E6430 Owners Thread

So I got mine in today. First impression is very good build quality, but not so great display.

I got the matte 1600x900 HD+ , and while colors, brightness and contrast look good, the panel has crappy dot pitch, and limited viewing angle. You can also see the individual matrix of the LCD, very disappointing.

I'll have some pics up shortly.

 

Thanks for all the pics, it seems like there might be a little camera "distortion" in the angled photos of the screen , or is it really that bad ?
I'll get my own on sunday, so guess I should just be patient, and not worry too much.

 

I think that's mainly camera distortion. I wasn't able to really capture the screen quality in the angled shots with lens I was using, and even the straight up shot doesn't look too bad. After using the laptop for a day, I'm getting used to the dot pitch & the viewing angle.

My other observation is the 3320m runs very hot. I fired up a game of UT3, and the CPU hit 85 C with GPU temps being 67 C. You could feel super hot air being pushed out the side. The top of the laptop was only warm however, so it seems most of the heat is constrained to the bottom and side vent. Still, so far I'm happy with the laptop as it'll mainly be used at work for email, web, rdp, and the occasional vm guest.

 

I received my E6430 (i5-3360, 8GB RAM, 750 GB HDD, 1600x900) a few weeks ago and have been generally satisfied. The overall build quality seems good, somewhat better than my E6410. However, a couple of minor issues have arisen. First, upon delivery, the left touchpad button was sticking. Dell replaced this and the new one works fine. A second issue is the backlit keyboard. The lighting comes on whenever the keyboard is touched - not only in low light conditions as I would want. In the setup for the keyboard, the checkbox "illuminate keyboard in low light conditions only" is greyed out so it is not possible to select this option. The service tech here in Bangkok who replaced the keyboard says that there is a problem with the driver, while Dell Thailand tech support claims there is no ambient light sensor in the E6430 to enable this. Tech support here in Thailand is a bit and miss so whatever they say may or may not be correct. It seems odd that a premium machine like the E6430 would not have this capability - my E6410 certainly has this.

Can anyone confirm whether or not the E6430 does in fact have an ambient light sensor to enable the keyboard lighting to activate only in low light conditions. Thank you.

 

It does not.

 

Actually the Dell shop says "Light Sensitive Webcam and Noise Cancelling Digital Array Mic", same as for E6x20, so perhaps the webcam should work as a ambient light sensor...

 

maybe. but it has no visible dedicated light sensors like E6400/E6410.

 

Had my 6430 about a week now. Generally good experience, but I am having one issue that is ... irritating.

I have a Dell (Logitech) 5 Btn Bluetooth Travel Mouse. It has worked flawlessly with a D620, D630, 6400, 6410, and 6420 ... but on the 6430, I get jerky mouse movement, jumping all over the screen - the mouse is nearly unusable. And it doesn't happen consistently, but it is a problem most of the time.

Anyone else experiencing issues with any other BT peripherals on the 6430 with the new 380 Bluetooth cards?

Addendum - I'm on the A02 BIOS - going to try the A03.

 

I'm using a ms notebook 5000 Bluetooth mouse with the A03 BIOS with no issues. However I uninstalled most of the Dell preloaded stuff.