I Love:
- Upscale and posh looks.
- Solid Performance.
- Backlit Keyboard.
- Envious look on my friends face.
I Hate:
- It is a lap-burner.
- Pretty heavy for a 13 incher.
- Dies in 2.5 hrs on battery.
Specifications:
- Intel Core 2 duo P8600 -- 2.4 Gigs
- 4GB Ram
- 256MB Nvidia GeForce 9500M
-
320GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
Priced at over Rs. 60,000, Dell’s Studio XPS 1340 would be best placed in the premium laptop segment. Before the spooky price scares you, i guess i should start telling you why this machine deserves your attention.
Looks:
Dell Studio XPS 1340 has a bold look, with rounded hinges and smooth details. The outer shell is a beautiful compilation of three distinct materials. A silver anodized aluminium stripe cuts across the lid dividing beautifully the black premium plastic and the leather. The chassis is bordered with anodized aluminium which gives the laptop a rich feel. The screen has edge to edge glass which you find on a MacBook. The backlit keyboard with flat keys is very comfortable to type and looks cool. However the black plastic attracts a lot of fingerprints.
Performance:
XPS houses an Intel Core 2 duo P8600 processor which you don’t find in most of the competition. P8600 brings about a major performance boost to the machine by providing a faster FSB and a larger CPU cache. It provides 1066Mhz Front Side Bus instead of 800Mhz found on most of the other laptops.(Note: A slow FSB will cause the CPU to spend significant amounts of time waiting for data to arrive from system memory) .The processor has a 3MB Cache which is larger than the 2MB cache found on most systems.(Note:Cache memory access is faster than the system memory.)
The XPS has Nvidia 9500M graphics card with hybrid SLI technology. The Nvidia GeForce 9500M is not a single graphics card, but two: an integrated GeForce 9400M G plus a GeForce 9200M GS with 256 MB of dedicated memory. Basically you can turn the dedicated graphics off if you want to save power and turn it on later for better performance. The hardware allows you to play most of the newer games with moderate to low settings.
I tried playing Call of duty 4 and Left for dead on the machine. Call of duty is very much playable with medium settings and i got 15-20 fps on an average. If you move to higher settings the frame rates drop below 10fps and it becomes difficult to play the game. I was able to squeeze out similar frames for Left for dead as well. I would suggest that this laptop is not for avid gamers though you can play some decent titles.
As far as day to day multitasking is concerned the performance is excellent with no major hiccups at all. The machine can handle playing HD content, writing a dvd and video chat together without showing perceptible signs of lag. The hardware scores well on the vista windows experience with a score of 5.2.
Ports:
VGA, Ethernet, DisplayPort, HDMI, one USB, one combo USB/eSATA port, 1 microphone jack and two headphone jacks, ExpressCard slot, card reader, FireWire, slot-loading optical drive.
Heat Noise & Battery:
Heat plays spoilsport to otherwise great machine. Certain regions under the laptop and near the battery get unbearably hot. This particularly happens when the laptop is running in performance mode.
The heat is bearable when the machine is running in power saving mode. The fan and hard disk don’t make a lot of noise and are pretty silent.
The battery life when the dedicated graphics are not fired up is decent 2.5 hrs. But the battery lasts only 1.5 hrs when the dedicated graphics are brought up. This is unusually low for an ultraportable. The MacBook 13 for instance can last just less than 4 hrs on the battery.
Conclusion:
The Dell XPS-1340 caters to a wide audience that wants portability without compromising on performance. Apart from stylish looks and portability this machine has a powerful hardware to give tough competition to any other premium segment laptop. It seems battery life and heat remain the major issue for the laptop.
I give thumbs up to Dell Studio XPS 1340.
Case Closed
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