STUDIO XPS 13: My comprehensive review

Dell Studio XPS Review

Background:

I am an Electrical Engineering student at Drexel University, with a minor in Computer Science and hopefully a dual degree in Software Engineering. I used to own a Dell Vostro 1700 laptop. It was a beautiful machine, but I am a daily commuter so it was too big and too heavy for my needs. I got an Asus EEEPC 901 netbook, and it's great for some of my needs but since I also code it was too small for that. I ended up selling my Vostro on eBay and used the funds from that to get myself a smaller, lighter laptop.

13" seemed to be the best form factor for my needs. I wanted something really light but still with a good screen and adequate power. Also, while my last laptop was pretty utilitarian, I wanted something really classy, with an aluminum body. My original choice was the XPS m1330, and there are some really good deals out there. However, I found out about the Studio XPS, and realized that the m1330 is still old tech.

I also looked at the Lenovo U330, Sony SR, Sony Z, and various other ones. I didn't like the look of the Lenovo, so it really came down to XPS vs. Sony. The Sonys I really liked, but the Z had a flimsy lid and it was very expensive ($1500+ for a comparable model). The Sony SR was within my range, but it was still $300 more than an outlet XPS. I was on the Dell Outlet page and I ended up refreshing the page to see a list of Studio XPS 13s pop up. I grabbed the first one that had a 9500M and went straight for that. It arrived last week, and I've been using it everyday since.

Unboxing:

The box it came in was SMALL. I was used to the huge box that the Vostro 1700 came in, this thing was tiny compared to it. It was also really light, even inside the box. I got home, and opened the box. The first thing on top was the accessories box. It came with just the basics: instruction manuals, OS and applications DVDs, charge and battery.

~Thought.. What is this joke of a charger? Is it a wafer? Can I eat it?

I gave it a look over. This thing was in AMAZING condition. All of the plastic and metal was in pristine shape. No scratches, nicks, dents, anything. There was one scratch on the leather, about an inch and a half long. It's not deep or anything, looks more like a stain than anything else. It's acceptable considering the refurbished price. The laptop itself feels of great quality. It's solid, well made.

There's no sleeve or cleaning cloth. Thankfully, I got a m1330 xps sleeve from ebay, and a microfiber cleaning cloth, so everything is good.

The moment of truth. I put in the battery, and turned the computer on for the first (well, first after refurbishing) time. It was amazing to watch it turn on. The back-lighting flickered on, and the lights for the media keys cycled back and forth. The initial Vista installation took a while to boot up. It also crashed on me. Go figure. I reinstalled Vista using the included DVD, that was quite painless.

There's no MediaDirect, so that's quite a relief (I hated the button, you couldn't do anything with it, and if you didn't have the partition, pressing it would mess up your system for a bit). There was one recovery partition, I deleted that, set up a 25gb OS partition, 10gb for dual booting, and the rest to data.

After reinstalling, everything was working fine, I've been using it since then.

Keyboard:

The keyboard is of extremely good quality. There is no flex at all. The plastic is smooth and pleasant to the touch. The flat keyboard style is a personal preference; it was one of the reasons why I looked at this and the Z. The only downside is that the keys are pretty wide, so sometimes I type short.

Touchpad:

The touchpad is definitely one of the high points of this laptop. It has a slightly textured feel, so it's not slippery like the hp touchpads, but still smooth enough for a gentle glide. The accuracy on this touchpad is amazing. There is no stuttering or glitching with this touchpad. The touchpad buttons are something to be desired, though. They are nice and wide, but there is long key travel so if you're used to gently tapping the button then you'll have to get used to pressing it in fully. Same thing with tap-clicking. It takes quite a firm tap on the touchpad to get to confirm a click.

It's also a synaptic touchpad. If you've ever used a macbook or an eeepc, you'll know how much fun these things are. There's a 2-finger scroll program online (called 2-finger scroll), and it will emulate those functions. The program itself is kind of quirky, it took a little bit of configuration to make it perfect.

