Dell Studio XPS 15

At a time when most laptop manufacturers are turning to netbooks, Dell seems to be the only brand not guilty of flooding the market with dozens of netbooks. Dell’s Studio XPS series brings a breath of fresh air by offering great value for money and a great configuration.

EXTERIOR

Dell studio 15 looks classy to say the least with a glossy lid (which is also a fingerprint magnet) that comes in a variety of colours and a few artist editions (which, by the way, look too eye catching for my liking). It has just 3 USB ports (one of them also doubles up as an eSATA port). It 2 audio out ports and 1 microphone jack. Apart from that, it comes with both D-Sub and HDMI ports, LAN port, eSATA and 4-in-1 card reader. A slot loading DVD writer is also thrown in.

OPENING THE LID

When you open the lid, you are greeted with a glossy, 16:9 15 inch screen. Above the screen, there is a barely noticeable webcam which can be used for face recognition as well. The speakers are present above the keyboard. The multimedia keys are integrated with the function keys.

TURNING IT ON

The notebook comes loaded with Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit which, thanks to the fast processor and ample RAM, runs quite smoothly. Being a multimedia notebook, it comes loaded with a copy of Power DVD DX. Watching HD videos on the 1366x768 screen is a good experience as the videos are free of framing issues. The keyboard is good with right sized and well spaced keys. The touchpad supports multi touch gestures like pinch to zoom. Sometimes, while typing, the palm of your hand can rest on the touchpad without you noticing it. When you try to use the touchpad, the zoom function gets activated. This can be quite irritating. Moreover, there is no button to turn off the touchpad. One minor problem with the laptop is that pressing the function keys executes the multimedia functions. To use the F1-F12 keys, they have to be pressed with the Fn key pressed. This can be inconvenient if you use shortcuts like Alt+F4, F5, etc.

UNDER THE HOOD

This notebook comes with an Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 2.1 GHz processor, which is enough for most tasks coupled up with 4GB DDR2 RAM. The discreet graphics solution is ATi Mobility Radeon 4570 with 512 MB GDDR3 memory which can run HD videos and run most recent games on low to medium settings at decent resolutions. The roomy 320GB hard drive will be enough for most users. Connectivity options like WLAN 802.11n and Bluetooth are present.

ACCESSORIES

The notebook comes bundled with an AC adapter, a pair of Creative earphones and a laptop backpack. Driver CD and Windows reinstallation CDs are provided too.

VERDICT

This is a good multimedia notebook that offers great value for money.