Buying a new laptop is definitely a difficult task. With the plethora of options that are available, anybody hoping to buy a laptop other than the Macbook will have to think and rethink upon what is important and what is not. In my case, I give highest preference to the display followed by the processor, ram, graphics card, cooling solution,battery life,weight and looks in that order. Or, maybe, looks should follow just after the display. I brought the core i5 version with full HD display.
Display
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| Courtesy: thinkdigit forums |
This system has a full hd 1920x1080 resolution. There is also an anti glare matte coating on the display. Either of them alone can be found in other laptops but the combination of the two along with the quality of the display gives the laptop a huge boost above its similarly priced counterparts. Notebookcheck.com mentions that this display is made by AU optronics. For normal usage the screen is very good. Text is crisp and sharp and reading for an extended time is strain free. Whites are truly white and blacks are rich deep blacks. The blacks are enhanced by the anti glare coating which gives the display an awesome feel when watching movies. The screen is very bright at its maximum. Full HD movies look very good too. 1366x768 resolutions are available, but at 15 inch, they will not give you the same effect that the full HD display does. There might be two possible short comings for a full HD display. Battery life will be less and the latest games might not be playable at full HD resolution due to a less powerful graphics card in this system.
Processor
Has the option for a core i5 3210m or a core i7 3632QM processor. i7 will make it future proof for you but considering the fact that this is not the most powerful laptop around in terms of the cpu+gpu combo, i5 will be more than sufficient for all needs. The processor is the M series(35W) and not U series(17W) so that even if the battery life is less the performance does not suffer. Its also Intel 3rd generation processor, which is the worlds first commercial 22nm 3D trigate processor.
RAM
Many choices from 4gb to 8gb. This laptop has its RAM clocked at 1600MHz which is almost a norm among all high performance laptops. The RAM is made by Nanya technologies and benchmarks show a very high rating for the performance of this RAM.
Graphics Card
The AMD radeon HD 7730m is, according to experts, not a very great card in terms of gaming performance. But rest assured that it can game well enough for most games and almost all games would give playable frame rates albeit at a lower resolution. I tried my hand at Mafia 2 on the system and it runs smoothly in full HD resolution at maximum settings. This system contains another very capable graphics card in the form of Intel HD 4000. AMD's enduro technology helps to switch between these two when need arises. When I played Mafia 2, the GPU automatically kicked in without assigning the high performance mode in Catalyst control center. The radeon HD 7730m is AMD's first 28nm card based on their Graphics Core Next(GCN) architecture. The 28nm and zero core technology helps in major power savings. If you want to assign a particular graphic card to an appliaction, you can do it in catalyst control center, but I haven't actually tested if this works. Many users in other forums have reported that this doesn't often work. A matter of concern is AMD's buggy drivers. The de facto drivers provide good performance but if you try to run AMD's driver updater, your graphics card will be shown as unsupported. So you will have to download the latest drivers directly from AMD or a little older drivers through dell support website. When you install the latest drivers for AMD, the Intel HD 4000 gets downgraded to an older driver. AMD does this to ensure compatibility. If you allow Windows update to update the Intel HD automatically, the AMD radeon HD will be shown as disabled in the device manager. Hopefully, all this should get solved by a future update.
Cooling
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| Courtesy: thinkdigit forums |
This is one of the coolest laptops around. The top portion of the laptop does not get hot under any situation. The vent is situated on the side and is angular and expels heat very well. The touchpad is cool even after an hour of HD gaming(Mafia 2). I got this laptop very recently, so I didn't have enough new games to test on this system. I will update this post soon with more game info. Cooling is helped by the size of this laptop. This is not your superslim ultrabook that doesn't have enough space for a vent. This laptop is big enough to expel heat very well. This, I feel, should ensure longevity of the components.
