Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

jphughan. Obviously there is a complete difference in terms of CPU/GPU power between the E7440 you have and your XPS 15, but as I plan to make the move from the E7440 to the M3800 I would be interested on any thoughts you have between the machines in terms of:

1. Keyboard
2. Touchpad
3. General noise emissions – fans, etc. (not coil whine)
4. Build quality
5. Display – I guess difficult to compare as different resolution
6. Ease of use – having a “proper” Dock for the E7440 vs. none for M3800.

 

I hope you also got an SSD in your E7440. I agree with your view about 1366 x 768 on this size of panel. I'd previously had 1440 x 900 on both the E6400 and E6410 and my eyes were happy with the pixel size / density but 1600 x 900 on the Lenovo T420s felt too small (not helped by a a very low quality panel). 14" FHD with 125% scaling effectively sits between the two.

Perhaps my main grievance with the E7440 is the battery capacity, not helped with it being short of 3Whr out of the box. My tests suggest that the supplied battery is only good for 6 to 7 hours while a 60Whr battery would see me through the whole day. The battery is swappable and I've already bought a spare (which also had some wear fresh out of the bag) but it's more extra baggage than a slightly larger internal battery would represent.

HWiNFO should be able to figure out the panel type - see below



Failing that Moninfo may be able to look a bit deeper.

I will also be interested in these comparisons plus I would add overall size and portability (including PSU).

John

PS: We should adjourn our discussion of the E7440 to the relevant thread except as applies here as comparisons to the M3800.

 

Keyboard: I'll preface this by saying that on a good keyboard I type ~140 WPM with 94% accuracy, so I'm more sensitive/snobbish when it comes to keyboards than most others. Now then, I prefer the E7440's overall -- slightly. Its dedicated Home/End/PgUp/Down keys are great, though the Fn+arrow key combination on my XPS isn't as annoying as I thought it might be, even though I use those keys a lot. The XPS keyboard's feel is very good overall, but for me the E7440 edges it out. The XPS's larger touchpad means I naturally rest my palms slightly farther apart, which in turn means I can feel my fingers reaching a bit more while typing on that keyboard compared to the E7440. I'm not sure that's actually necessary to avoid unintended touchpad input on the XPS, but it's something I do automatically. Additionally, the XPS has more palmrest area between the bottom of its keyboard and the "front" edge of the system, which means I also extend my arms slightly farther to type. But again, I'm very sensitive to keyboards, and a lot of this is more "they're different" than "one is worlds better than the other" -- in fact I only became consciously aware of the palm spacing and arm extension differences while trying these keyboards side by side to write this post. Lastly, the E7440's keyboard is a bit quieter, and I definitely prefer its font, but for me both of those points are just nitpicking since most of the time I use a Das Keyboard Ultimate S, which is relatively loud because it's a mechanical keyboard (even though I have the "Silent" version) and it also has blank keys, so I never really look at keyboard fonts anyway. (Incidentally, there's nothing like a mechanical keyboard for fast typists if you haven't tried one.) On the other hand, the E7440's keyboard flexes (slightly) and feels slightly mushier, whereas the XPS's does not flex and has a more solid tactile feel, maybe due to its island style?

Touchpad: The XPS touchpad is wider and taller, but the E7440 has physical buttons, which I vastly prefer to a larger touch surface -- although even the E7440 lacks the dedicated middle click button I came to love on my Precision M6300. Using the Synaptics drivers on my XPS having disabled gestures that are pointless to me, I hardly have any input recognition issues that others have noted, but reliably right-clicking requires you to click pretty far to the right, not just right of center. The touchpad finish is smoother on the XPS and more textured on the E7440, but again this more of a difference than a preference.

Noise: Ignoring coil whine, under similar workloads they're basically identical. They both run completely silent under casual usage, and even when the fans come on, they both remain very quiet. I've subjected my XPS to multi-hour gaming sessions, and despite never throttling, the fan noise was never what I would consider loud -- and never got anywhere near the 747-sounding full speed noise that I've only encountered during part of the BIOS update process.

