Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

I've never used it outdoors, but based on my airport experience which is very close, I would say that as long as you're casting a shadow over the display or at least don't have light shining directly on it, I don't think you'll have any problems with reflections due to the finish. The other typical problem with using laptops outdoors is that sometimes the display isn't bright enough and thus looks washed out -- well the QHD+ display is EASILY bright enough to handle even a bright outdoors environment. But again, both of those observations are based on my experience with the QHD+ display, so I have no idea how the FHD panel would compare.

I'm very happy with my system. I have coil whine, but it doesn't bother me, and some apps don't handle QHD+ scaling well yet, but that's hardly Dell's fault and in the meantime I've got one workaround or another. I'd definitely buy this system again.

Incorrect. The keyboard backlighting has off, dim, and full states. You can configure them in Mobility Center (if you have Dell Quickset installed), otherwise I believe you can toggle the modes with the hardware button.

 

Battery life of 3 hours when just web browsing? That's horrific Not to mention a far cry from the advertised 10 hour battery life..

Kind of going off on a tangent here, but has anyone had any luck getting a discount on the M3800? I've read in other topics that sometimes if you haggle with a sales rep they can knock a few hundred of the price..

 

thanks alexhawker for the quick response.
yeah that was my plan to call and chat with their support. Did your or anyone else here had success with complaining ?

cheers

 

At the very least, you should be able to get your shipping upgraded to overnight (if you did not select that option already when you ordered). I was able to get my warranty extended at no cost, and eventually a discount, after being very persistent. I was also lucky to find a 20% off coupon, so I asked to have that honored (instead of the original 10% discount I was offered). At the end of the day, I was slightly less annoyed by how long the computer took to finally ship.

 

There was a coupon for $150 off Precisions priced over $999. That worked for me on the Precision M3800. I was able to go through a rep - several actually - and get a varying discounts offered. I ended up getting the top config with 91Whr battery, 512GB SSD, and 3 years support and had several hundred knocked off the price. I liked my best quote, but wanted to get my total price below a certain level, so the rep was able to come down just a bit more. Ended up way cheaper than I could get a high-end XPS 15 or MB Pro Retina for, so I jumped on it. I'm just hoping it arrives before summer based on the stories of escalating delays. I did hear that the issue with delays could get resolved soon, pushing delivery dates up. Let's hope....

 

That is actually not correct. The mention of 10 hours they advertise is for the top tier model which has a 91w battery. From reports on this tread, the performance most people have reported on that model is anywhere from 6 to 9 hours depending on the work load and settings.
The 4 hours mentioned here is for the 2 lower tear models which only have the 61w battery so typically as they have mentioned here many times, 50% less charge than the bigger models. So logically the battery life you tend to see in those models ranges from 3 hours to maybe 5:30-6 hours.

 

Hmm.. The M3800 specifications page doesn't even mention different batteries for the different models. Do you know if it's possible to get the larger battery in the cheapest model?

EDIT: Just chatted with Dell online and they said it's not possible.

 

If the cheapest model has the HHD, then you can't have the larger battery, because the 2.5" drive is occupying the space needed for the larger battery. It will only be available if you are looking at a model with an MSATA drive (only).

I believe people have been able to request the smaller battery on models with an MSATA drive only (and an empty cage for the drive) in order to allow them to install their own 2.5" drive later.

 

Anyone knows how to run this machine with 1152 x 864 resolution? Desktop icons do not fit when I use that resolution. Please help.

Thanks.

 

What do you mean they don't fit? First off though I would switch down to 100% scaling, otherwise things really would be huge at that resolution with 200% scaling. But why do you want 1152x864? That's a very strange resolution. Even if you need 4:3 aspect resolution, why not 1600x1200 or 1280x960?