Dell Precision M3800 Owner's Review

Hello everyone.

I am actually torn between the M3800 with the QHD screen and the M4800 with the FHD screen (QHD not an option for me for the M4800, my company is buying so not debatable...)

Would any one who has used both of them care to offer an opinion. I won't be running and CAD/3D program, mostly MatLab and R-Studio for statistical analysis and modelling. I was thinking I could use CUDA in the future to accelerate my modelling simulations but as of now this is just a thought...

I would be interested in playing modern games, at lower resolutions of course, so this is one of the reasons I am considering the M4800 with the FirePro m5100.

Any help would be appreciated

 

Hi M3800 owners,

I am close to buying the M3800 today. Initially I thought I would wait for M3900 but who knows when it will come out. So before I pull the trigger, does anyone know if it supports 2 external monitors (using the HDMI and mdp) at the same time in addition to the laptop display, i.e. 3 displays? Thanks.

 

The M3800 does support 3 displays (see the early posts in this thread).

As for M4800 vs M3800, that's a hard call. I really find the QHD screen to be great and I came from an M4400 with a 1920x1200 screen. If your eyes are good then you can really take advantage of the extra resolution. However, if you have access to a second or even third screen much of the time then the M4800 is starting to look a lot better. The M4800 has several advantages for coding type work (ie Matlab/ R). The keyboard is full with a number pad vs the reduced keyboard that uses the Fn key to get things like Home/End etc. That really bothers me with the M3800. Too bad since the keyboard is very comfortable for me. I find that the high DPI and standard DPI screens don't play well together. I never had issues using a second 1920x1200 screen with my M4400's internal screen. Due to text size I had to use the laptop screen as primary but I had no scaling issues. Win7 simply doesn't scale. Win 8 scales but things look a bit blurry when scaled. The blur bothers me to the point that I only used the external screen as a back up display. With the M4400 I used it quite a bit more. However, I also needed it more because I couldn't shrink text as easily.

I was deciding between the M3800 and M4800 when I bought the M3800. My reasons were I didn't need the power but I carried the computer every day (foot commute) so weight was an issue and I REALLY wanted the touch screen having used a Toughbook with touch screen years back. So that pushed me to the M3800.

If you aren't going to use the graphics too heavily I don't think there is a huge difference in CPU power but the M4800 GPUs are quite a bit more powerful. If I was using this mostly as a desk replacement I might get the 1080i M4800 if, and only if, I had a one or two external displays to use with it.

 

Thank you for all the info!

The thing is, that I will be moving every 6 months between the UK and the Netherlands, but this is not a big problem, portability wise. I will probably have to have my laptop on a few conferences, etc... Still I am not sure if I will have much of a problem with the 4800, I am not a small guy anyway...

How portable is the M3800 actually ? And how about gaming ? Have you overclocked the K1100 at all ? I won't be gaming much, just curious to try the latest games at some point or the other...

 

The M3800 is very portable... but I came from an M4400 which is just a bit smaller than the M4800. The 3800 is right at 2kg which I find decent. My old M20 (Latitude D610) was about the same. When I got the M4400 I was never really happy with the size. I would have preferred something smaller. I thought about a 14" computer at the time but none had high resolution screens. My M20 was 1400x1050 and I wasn't willing to go down in resolution thus I went up in size.

As for gaming, I'm not the person to ask. I have played a few 1st person shooters but I have nothing with which to compare. Yes, it's better than my M4400 and my M20. It plays Halo 1 really well

 

Halo1 heh ? Then it is perfect for games

All kidding aside, can I ask you how is the battery life on it ? And does it get warm under stress ?

 

I've never noticed it getting warm but I rarely subject it to a full on stress test (say a multi-thread MatLab problem that runs for a while).

For me battery life is a bit disappointing as I seem to only get 2-2.5 hours. However, I have a few very big disclaimers. That is 2-2.5 hours typically web or office work but without shutting down other aps. I also have the screen turned to full (it's a bright screen) and finally, I have my computer set to not charge over 85%. I'm trading run time for long term battery life as I don't want to replace the internal battery. My M4400 didn't have a good battery management option and the battery was seriously degraded after about 2.5 years. My M20 was more like 2 years. Well I'm coming up on one year and my battery is in great shape. Thanks to that same 85% limit my Thinkpad x120e has shown no battery degradation after 3.5 years of which much of the time the computer was used on the battery. When I really need full run time I change the settings to allow 100% charge. So I currently use 75% of the total charge since I plug in at the 10% warning. If I used the 100% charge then I would actually use 90% of the total capacity. So based on my usage I'm giving up about 30 minutes of run time (20%). Also, I have the small battery (the 60 Wh vs 90 Wh for the SSD only models). So at minimum I should expect 4.5 hours of life if I charged to full and had the big battery. If I turned the screen down I bet that would extend to 5.5 or more.

BTW, my Thinkpad, used in a similar fashion seems to deliver around 4 hours of life which for me seems to get me from feeling like I need to use it on the cord more often than not to battery more often than not. However, the Thinkpad isn't nearly as bright (matte screens don't seem to need to be so bright). If I got run times like my Thinkpad without having to really think about it I would be really happy.

 

Thanks for bringing this to my attention!

I called them back and explained my situation, to which they agreed to send a technician to service my laptop on-site. It seems because the coil whine issue can potentially be more than one thing, (connector hardware or MOBO) they wanted me to send it in. However it seems like they're sending all the necessary parts and will be able to provide service for my at home. Thanks again for clarifying!

 

Hey, no problem. Glad that I could help.

Hopefully they can resolve your issues!

 

A Dell technician came by today and replaced the motherboard and keyboard. The enter key is perfect, but I do still notice some coil whine here and there... It might be better, unsure as of yet.

My screen seems to be playing tricks on me as I originally had a blue stuck pixel, but it went away right before I called to ask if they'd come to me for service and told them that it didn't need to be replaced anymore.

Well, lo and behold the blue stuck pixel is back. Can't get a break!

Has anyone recieved replacement screens from Dell and are they of equivalent quality? I'm a bit wary of getting screens replaced ever since my brand new Asus N550JK needed a replacement - the replacement had an abysmal yellow tint, making it unsuitable for graphics work. I had no choice but to ebay it (was replaced twice - same issue both times) to try and get SOME money back and know never to buy Asus again. I'm wondering if I should just live with the stuck pixel... Any opinions?