Build quality: It's a wash. Both are overall excellent, and my only complaints are nitpicks that I'm only calling out because you ask, not because they bother me in the least. The battery on the E7440 can flex a little bit in its compartment, leading to a plasticky noise if you grab it a certain way, and the XPS has very minor light bleed along the lower right corner of its display assembly -- small enough that I never would've noticed it if someone else hadn't posted a picture of theirs. It's literally the size of a sliver and is only visible in the dark, but it's there. But as I said, both are outstanding. Other than that, I prefer the palmrest finish of the E7440 slightly (not as rubbery), and my first XPS touchpad discolored very quickly. Apparently a new touchpad was introduced shortly after launch (when I got mine) that may be better in this regard. I got a new touchpad when I got the motherboard swap, but I haven't used the new one enough yet to confirm a discoloration improvement. For that matter, I haven't used the E7440's touchpad much yet either, though it feels like previous Dell touchpads on which I never had discoloration even after years of use. Other than that, the aluminum lid and carbon fiber base on the XPS feel pretty great, better than the same surfaces on my E7440. I'm not sure if the E7440's lid is also aluminum and just has a different manufacturing process from the XPS or if it's just very good plastic made to look and feel like brushed aluminum, but either way it doesn't feel quite as nice as the XPS. Note that I have the 1080p anti-glare non-touch panel; E7440s with the glossy touch panel have a carbon fiber lid.

Display: I'm very impressed with the E7440's IPS display, particularly on color, and 1080p in 14" makes for some very crisp text -- but the XPS's QHD panel is definitely a step up on both counts. I've only found the glossy display on the XPS to be an issue when using it outside in bright daylight, fyi, though I suppose if you had a harsh light source directly over the display that could cause problems too.

Ease of use: I do miss the docking connector a bit. I don't want to deal with the drivers and CPU/GPU penalty of a USB 3.0 video dock, so instead I manually connect AC, MiniDP, HDMI, speakers, and the USB cable from my Anker 13-port USB 3.0 hub -- another amazing product for a whole raft of reasons I could write a long post about; my favorite feature by far is the surge protector style port layout, which has all kinds of benefits that aren't obvious until you start using it. I use a Velcro tie to lash the cables I use with my XPS together so they don't fall off my desk when my laptop is away, and it's not terrible connecting and disconnecting them individually, but a dock is definitely easier. Other than that, I'd rate them pretty equal on portability. The weight and thickness are close enough not to matter, the XPS is of course wider and deeper but rewards you with a larger display, and the XPS has an extra USB (2.0) port, and all 4 ports support PowerShare, compared to the E7440's single port -- but the E7440 has wired Ethernet. I also don't know whether the E7440's HDMI port is 1.4a like the XPS's, which allows the latter to use HDMI to drive 1600p displays @ 60 Hz and 4K @ 30 Hz.

Battery life: I don't use the battery often enough to comment. From reviews I've read of the E7440, it's average at best in its class. The XPS 15's battery life is nothing to write home about either (even with the larger battery), but considering the horsepower I think it's pretty reasonable -- of course the XPS has 6- or 9-cell batteries, compared to the E7440's 3- or 4-cell options. And again, I'm coming from a Precision M6300, made in an era when there was no such thing as good battery life and high horsepower in the same package -- even when said package was nearly 2" thick and almost 9 pounds!

PSU: The XPS's is slightly larger (expected since it's 130W compared to the E7440's 65W), but its 130W PSU is MUCH smaller than the 130W bricks that come with the Precision models that require them (or with docks sold for systems that require 90W PSUs when used outside of a dock.) However, if you're like me and find yourself around a lot of other Dell AC adapters, definitely get the dongle that allows you to use those adapters with the smaller AC connector on the XPS/M3800. It's included with M3800s at least in the US, but otherwise it should be listed as an accessory on the order page. Otherwise, here's a link to the version in the US store: http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=331-9319.

Bottom line: If CPU and GPU performance aren't particularly important to your work, the E7440 is arguably the better business machine -- which shouldn't really come as a surprise. I still like the XPS a lot for its larger, better display (great for movies on planes), ability to play games on occasion, and extra CPU and memory for Hyper-V. I only miss the dock connector. That said, if I already had an E7440 as you do, I'm not sure I'd feel it was worth upgrading to the XPS unless that extra horsepower was essential. But if it is and you like your E7440, you should be very happy with your XPS/M3800. They are similar machines in a lot of ways; the XPS is sort of an E7440 on steroids.

 

It didn't come with one (nor did the E6430), but that was so painful that I ended up just swapping an SSD of my own into the E6430, which I then moved over to the E7440. I've been spoiled by SSDs for too long to be able to stand going back to spinning platters.

 

It's disappointing the way that companies still save a little money on the hardware (low res displays and platter-based storage) without consideration of the implications for the employee productivity.

It's almost 5 years since I first bought an SSD (a 256GB Samsung PB-22J). Hard drives are good for bulk storage and Dell does provide the facility in both the E7440 and the M3800 for users to have the combination of both drives to balance performance and cost.

John

 

Agreed. I think part of it is that some employees aren't paid enough and/or don't have jobs where those upgrades actually would improve productivity enough to justify the cost, so companies that employ people for a wide range of job functions standardize on lower-end stuff and upgrade case by case. But the larger factor is probably exactly as you say: when you're looking at a balance sheet, higher productivity doesn't appear directly as a revenue/savings line item, but better displays and SSDs definitely show up as a cost.

