Precision M4400 Mini-Review + Pictures/ Images, Thoughts! & Questions?

Hi everyone! Warning: 17 640x480 pictures in first post.

This is my Dell Precision M4400 Mini-Review for all the M4400 owners, to be owners and spectators alike! Sorry if the images are poor quality / lighting, its nighttime here. Feel free to toss in your own pictures or questions and comments. I wasn't too sure of what pictures to take either, so I spared the boring stuff (CD drive, air vents, etc) but I'll take individual requests though (you can also request for me to PM high-res versions of a picture). Specs are in my signature.

Unboxing:




(Left to right: Warranty, Installation + Driver CDs, G.Skill 4GB Kit, M4400, Power Supply.)



First Impressions:





Well, when I first took it out of the box, I couldn't stop staring at how beautiful the matte finish of the entire laptop was. Nothing glossy or toy-esque. This is a high-end business laptop and it sure looks like one. The rippled back is not as cheap as it looks online, despite what others say it's actually very cool to the touch and solid. It flexes a bit when pushed in the middle but I'm assuming thats for shock absorption. Anyways, the entire laptop has a very solid feel to it. The weight is not super-portable however. It feels around 6-7 pounds, but it's perfect if you can carry it in a bag and it's weight gives it a "powerful" presence. Not too heavy, not too light. It's a little over an inch in height with the lid down and has a solid button in the front that has to be pushed in order to unlock the LCD latch. And yes, the "robust metal hinges" are truly strong, definitely not a one hand job the first few days around. One thing I love is the color combination, gray back, silver Dell logo, black frame with blue lights (see below).

Design:







The M4400 has a quite slim profile, and a very enjoyable one where you wont feel like it'll snap in half if you drop it. The majority of the laptop is made of plastic, and the bottom is made of some sort of magnesium alloy. The bottom stays dead-locked with only 1 screw with a spring in it. You also have to "slide" the bottom out after removing the screw, so don't worry about it being connected poorly. It's very tight and afterwards, theres tons of screws more if you're worried about the insides not having enough . To change the RAM, I removed only one screw and then put the bottom back. Very nice feature. The LED LCD is as many people claim, VERY rich in color and as bright as can be (LED turned off here, otherwise it blows out the image). Everything around you will look dark if you stare at the screen any given amount of time. Of course, there's around 10-15 levels of brightness you can control. You can also let the ambient light sensor (not visible here, but its below the LCD) take control, which will dim the LCD when you need less light (in low light conditions) but activate the backlight on the keyboard as well (when you cant read the keys)! Almost every part of this laptop has great design elements to it, so its hard to explain it all in one section. Read on.

Keyboard & Touchpad:



The keyboard is extremely solid! All the keys are "low-profile" and do indeed provide a very satisfactory feedback when you click them and keep things snappy. It's a quiet keyboard, just like the quiet hard-drive (which you cant hear unless it's 3AM in the morning and no one else is in the room). For the -non glossy- touchpad, using the alps driver you can customize the areas of scrolling/zooming as well as the speed. However, sometimes the touchpad won't respond and takes a few seconds to come back. It has a left, middle and right-click button. If you're used to the left click being the biggest, it'll take a day or two to get used to this. The pointer stick also has 3 buttons dedicated to it, which is a nice feature when you want to use the more pressure-sensitive mouse controller. To the right of the touchpad, you'll see it has a contactless smart card reader. Havent tested that out yet. There are 3 media buttons: Volume up, down and mute. They are rectangular and require a firm press for them to click and do not shake in place. Really satisfactory here as well. To the left of the keyboard are all your expected lights: HD, Battery, WIFI, Bluetooth, etc.

The keyboard also features a backlight, which might seem unnecessary to some but works extremely well in low-light conditions. Dell also has a driver that allows you to control just how bright you want the backlight to be. The light also fades out very nicely after a certain period of being idle (which you can set):





Speakers & Fingerprint Reader



The speakers are decent, not too bad and not too good either. They are laptops speakers, no more needs to be said but the grilled design is a nice touch. HDMI, eSATA, 1 USB port, air vents (only 1 fan cools the majority of the left side on this beast) on the left. The manual will tell you the technical specs.



To the right, theres 2 usb ports, WIFI switch, headphone & speakers jack, smart card reader, PC card, 1394 connection and DVD drive. As far as the finger print reader goes, it's all its expected to be. You have to swipe 10 times for it to work and it does ensure that data thiefs will be annoyed when trying to get in and eventually quit. I eventually quit myself and uninstalled the drivers. Tips on using it is appreciated!

Battery & Power Supply:





Beautiful! Isn't it? The 6-cell is flush with the back and provides me around 2-3 hours depending on what I'm doing. Definitely not the best the best battery ever though, but I'm 90% of the time plugged in.



Bottom view here - the battery has 2 sliders that must be pushed in towards each other in order for the battery to unlock. It also has indicator lights for how much charge is left. Below the battery are some product keys. The four screws on the bottom left are -not- part of that bottom plate that slides off. I'll post more pictures of this when I open it up (if I do that).



And the power supply size comparison. It's kind of wide but its yet to bother me, and the blue light on the power connection is a nice touch to let you know that it's plugged in to an outlet.

Performance wise, design wise and "man thats sexy"-wise: it's a 10 out of 10.
Touchpad: 8.5 out of 10
Keyboard: 10 out of 10
LCD: 10 out of 10
Battery: 8 out of 10

Average: 9.3 out of 10

- RAM

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tests so far (after vLiting VB64, tweaking and thoroughly stripping the OS):

- Passmark: 898.1 / 900.0
- 3DMark06: 5862 (vLITEVB64) & UPDATE 10/13/08 6023 (nLITEXP32) ... +161 points (or +2.7465%)
- Photoshop CS3 bootup time: 1.3 seconds

 

Do you got the WXGA+ WLED or the WUXGA RGB LED display?

 

Specs in signature

 

Thanks for the Pics Ram, especially of the bottom.....

Looking forward to receiving my E6500, hope you love your new M....

 

Are there ripples on the screen if u push in the lid (say in the middle )?

I wish they did not have a wavy lid. The E6500 looks sexier

 

nice review! the pictures look good to me......btw, what's your screen resolution?

now I want one!!

 

@wearetheborg: No, the wavy lid is not cheap plastic thats been slapped onto the display. It's actually very very hard to cave the lid in without any leverage, like you could when the lid down. Even then, no ripples are produced. Only way to do that on here is from the front.

@mtv2004: 1440x900

 

Is the WUXGA RGB LED actually in some countries available?

 

There is a 15.4" WUXGA RGBLED screen on the M4400s ??????????

 

According to the brochure, the RGBLED option is called:

Dell UltraSharp™ 15.4" WUXGA TrueLife™ RGBLED (1920x1200)

On the current US WUXGA options, it doesnt state TrueLife RGBLED anywhere. Probably have to call in for that.