Dell Vostro 3560 Review and Owner's Lounge

Does someone here have a Dell Vostro 3560? I find it weird that no one's talking about them in here, only about older models o.o'

 

Yep I've had one for a couple of days now. If it helps heres a mini review of it I did on another forum :

Posted this on another thread but thought I might as well let other people see it. If you want any more info or me to try anything just let me know. Only had it a couple of days so these are my initial thoughts.

So here are the specs again :

Price : £658 inc VAT with free 2 day delivery

I really like the simple elegant look of the laptop. Seems quite light and slim to me although my previous was a very bulky 17" Vostro 1700. But had it on my lap for a hour or so and wasn't uncomfortable at all.

The surface finish is really lovely. It has a rubberised coating around the keyboard/trackpad and the screen and also at the top of the screen on the back. So you get a bit of grip for typing and no fingerprints around the keyboard or when you pull the screen up/down.

The screen is excellent. No backlight bleed and colours look nice and vibrant. Its a matt finish as standard so shouldn't suffer from reflections. 1080p suits the 15.6" screen perfectly in my opinion.

Keyboard is a good size and has soft touch keys with decent spacing very similar to my logitech K750 and plenty of room to rest your palms for typing. Not sure if its standard but the backlight works very well so I'd say thats a must have. Touchpad is nice and big and supports 2 and 3 finger gestures (Not actually sure what 3 fingers do phnarr phnarrr)

Something that niggled me about the XPS was that the HD led was on the back so you couldn't see it with the screen up which seemed daft. Thankfully the LEDs for Power/HD/Battery & Wifi are on the front.

It has plenty of connectors. 4x USB3.0 with one on the lefthand side marked as powered (I'm assuming that means it supplies more than the standard spec for iPODs etc ?). HDMI, VGA, Gigabit network, headphone & microphone jacks. My only gripe about these is that there are no connectors on the back which makes it a little untidy and a bit awkward when for example using a mouse as the cable can get in the way. Not a big issue but would have liked at least the power/network and 1-2 USB ports on the back. It also has a fingerprint reader which appears to do what it says on the tin.

Speakers are adequate. Theres no subwoofer so don't expect this to sound good in games or for playing music. Either use headphones or get some external ones. The XPS speakers + subwoofer were very impressive in comparison.

Not sure on battery life. Looks like it will last about 3.5 hours just doing normal desktop stuff.

The original 500GB hard drive supplied was a Western Digital Scorpio Black so not a bad drive really. I expected something more mundane. Although I still swapped it out for a Crucial M4. One thing to note was that the service cover underneath was very difficult to get off. Felt like I was almost going to snap it trying to get the plastic lugs to pop.

Performance

Couldn't tell you what the original build is like as I swapped the HD for a Crucial M4 SSD and reinstalled Winows 7 Pro from the supplied disc. Got all the necessary drivers from the Dell website and had no problems getting everything working. Bit disappointed that I couldn't use the latest ATI drivers but I believe there are ways around this which I still have to investigate. - Edit : Have now installed Catalyst 12.7 Beta drivers

3DMark11 basic gives :

I did run Unigine Heaven 3.0 at 1920x1080 with 4x AA as per the benchmark thread in the GFX forum and it was limping along at about 8FPS

Windows Experience Index gives :

I ran Dungeons & Dragons Online which due to being an old engine runs very well even at some of the highest settings.

I also tried out Battlefield 3 and running at 1080p was getting averages of about 23FPS on Low and about 18FPS on Medium settings.

If you set it down to 1366x768 that goes up to about 33FPS on low and 26FPS on Medium so just about playable.

During benchmarking and playing games the fan does come on but its not too loud or whiny. The CPU and ATI card were both in the low 70's temperature


To summarise.

Pros :

Nice subtle looking.
Rubberised coating a great idea.
Screen is excellent.
Enough power to play most games at decent settings.
Quiet fan
Comfortable on a lap

Cons :

No ports on the back.
Speakers aren't great.
Service cover very difficult to get off.

 

Hey BeelzebubUK,
How is the surface in the "palmrest" area and in the touchpad?
And what about the touch buttons? Are them nice to use? Silent?
I used to work in a Vostro 1510 and I hate these parts. But now I'm considering a Vostro 3560...

 

The palmrest area has the rubber coating which I really like. Feels very tactile and gives a slight grip to your palms.

If you mean the 3 buttons at the top right corner (Windows Mobility, Dell Support & Dell Instant launch) they are just normal buttons so you have to press them. They are not touch sensitive. Haven't noticed any noise from them but i don't use them very often.

Hope that helps.
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Thanks!

I missed a word in the last post. I was talking about the touchpad buttons!

 

Have you tried to play anything with it? I'm always weary of benchmarks because often they don't translate very well into game performance.

If you do try games, please try also with lower res (1600x900 and 1366x768) to see if the downscale works nicely or the image gets blurred \ weird.

Also it'd be nice to know real battery time with low brightness, just surfing \ light work \ idling a bit.

PS: The powered USB should be for you to be able to charge stuff with the notebook powered off. There should be a BIOS option to turn that on \ off IIRC.

 

They are soft touch buttons so make very little noise unless you are very finger heavy

 

Don't play too many games. I've tried out Battlefield 3 at 1600x900 & 1366x768 at Medium settings including low AA and although its not quite as sharp as 1080p they both still looked good so the scaling on the screen seems to be decent. Obviously at 1366 without any AA you do notice quite a few jaggies.

Same with Eve Online and also Dungeons & Dragons Online.

I've ran the laptop on the power saver mode and after 1.5 hours of browsing, playing YouTube videos (mostly 720p and 1080p) and playing a bit of music its showing 50% left with about 2hours estimated.

 

Nice, thanks for the heads up. It's normal to notice jaggies @ 1366x768, as long as it doesn't look weird.

Battery life seems like it can be stretched to 4-5h with very light use. I guess it's a bit too short for my likings, even though I'd love a 1920x1080 panel like that ^^.

 

anyone know the brand and voltage of the ram inside the laptop? does it matter if i put in rams that's 1.35v or 1.5v?