towards the optimal laptop

Score: 8
In a few words: a basic laptop with dedicated graphics and a good configuration for the price. It is a pity that the speakers are so bad.
Purchase options: Dell Spain, Dell US, Dell UK, BestBuy.com

Most of the time I use my desktop computer, but during the holidays I need a laptop to keep in touch with optimitza (news, forum, e-mail…) and play some old games. The laptop has to be carried only at the beginning and the end of the holidays, so weight is not very important, but price is, because it is not going to be used a lot and it is not justified to spend a lot on it.

The Dell Studio 15 is a good option: it is a laptop with current hardware, with low-end dedicated graphics card and a good configuration for the price:

• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T5800 (2,0 GHz).
• Memory: 3 GB DDR2 800 MHz.
• Graphics card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450 (256 MB dedicated).
• Hard disk: 250 GB at 5400 rpm.
• Screen: 15,4” a 1280×800, glossy, LED backlight.
• Optical drive: DVD burner.
• Wireless: 802.11b/g.
• Operating system: Windows Vista Home Premium SP1.
• Extras: card reader, webcam (2,0 Mpx) with integrated mic.
• Price: 579 €; similar configurations cost 499 GBP (UK) (749 USD in the US, but with the Intel GMA X3100).

I decided to upgrade the WiFi card to a 802.11n because I know for a fact that the wireless signal I get at my mother’s home is weak, and I got the Midnight blue colour, so the final price was 658 € (with free shipping).

The laptop came without accessories: only the computer, the power brick, a Windows Vista restore disc, 3 driver & software disks, a Microsoft Works disk and the manual.

Design and finish: design: very good; sturdiness: acceptable; finish: good.

The Dell Studio 15 is a consumer laptop, so it is not as sturdy as business laptops (Lenovo Thinkpad, Dell Latitude, HP Elitebook…), but the plastics seem of good quality. The screen has some flex and when the lid is pressed the picture gets distorted at some spots. Anyway, the laptop feels solid and with a nice finish; it does not bend when pressed with the hands and creaking is minimal. The screen is the only point that bends considerably. The design is very nice, but most of the surface is glossy and a fingerprint magnet. The Midnight blue finish of the lid is matte and good-looking. The power cord falls short, for me.

Screen: quality: good, viewing angles: good, outdoor use: mediocre.

The monitor is 15.4″ at 1280×800 with LED backlight. The first impression is excellent, since it is very bright and with vivid colors, better than most laptops at this price point. But when compared to my HP L2245w, contrast and vieving angles are not so good. Viewing angles are better than in other laptops I have used. As I do not make a professional use of color, I cannot tell about the colour gamut, but I have raised a bit the red level in the Catalyst Control Panel since the skin colour in pictures seems too dull. The glossy surface of the screen is not annoying to work if there is no light behind you, but if there is a window or similar, the reflection can be distracting. In the dark scenes of films and games the reflection is more noticeable, even without light from behind. Outdoors, even with the brightness to the maximum and working with clear background, the reflection of myself in a sunny winter day is too visible. It is possible to work, but it is annoying.

It is very difficult that pictures of the screen reflect what the eyes see, but here you have some images: the first is quite blurry, but it was made with low light and can help to get an idea of how the colours and brightness are; the second is less faithful to the reality, but you can see that the contrast and color are not as good as in my usual monitor, an HP L2245w.

Keyboard: feedback: good, layout: very good, flex: very good

The sensitivity of the keyboard is good, even when I prefer softer keys as those of the HP Pavilion dv5 or Sony Vaio laptops. Although if we press strongly the keyboard we can see a certain degree of bending, there is no flex while typing, so you can type comfortably. The layout of the keyboard is very good, with all the special keys grouped in the upper right, and it is very easy to get used to it.

The multimedia keys are touch sensitive and allow to open the Dell Average Direct, control the playback of Dell Media Direct or Windows Media Player (play/pause, stop, forward, backward) but not of Winamp (I did not test other players), control the volume of the system (increase, decrease, mute) and eject the disk of the optical drive. Multimedia controls are not illuminated but they light up when touched; the sensitivity is very good and by now they have not been activated accidentally.

Touchpad: sensitivity average, buttons very good, configuration good.

