[User Review] Dell Precision M4600 15.6" Mobile Workstation

Dell's SSD SATA2 are all from Samsung. Not sure about SATA3. If hybernate is an important feature for you, then getting SATA3 is a better choice. m4600 is able to utilize the bandwidth that way.

I always disable hybernate so that usage never come through my mind at first place.

 

Updated some battery tests in the 1st post. Maximum it can achieve is 86W and general use at 26-32W.

 

Updated more photos on viewing angle in original post.

 

Thank you!

I know your CPU was down to 3.7 - 6 watts when saving power. This makes me wonder about the GPU. The LG screen you have is around 7 watts at max brightness. Western Digital Scorpio black is around .8 - 2.75 watts. I keep thinking you should be around 20 watts or less. I saw that you did get 21, so maybe there is a way to work this number down with updated video card drivers. All the numbers look right on your screenshots though.

Can you see how many processes are running in Task Manager when you do the power testing? I keep wondering if you have Indexing, Defragmenting, Virus Scanning, Toolbars, updaters, or some other task running in the background. I always have gone to Black Viper's site to get rid of services and tweak out the W7 install for max battery life. I know the other day you had 118 running - which is a lot. Even with Adobe Creative Suite MC 5.5, Office 2010, MS Security Essentials, Malwarebytes, Pidgin, VPN, and Firefox running I only have 47 processes.

My M6600 should be here today or Monday. Will be doing similar testing.

 

+1 Excellent review! I've pushed a lot of your information to Dell and hopefully they'll take into consideration your points into their next iteration or even a current updated BIOS for a few of your points.

 

I know it is not an exact comparison, but I did some testing on an E6520 with the Quadro 4200 and a 2720QM processor. The screen is the 1920x1080 LG 15.6". Hard drive is a 320gb 7200rpm Hitachi. Nothing was attached to any port on the machine. The build is just a normal Windows 7 build. 52 processes running.

I disabled Optimus so that it would only use the Quadro. With the machine set to the default power scheme of "Balanced", I was seeing 10.9 watts at min screen brightness. Medium brightness (8 of 15) was 13.5 watts. This would go up to 16 at max brightness. At Medium brightness displaying web pages with Flash ads, I was seeing 19-20 watts as the page loaded and back down to 16-17 watts once the page was done. Google was 15-16 watts. Downloading driver files from Dell was 17 watts. You tube was 26 watts while the page loaded and fell to 18 watts once the video was playing.

The 2720 was actually pulling more power than your 2920.

The difference I did see was the load on the GPU. I was seeing 3% tops on a page with flash ads. Watch youtube video I was seeing 5%.

Remember, this was all in the standard balanced mode.

With Optimus enabled, I was able to get down to 8.7 watts in the "Extended Run Time" power mode with the brightness all the way down. After updating drivers for Nvidia and Intel, I have now seen 7.9 watts. Typing this, I am seeing 11-13 watts.

I really think you should have lower power draw. Maybe its peripherals attached to your machine, software running in the background, your video card drivers, or settings. Maybe its the 3g wireless card you are using.

Hope you can figure it out.

 

Hi guys,

Great work trying to knit up a review. Can any of you enlighten me on the speaker fidelity/performance on M4600 and M6600? It is one of the aspects based on which I will pull the trigger for one of these models.

 

they're all right. its a laptop so dont expect miracles from the speakers. through headphones its pretty good.

if you care about sound quality, buy one of these to carry about:

XMI X-mini II Mini Speaker: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics

i use it when i watch tv programs or am listening to music in a hotel room

 

I checked and found 90+ processes in Task Manager. I turned off some processes/services that are not needed like Acronis, PowerDVD, Jave update, HP update bla bla background programs. At the end I still have 84 processes at start up.

No other application running except for HWinfo64.
Wireless switch is OFF. No internet.
Running Max Battery Performance Mode again, Windows Colour Scheme automatically switched to Basic, I get min 15+W when the GPU is at its lowest profile. Normal range is 17-27W


With lowest brightness, I get minimum 13W and normal range is 16-25W. The GPU activity is still active in the range of 0-50% and most of the times still stays at 400/900Mhz. Only when it is at 100/150Mhz I am able to capture the 13W screenshot because that rarely happens.

 

How does the Lenovo Thinkpad W520 FHD 95% LCD compare to the M4600 non-IPS FHD screen ??

Are they using same LCD panel ?

Same spec ?

Anyone know ?