Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

In my experience so far, this machine is really wonderful after almost 2 months of use.

Most of the issues I had are fixed or I have found a workaround method for them. I was one of the lucky ones without any noise coming from the machine under all circumstances. It is very quiet actually and very rarely have I heard the fans go off.

I played with the touchpad (also installed new drivers) which now responds very well to all the different gestures. I only disabled the side swipes which would sometimes create unwanted results.
The issue with the screen or pointer not responding when coming back from sleep is no longer a problem for me since when it happens I only have to very quickly swipe back and forth on the touchpad and it seems to wake up the screen sensors instantly and I can resume my work. Before only a shut down would solve that problem...

As far as heat, it can get fairly warm on your laps and could be uncomfortable for some. I use it on my bed from time to time but not for any long period at a time. But it never really gets hot or unbearable like some other systems would do.

I do not know if it is true for a fact, but my impression is that the XPS 15 seems to be more prone to the coil whine since there are less reports of this issue from M3800 owners... I think it was mentioned before in this thread, the fact that they had different graphic cards could be the difference maker? maybe that is the reason...

So far I am extremely satisfied with this machine and it is a pleasure working on it.

 

I don't think that would account for the difference. I think it's the fact that a) the XPS 15 had about a 2-month head start on purchase availability over the M3800, so more people have XPSes, and b) even now that both are available, more people are buying the XPS than the M3800. Those two mean that there are simply more people who are likely to have coil whine.

 

Fair enough. I admit that having read both this thread and the XPS 15 Haswell thread from the beginning, the fact that the same questions are constantly being asked over and over by people who clearly haven't done any reading has been wearing on me, but if you've done some reading then it seems that was misdirected in this case. It was simply unclear because your first question was the classic "Is there anything I should know about this system?" which doesn't suggest much research. And as for the conflicting information about thermals, I fail to see how you expect that asking the question again will suddenly result in a unified answer despite prior conflicting information.

In any case, I absolutely recommend this system to anyone for whom its unique combination of features is important. There are systems that are better than this one in certain individual respects (battery life, performance, keyboard quality, port connectivity, etc), but there's no other PC on the market at the moment that offers this particular blend of functionality in what amounts to an impressive build as long as you don't suffer the QC issues around the display that some seem to have. Coil whine can be irritating if you work in a very quiet environment and can hear it (though both apply to me and I don't consider it THAT irritating), but it will probably be fixable with a motherboard replacement whenever Dell develops a solution if that truly bothers you -- though motherboard replacements also seem to be forcing people's displays back into splendid mode and no longer showing the option to change it back, which would make the penalties of said replacement outweigh the benefits in my mind. But as I said, even with the coil whine I think this system is excellent.

 

In regards to heat, it is ok when it's on a desk. On my lap, it gets pretty warm if its running at 100%.


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As to the heat issue, while you may fail to see how that will help me outside of providing a "magical" unified answer, I can clearly see that it is still quite useful to me. A lot of these reviews put these notebooks through "torture tests" to measure heat that I most likely will never encounter. While I expect a laptop to get fairly hot during these instances, I'd also like to know how the laptop does under moderate strain/more "real world" circumstances for the every day user. Also, maybe one reviewer got a defective laptop, or something to that effect (probably not likely, but still). Also, reviewers don't normally use these things for months on end, so while the laptop may have gotten warm during their review, how long did it stay warm? Does this happen often? Do the fans kick in quickly and cool the laptop down right away? These are all things that an actual owner can speak on much better than a website that reviews a unit for a few hours and then moves on to the next product.

Based off of some of the comments posted (including yours), I am leaning towards getting an M3800 and just praying that I do not get one that has the coil whine issue, as I know that would bother me. I totally agree with you that no unit is going to ever be perfect, it's just that I would rather deal with minor issues on a notebook (especially in this price range) rather than potentially major hardware issues. I want to do as much homework as possible to ensure that I get something that has problems that I can actually deal with without having to call Dell out for a visit. I am also looking at the HP ZBook 15, but the issue with that notebook is that I wouldn't be losing much weight going from my Precision M6600 to that notebook (which is fairly important to me), other than that, that machine has gotten great reviews. I would still like to stick with Dell though if at all possible.

 

Heat during regular usage is a total non-issue. In fact most of the times I'm using it for regular productivity tasks the fans don't even spin up. And even when I've played games for a while, the fans stay fairly quiet and the exhaust heat is warm at best. That said, I don't ever use my laptop on my lap, so if that's a concern someone else can hopefully provide more insight -- although it's also been established that such usage seems to contribute to throttling. I came to this system from an ancient Precision M6300 and also wanted something thinner and lighter without giving up too much performance to get it. GPU performance wasn't a major concern for me, which seems to be mostly what you get from the heavier classes of workstation, so this one fit the bill nicely. It was also the only laptop that provided the entire suite of futureproofing features all in the same place: mSATA, M.2/NGFF, USB 3.0 with PowerShare, HiDPI, touchscreen, HDMI 1.4, MiniDP 1.2, 802.11ac Wifi, Bluetooth 4.0, quad core CPU with the latest virtualization features, etc.

 

That is good information to know. I think I am really leaning towards getting one of these and hoping that coil whine isn't an issue for me. I will be losing some screen real estate, which will hurt, but I just can't lug this m6600 around too much longer. 17" screens are starting to die out anyway aside from the niche gaming community.

One more quick question. I have seen two different keyboard layouts for this laptop based on pictures on the internet that came both from Dell and from reviewers. Does the m3800 come with a full-sized Enter key or the smaller upside-down L-shaped one?

Thanks.

 

I too was sad to give up the extra real estate, especially when watching movies and things on airplanes, but I can read 1080p resolution on a 15" panel anyway, so things are just smaller, not more cramped -- and my M6300 wasn't exactly an easy fit onto an airplane tray table.

The different layouts you're seeing are almost undoubtedly from versions of the system made for different world regions. The US spec has a typical (for the US) Enter key. I believe the upside-down L design you're describing is standard for an Enter key on a UK keyboard, so the M3800 there probably has that design as well.

 

Really? Huh, I never knew that. Thanks for the info!

 

I get the same problem under windows. Im a .NET developer and use Shift + Home/End all the time to highlight the current row in my editor, but without dedicated Home and End keys on the keyboard I need to use Fn+Shift +Home/End. But, just like you reported, it only works properly if I hit the Shift key first. I can't get consistent behavior with my current keyboard habits. Very frustrating.