The touchpad has a slightly rough surface that poses little resistance, on which the finger glides easily. The cursor movement is smooth and precise. Some users complain that this model shows an erratic movement of the cursor, but during these 3 weeks of use I only have experienced it once or twice, and I have not experienced any pause of 0.5 s every 10 s as other users commented. The click of the buttons is soft and makes almost no noise, and they donot feel cheap . Tapping is not perfect, and sometimes it is necessary to repeat the tap . You can configure the standard functions, in addition to the horizontal and vertical scroll , zoom and “circle movement” (I have disabled everything except the scroll), but you cannot define “tap zones” as in the Synaptics touchpads.

Audio: volume mediocre, quality average, bass mediocre, configuration good.

Speakers are, for me,  the weakest point of the Dell Studio 15. Los altavoces son la queja principal que tengo de este portátil. I am not an audiophile, but i like music and I can notice the difference in quality between the Logitech X-210 that I have attached to my desktop computer and the Logitech Z-4 that I have in the living room. The Dell Studio 15 do not have a subwoofer, so a deep and powerful sound cannot be expected, but even when compared to other laptops without subwoofer the audio of this laptop is poor. Basses are there, not as in my LG LS70 in which it seemed that the bassist was on holiday, but even the quality of the high tones is only acceptable. The volume allows listening to music or a film even if there is some environmental noise, but it gets distorted easily if you try to set it very loud. Using the Windows Vista audio properties and the laptop own IDT Audio Control Panel (with graphic equalizer) you can improve sound output a little, but the speakers simply are unable to deliver a good sound. You can listen to some music in the background or follow a movie or game, but you cannot really enjoy them. Of course, the audio outputs can be used (it has two 3.5 mm headphone jacks) to plug the laptop to quality speakers or headphones.

Ports

I like the distribution of the connections: all of them are on the sides, so they are easily accessible and not bother especially. I have not missed any port, and 4 USB ports (one of them shared with an eSATA port) are more than enough.

Left side: In the hinge there is a button to search for WiFi connections. Following there is the slot for a security lock, the wireless switch, HDMI, VGA, 2 USB (the top shared with eSATA), Ethernet, microphone, two headphones, 54 mm Expresscard and card reader.

Front: infrared port in the center.

Right side: FireWire (IEEE 1394), 2 USB ports, slot-loading DVD burner, power plug and power button. I’m a bit afraid of slot-loading, but I have not experienced any problems until now.

Rear: no ports. You can see the heat vent; it is a convenient location, so the hot air is thrown far from your hands, nearby peripherals or other objects you could be keeping at hand.

Comfort: temperature very good, noise good.

The laptop is quite cold and very silent when performing tasks low-intensity tasks: it is warm to the touch but you can have it on your lap without problems (at least in winter and with jeans), and the fan only turns on occasionally. If you are connected to the power outlet and doing more demanding tasks, such as playing a 3D game, the fan is turned on and can be heard constantly; although it is clearly audible, it helps keeping the laptop almost at the same temperature than when surfing the net, so that you can continue using it comfortably. I have to recognize that if you are very sensitive to noise you can find it annoying, but as I use to play with headphones I do not find the noise too problematic.

The bottom has three ventilation slots. The battery has a button that, when pressed, indicates the level of charge. For upgrades and repairs, all the bottom is open…

…that gives easy access to the memory modules, hard disk and internal cards. As you see, there is an internal slots used by the WiFi  module and two free slots for WWAN, Turbo Memory or similar.

Webcam: pictures good, video good, audio good.

The webcam is 2.0 Mpx and allows to take pictures of up to 1600×1200. The image quality is good, but there is some static, especially if the lighting is not very good; it also lets you record video up to 640×480. The built-in microphones record at a quite low volume and initially capture a lot of hissing, but removing the Microphone Boost in the recording options improved the audio recording. All in all, for casual video recording or videoconferencing is quite good.

General performance

Considering that the configuration is quite basic and that it runs Windows Vista, I was surprised by the good performance. Working with 4-10 Firefox tabs, GIMP with 2-3 pictures of 5 Mpx and a few other apps (OpenOffice Writer, Microsoft Word or maybe Dreamweaver) you can switch tasks without delay, but sometimes it keeps thinking for a few seconds to open a window or a menu: quirks of Windows Vista, I guess.

