When you think of design supremacy in the laptop world, you generally do not think Dell; most of the times our minds turn Sony, Apple and most recently HP. But in recent months Dell has been stepping up the design aspect of their laptops especially their Studio and XPS lines.At the top of this is the Dell XPS Studio 13 which is the latest to make it from Dell’s R&D labs. Hot on the heals of the new Macbook’s and HP dv series, the Dell brings something to the table that most the others is lacking, price performance and a damn sexy look.
DESIGN:
I will be honest, when I first heard about the new XPS Studio 13 systems; I was expecting to be greeted by sub-par design and decent performance. But when I went to Dell’s website and checked the system out for myself I was blown away.
As the name suggests the system comes with a 13.3 inch LCD screen that boasts a 1280x800 pixels (LED backlit is available).
Other specs include a standard Intel Core 2 Duo with a clock speed of 2.4GHz (and as we said standard) as well as 4GB of DDR3 (not DDR2) memory. The RAM can be expanded up to 8GB but be prepared to spend some extra moola for that.
The standard hard drive is 320GB wit 7200rpm as well as a slot load Super Multi DVD optical drive (Blu-Ray options is available on the 16-inch model).
Ports include VGA, HDMI, FireWire, 2x USB 2.0 ports, eSATA, 4-in-1 card reader, 2 audio out ports as well as a microphone port.
Wireless technologies include Next-Gen wireless N Mini Card, Bluetooth 2.0 as well as a port for EVDO cards (Sprint, Verizon etc).
Other features include an NVIDIA GeForce Integrated 9400 graphics, 2.0 megapixel camera (with face recognition software), Window’s Vista Home Premium 64-bit and a beautiful back-lit keyboard.
Everything fits nicely into this system which is very compact and easy to use. The back-lit keyboard provides a beautiful typing experience for those who use their computers in the dark. The touch sensitive media controls work beautifully and so far none of them has malfunctioned.
PERFORMANCE:
Thanks to this computer super fast Core 2 Duo clock speed it has blazing fast performance and couple that with the 7200rpm 320GB hard drive as well as the standard 4GB of DDR3 memory, you get everything you need performance wise. The system is able to do multi-tasking effortlessly. Programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Premier, and many other graphic intense programs run smoothly.
Thanks to the computers integrated NVIDIA GeForce 9400 graphics chipset you get excellent performance on multi-media and good performance on games. As expected this is not a gaming system so you won’t be able to play Crysis on full 60fps, but games like COD4, NFS Undercover as well as Halo all play nicely on medium graphical intensity.
Battery life is good but could be a little better. If the backlit keyboard is running you can expect to get 2:40 minutes from continuous use (this is a 6-cell battery). On power save mode, this increases to 3:20 minutes.
Since we have been testing the system we have not seen any lag in performance no matter what we have thrown at it. The major reason for this is thanks in part to the 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor as well as the 4GB of DDR3 RAM with 1066MHz FBS.
DRAWBACKS:
Design wise, some have raised concerns about the visible screws on the display panel but personally they lend a cool design notch as they are polished and have the resemblance to titanium.
Also we would have wished that the trackpad were multitouch as well as glass. But more importantly the screen resolution is not as good as it could be. We were really hoping we could get a better one but that is minor.
We do notice that the system runs a little hot depending on what programs is running and the environment temperature so we would not advise resting the device on the carpet for extended tournaments of WOW.
Also LED backlit does not come standard and you will have to shell out some dough for that. Other then that we are very satisfied with the design and performance. We couldn’t ask for more.
Our only major concern was the system crash which happened within a few minutes of the computer starting up. After checking out a few forums as well as reviews we found that some of the earlier versions of the XPS Studio 13 were shipped with defective BIOS software which caused the system to crash or give the “blue screen of death.” A quick BIOS update via the Dell.com website as well as a fresh reinstall of Windows (thanks to the included disk) will fix the problems, although we did not have to do that. After spending a few minutes with msconfig we found out that our problem was a software conflict and that was easily rectified.
CONCLUSION:
So you’re probably asking what is the price and is it worth it? Our system clocked in at just a little over $1,300 from Dell.com. But, this system was rather purchased at Best Buy where we got it for $899 (a $400 savings). There were some surprises in the box also which included 15-month subscription to Trend Micro Anti-virus as well as LoJack for one year.
Cost to value ratio, this is a heck of a steal. This system beats out the specs for the Macbook 13-inch. The Macbook 13-inch only comes with 2GB of DDR3 memory which can be expanded to 4GB. The Dell XPS 13 comes with a full 4GB of DDR3 memory and can be expanded to 8GB (like the Macbook Pro). More importantly Apple shoved a mediocre 160GB hard drive into their baseline Mac. This system doubles that and has the same rpms (7200). You also have the option for a wireless card (something the Mac lacks), and last but not least our system came with touch sensitive controls (which the Mac lacks) as well as backlit keyboard (which is only available on the $1599 MacBook 13-inch).
So is this a deal? Heck yes. We can guarantee you will not be disappointed.