Looks
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I was impressed by the honeycomb aluminium finish when I first unwrapped this laptop. The texture is smooth with the honeycomb pattern embossed lightly. The cover is switchable but this is not officially supported in all countries. The power button has much less travel than I like. The back lit keyboard seriously accentuates the night time looks of this laptop. The inside too has the same honeycomb finish and this makes it feel good to touch. The track pad is large and smooth with dedicated keys. The only drawback is that the interior and exterior surfaces are very much finger print prone. You can see fingerprints all over the body after usage, so it requires periodic cleaning.
Battery life
This is no ultrabook and the processors are not Intel U processors. This laptop gives me a battery life of about 3.5 hours when the display is at minimal brightness while browsing on WiFi. For HD movies playing from hard disk, it can last you the length of 1 full movie and a little time extra. So battery life is not very great but its not so bad also.
Weight, bulk and build
It weighs a heavy 2.7kg so this is may not exactly be a suitable travel partner. The laptop is thicker than most of its counterparts but you wont see the bulk while looking at it. There is a silver panel running through the side that looks slim. The rest of the bulk is hidden by black plastic that curves away underneath so that when this laptop rests on a desk, you might even say that it is a slim one. This is rigidly built and there is no flex on the top and bottom surfaces. The only flimsy thing is the DVD drive which, when opened, would look like its just about to fall off.
Speakers
Provided by Skullcandy, the speakers are loud enough to fill a room. They lack bass though. The sound is a little bit muffled due to the placement of speakers beneath the laptop. Dell could have given them on the top so that you get direct sound rather than reflected sound. Not the best, but better than many I've heard.
Keyboard and trackpad
The keyboard is chiclet and has wide spaces between keys. There is adequate key travel and backlight provides for night time typing and daytime styling. The trackpad is large and responsive with dedicated keys. It supports multi gestures and has functions for accessing windows 8 charms menu. The trackpad is smooth to touch and does not get hot even under extended usage.
Bloatware
Preinstalled bloatware are few except for McAfee 30 days trial and Office 2010 downloader. There is an ebay metro icon. Cyberlink mediasuite essentials are included but since it includes programs like powerdvd, it cant be classified as bloatware.The real bloats are the dell applications like quickset, touchpad control center, smart audio etc. which cause a lag at start up But since this is a very powerful system you barely feel the effect of all these. Not all these are bad software functionally. The new Dell Support Center is one of the best support software available. It has minimal looks but is supremely functional. It is provided by PC doctor.
Software
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Windows 8, in spite of all the negative reviews, is a great operating system. Never before in the history of Microsoft has there been an OS that is quick, secure and good looking, all at the same time. People will of course miss the start menu but instead Microsoft has given a full screen start menu with all the same functions. The system boots in less than 10 seconds even if the laptop doesn't have an SSD(Although you can always swap your HDD for an SSD). It includes windows defender which is rated as one of the best antivirus products. It has a very functional feel shaped by the long years of Microsoft OS 's.
Package
I ordered this laptop online and received it only after 20 days of waiting. There was some kind of customs clearance problem for the shipment and this was the cause of the delay. The build process was completed 4 days after receiving the order. Everything can be tracked online through dell.com/status. The system was well packed when it reached me. Dell sent 3 separate packages containing the laptop, the Targus backpack and the mouse. The backpack provided with this system is a very high quality, good looking bag unlike some of the other laptop manufacturer's bags. The only disk I got was that for driver re installation and there was no windows 8 disk. So you have to make recovery disks or risk losing your windows 8 copy. There was no other offers or freebies included except for a 3% corporate/student discount which they have discontinued now.
The Inspiron series have been Dell's best selling line of laptop. Comparing the Inspiron 15r and Inspiron 15r SE, the SE offers better build quality in terms of the honeycomb aluminium finish, the skullcandy speakers, backlit keyboard and the Full HD display option. The overall advantages can be summed up as excellent display, very efficient cooling, good keyboard, good trackpad, loud sound and value for money. The cons include the 4hr battery life, flimsy DVD drive and tendency for fingerprints on the honeycomb coating. To sum up, its one of the best value laptops to buy right now.
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