I tested HD video playing using Quicktime: interestingly, while some H264 trailers such as 300 (720p) and The Bourne Ultimatum (1080p) play flawlessly, with a CPU usage of 30-60%, the Serenity trailer (720p) is laggy at times, with up to 90% of CPU usage; on my desktop computer (see specs below) it is completely smooth. More tests with additional trailers and computers are needed to find out if it is a isolated problem or if the configuration is too weak for HD video playback. Anyway, the Serenity trailer is mostly OK, but not perfect.

Update: It is clearly a software issue. Using VLC Media Player instead of Quicktime, the Serenity trailer plays perfectly, I watched 5 more H264 trailers (two of them 1080p) and all of them were perfectly fluid. All clips from dvdloc8.com.

I ran PCMark 05 and 3DMark 06 to be able to compare the scores of my Studio 15 to other laptops:

PCMark 05: 4548 – 3DMark 06:  1802

I also performed a comparision against my desktop computer in a series of real world task. All the tests were performed using free software that can be downloaded and run for free, so anyone willing to compare scores can do it without spending a cent. The configuration of my desktop computer is: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (3.0 GHz), 2 GB RAM DDR2-800, 750 GB HD (7200 rpm), ATI Radeon HD 3450 (256 MB), Windows XP Professional SP2. The tasks performed were the following:

• WinRAR: compressing the Far Cry demo folder (567 MB) in RAR format.
• Folder copy: creating a copy of theFar Cry demo folder (567 MB).
• Video transcoding: converting The Bourne Ultimatum trailer (H264 at 1920×816) to Xvid at 320×240 using Any Video Converter.
• Multitasking: the same conversion while the Far Cry demo folder is compresed in RAR and GIMP has open 14 pictures of 5 Mpx.
• Far Cry (demo) Low, 800×600. Average fps.
• Far Cry (demo) High (Medium texture filter quality), 1280×800. Average fps.
• Crysis (demo) Low, 800×600. Average fps.
• Crysis (demo) High, 1280×800. Average fps.

Results:

As expected the difference in processor frequency (3 GHz in the desktop vs 2 GHz in the Dell Studio 15) is clearly noticeable in most tasks, but the biggest difference is in the folder copy task, moltly influenced by hard drive speed. But in the multitasking test the Studio 15 scores better than the desktop: as the test implies a very high memory use, the 3 GB of RAM give a significant advantage to the laptop; in addition, it is likely that Windows Vista handles multicore processors better than XP.

Gaming performance

The Dell Studio 15 is clearly not a gaming laptop: a moderatly old game such as Far Cry (2004) is playable at 1280×800 and High detail, but gameplay is not as smooth as it is desirable (I got 19-21 fps, 26.7 fps average). A demanding game such as Cryisis is quite playable at minimal settings (800×600, everything set Low), even while the scores are not good (13-40 fps, 25.3 fps average); but in points where there is fog or similar effects (like when the plane door opens in the introduction, or when you are close to the flare after the first encounter) performance drops considerably, so scenes where this kind of effects are widely used could become unplayable.

I also published gaming benchmarks for the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450.

Battery life

Although I have not been able to make a more extensive testing, after surfing the Net for 2 hours and 11 minutes with maximum screen brightness and the balanced energy profile, still a 27 percent of the charge was left (44 minutes estimated); so you can expect a battery life of almost 3 h, something more lowering the screen brightness and choosing the energy saving profile.

Veredict

I am very happy with the Dell Studio 15. Of course, I would like better speakers, a more sensitive touchpad and softer keyboard, but this laptop fullfils my needs and, keeping in mind that it can be had from 499 € in the basic configuration, it is a real bargain.

Strengths

• Good configuration for the price
• Nice and modern design
• Good screen compared to laptops in the same price point
• Does not get hot, even while gaming
• Good port and keyboard layout

Major weaknesses

• None

Minor weaknesses

• Mediocre speakers
• Touchpad sensitivity not perfect
• Can be noisy under heavy load
• Screen not suitable for outdoors

Some purchase options

• Dell US
• BestBuy.com
• Dell UK
• Dell Spain

Do you want more information, or would like to add some? Use the forum.