March 25th, 2009

Dell Adamo vs. Voodoo Envy 133 vs. Apple Macbook Air vs. Sony Vaio Z [Toybox Shootout]

Posted by Andrew Nusca @ 8:55 pm

Categories: Apple, Computers, Dell, Feature, HP, Laptops, Lenovo, Netbooks

Tags: Sony Corp., Voodoo, Apple MacBook Air, Dell Computer Corp., Sony Vaio, Hewlett-Packard Co., Lenovo Group Ltd., Apple MacBook, Apple Inc., HP Pavilion

The announcement of the Dell Adamo luxury thin-and-light laptop (above) reminded consumers that yes, there exists a market in between the white-hot Netbook segment and the ever-larger desktop replacement segment. Indeed, fully-featured thin-and-light laptops are still here for those of us who need portability and horsepower under the hood (and hey, a little style, too).

But where’s the value proposition? Just how much Adamo can you get versus Air, or Envy, or Vaio Z?

Here’s a statistical head-to-head comparison to figure that out. I took similar configurations — within $260 of each other, from $1,729 to $1,999 — of the Dell Adamo, Voodoo Envy 133, Apple Macbook Air and Sony Vaio Z, with Apple’s standard Macbook, Dell’s XPS M1330, HP’s Pavilion dv3z and Lenovo’s X301 thrown in for comparison.

Here’s a look at just how much laptop these machines offer for the price, from dimensions to components to looks.

Price

Here are the suspects. For the purpose of this comparison, I tried to choose configurations as close as possible to each other. Here are the price tags on each, with additional information on the range in parentheses.

Dell Adamo: $1,999 ($2,699 also available)

• The Adamo is Dell’s new premium thin-and-light laptop.

Voodoo Envy 133: $1,899 (to $2,999)

• The Envy is a premium laptop by VoodooPC, a “craft” division of HP.

Apple Macbook Air: $1,799 (or $2,499)

• The Air is Apple’s thinnest, lightest laptop.

Sony Vaio Z: $1,739 (or $1,599)

• The Z is Sony’s thin-and-light offering for executives.

Apple Macbook: $1,774 (or $1,299)

• The Macbook is Apple’s entry-level laptop.

Dell XPS M1330: $1,749 (from $699)

• The XPS M1330 is Dell’s lightest 13-inch laptop.

HP Pavilion dv3z: $1,972 (from $679)

• The Pavilion dv3z is HP’s thinnest and lightest full-featured notebook with an integrated optical drive.

Lenovo X301: $1,999

• The X301 is Lenovo’s premier ultraportable laptop.

When it comes to flexibility, the non-luxury laptops rule. Most of the laptops positioned as “premium” products drastically limit your pricing options — the Adamo, Macbook Air and Sony Vaio Z come in only two configurations, the Envy 133 comes in four (including the most expensive unit of the bunch), and the X301 comes in three if you include its cousins, which carry different model numbers. On the other hand, the XPS M1330 and Pavilion dv3z offer myriad configurations, giving you more freedom to pinch pennies on certain parts (such as RAM) and spend on others (such as CPU). But they don’t look as sleek and are a bit chunkier (more on that next).

For the purposes of comparing as fairly as possible, I’m using the first figures, which range from $1,739 to $1,999. Let’s take a look.

Next page: How thin is thin; light is light? »

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