, just sounds so weird is all.

+gentuxable Actually not true, we reviewed the MSI GT72 Dominator Pro with the 5th gen Broadwell Core i7-5700HQ quad core. Few manufacturers bothered since Broadwell was so delayed, but a few did.

+gentuxable Broadwell on notebooks was limited to 47W 4C i7s, 4.5W 2C Core Ms, and a variety of 15/28W 2C i3/i5/i7/Pentium/Celeron models. There were also desktop Broadwell processors - the i5-5575R, i5-5675C, i5-5675R, i7-5775C and i5-5775R.

MobileTechReview oh, that one I missed and the announcement for the CPU as well, then.

+Joe Schmoe if is doesn't charge via USB it is not a tablet. a tablet should be portable and charge anywhere.

+Joe Schmoe if I buy one of them I would keep the laptop charger on my desk at home to use for work. later I could browse or read in bed, I usually have USB chargers to charge my gadgets. that's my point. 😊

+Ahmed Senbel A tablet isn't defined by how it's charged, and many pre 2013 and all pre iPad tablets used pin chargers, just like the Z Canvas. They are all portable, and they all can be charged anywhere, just not with the limited microUSB port on crappy Android tablets

+Marcello Branca They're review loaners, as are most things we review.

ah ok ;)

+Kathrin Gerz The price was reduced during Feb-2016 (Miscrosoft store had a president day sale and the entry level Canvas Z was priced @ USD 997/-)

+RENJITH VAKKAYIL more like fire sale cause that's a ridiculous discount, they were trying to get rid of them.

+Darrel Und Not if you really have hard-work to do on it, and still want a portable universal machine.

+Michael Vuong Vaio is a company of its own now. In my opinion, Vaio is a good computer :-)

I thought so too. apparently not

+Matt Not anymore Matt, Vaio is a company of its own. Sony is no longer in the computer business. ;-(

+Matt well watch the video. It is no longer under Sony brand.

+Matt Sony had sold it to other japanese company but still retain 5% share plus majority of their employee from Sony Vaio still retain and work on the new company.

+Stev We "because if you are a professional, you aren't going to have a tablet to do your craft," By that argument none of these products make sense. There are plenty of artists who use mobile devices to do their work. It's a niche but far from non existent. Freelancers who travel are an example. We will have to see how it sells to decide if they overpriced it or not. It's for the same market as the Cintiq Companion but for those who want a quadcore.

I have a SP4....NEVER AGAIN, I could write a paragraph listing every little minor problem that makes it completely useless!

the VAIO would do okay, but the book can't play the newest games unless you go to max performance and plug it in