 

Just wanted to add a few more comparisons: I have had the E7440 for about half a year, and the touchpad does not discolor after long term usage unlike my M3800 which has developed a nice glossy section in the middle when viewed at certain angles. Also, I have the carbon fiber lid version, and I love the look - it feels like the carbon fiber bottom on the XPS 15/M3800 just as you would expect, and it gives the E7440 a much more finished look IMO as it matches the coloring of the bottom case. The screen on the E7440 is also very impressive to me, and even the viewing angles seem slightly superior to my M3800 QHD as the whites don't turn yellow at extreme angles. And be aware that Powershare on the E7440 seems to be a broken feature, as I noted this in the E7440 thread that it only works when the system is sleeping, not in hibernation or off. Still waiting to see if Dell will fix that with a BIOS update.

Your comparisons between the 2 are pretty much right on point - the E7440's main advantages to me are having a docking connector and a trackpoint - something that increases my productivity in heavy-typing situations when I don't have to move my hands off the keyboard to move the mouse around. I often tend to miss that at times when using the M3800.

 

Hmm, hadn't noticed that PowerShare issue on my E7440 -- but testing it now, mine indeed works as you describe, which is unlike any other PowerShare-enabled Dell system I've used. That's lame. And if a BIOS update hasn't fixed it yet even though this system is on BIOS A10, I'm thinking it may not be fixable through software/firmware. I actually like the silver lid because it provides some contrast and matches the trim around the palmrest area, plus I thought that having the lid almost match the underside (i.e. in color but not in pattern) would be worse than having it not match at all, but I've also not seen the carbon fiber version in person.

And thanks for calling out the pointing stick being present on the E7440 but not the XPS/M3800. I forgot because I never use those myself, in fact over the years I've tried to learn as many keyboard shortcuts as possible to minimize my use of any mouse, because whether you're using a pointing stick, touchpad, or external mouse, it's always faster to press a key combination than move your hand to the mouse, move the cursor to the item you want to click, maybe bring up a dropdown menu and a submenu from there, etc, then move your hand back to the keyboard. Several people have remarked that they're surprised at how fast I can work on a computer -- and especially without using the mouse. I keep explaining to people that I can work that quickly because I don't use the mouse.

UPDATE: After doing some research and further testing, I've discovered that PowerShare works while the E7440 is off, but only if it's also plugged into AC. That's somewhat more useful than only working while asleep, but I've had times on the go where I've wanted to use my laptop battery to charge my phone battery. I had a ThinkPad T520 a while ago that I believe required AC for this feature, but all of the other Dell systems I've used have allowed PowerShare to work even while not plugged into AC, and most of them also allowed the user to set PowerShare to automatically disable if the battery dropped to a certain level. Bummer.

 

Yes thanks for pointing that out. I did remember that particular point about powershare working only on AC. So I guess it works, but not being able to charge my phone on the go pretty much makes this a useless feature for me (unless I put it on sleep - but I prefer to hibernate over sleep given the speed of resume with SSDs). It's a shame the E7440 which so has many good things going for it just didn't get this right.

If you don't mind, can you share some of the shortcuts that you find most useful? as much as I like the trackpoint, I agree keyboard shortcuts will be even faster. And I'm sure that will definitely help with getting around on the M3800 better.

 

Regarding the lack of a “proper” Dock for the M3800, can I mitigate that somewhat with the Dell USB 3.0 Dock used in conjunction with DisplayPort?

I could connect my one external monitor directly via DisplayPort to avoid the video problems you describe with the dock, and then use the Dell USB 3.0 Dock for Wired Ethernet and for connecting peripherals (Speakers, Keyboard, Printer, etc.). Any obvious issues with that I am missing?

I read an earlier post from you which said the best setup for using an external monitor when you don’t need to view the laptop panel (I would have the lid closed and only have 1 external monitor) was to go to Screen Resolution, select the built-in panel and select “Disconnect this Display”. Am I understanding the behaviour of this correctly as described below?

1) Does the laptop remember this behaviour so you do not have to select “Disconnect the Display” every time you plug in the DisplayPort cable?

2) If so, when you plug in the DisplayPort cable to the external monitor will the laptop panel turn off automatically?

3) Does the reverse work, i.e. when you unplug the DisplayPort cable from the external monitor, does the laptop screen reactivate automatically?

4) With this setup do you still need to select a Primary display as if you were doing per display scaling, or is this not required as you only have one display on at any time?

5) Does this setup mean you don’t have to log-on/off every time you connect to the external monitor and does that differ depending on whether you have the FHD vs. QHD resolution M3800?

6) Does this setup work the same when using HDMI vs. DisplayPort?