Screen:

This screen is amazingly bright. It is much brighter than my Samsung 220wm monitor. This is the thin LED-backlit LCD. Everything is crystal clear and sharp. I have no problems seeing anything on this monitor. Beyond that, I'm not good with monitors so I'll leave that to other reviews. No ghosting at all though, which is a nice touch.

It's a glossy screen, which I think is very annoying. There's a good amount of glare. I prefer a matte screen. Also, color temperature is a bit on the cool side, especially when compared to my monitor.

I kinda wanted to try out the new 16:9 format, but this is just a regular 1280x800 16:10 screen. Too bad it doesn't have the high-res 1600x900 screen like the Sony Zx90 does.

Linux:

Ok, so I am a linux user as well. To save time, I installed a copy of Ubuntu Hardy (I never got around to getting Intrepid) through Wubi. It seemed like none of the drivers in Hardy would play nice with the XPS. It didn't recognize the monitor (and stayed at a nice frosty 800x600), and would not recognize the wireless card. I might switch that out for a supported Intel 5300.

I'll play around with Linux once Jaunty comes out.

Weight:

While it is no Sony Z, it is still very light. It sits comfortably on my lap with no pressure at all. I can hold it easily with one hand.

Heat:

Ok, this is where we start having problems. On power-saver and dell-recommended power settings, its fine. It gets a little warm. On high-performance, you can actually burn yourself if you hold your finger to the vent area (not even the vent, just the top or the bottom). This makes it hard if you want to game or do any kind of power-intesive application on your lap. Power-saving setting is plenty for most purposes though.

Gaming performance:

I haven't really tried much gaming on this thing. I've run Bioshock and Call of Duty 4, neither will run reliably except at low settings (which is a shame). I didn't bother to take the FPS settings. Are they supposed to be this bad? The 8600M GT on my 1700 could play Crysis reliably well and both these games on high settings. How does the 9500M compare to the 8600M GT anyway?

Maybe it's just the stock Dell drivers. Vista performance rates my GPU as a 1.0 (what the heck?)

Yes this was all done on high-performance settings.

Battery life:

Terrible. It lasts about 2:30 on power-saver mode, < 2 on power saver mode and skype, and about 1 hour with high-performance. It should not be this bad. My 1700 (9-cell) had better battery life.

Overall:

This is a very solid laptop for the price. The looks are great, and the quality of the materials are smooth. There are a few quirks with the design (screen bevel is not solid, heating vent design, touchpad buttons.

However these are not major problems with me, the laptop itself is solid, a clear screen, and very good keyboard design, the two most important aspects of any laptop (the parts you interact with directly).

A few other quirks: not very linux-friendly. The headphone jacks in front make it annoying to keep it on your lap (esp if you're not sitting straight. Screen is glossy (I prefer a matte option). Gaming performance is sub-par. Battery life is sub-par.

Also, outlet did not come with a sleeve, but I bought a m1330 xps sleeve, and it fits perfectly.

Well, that's pretty much all I can think about at this time. If you guys have any other questions or any other pictures feel free to ask.

Here are the pictures. Sorry I couldn't attach them as my attachment box is full from the last review, and tinypic doesn't do automatic thumbnails:

http://tinypic.com/useralbum.php?ua=0WjeFtSWVD3NjJ23OGKJ+Q==

 

nice review. I agree with most of what you said, and I don't use linux, so i cant comment on that. You might want to install the dell drivers from dell's website, as they can greatly improve preformance. My windows index is 5.4 and on battery power i am now getting close to 3 hrs of use web surfing. I sugest the following drivers:

Applications
dell quickset - offers more options for battery control (ei: you can have the laptop switch automatically from high preformance to power save when you have it plugged in or not) and has on screen display for brightness, sound volume
everything under audio, bios, chipset, system utilities, and video.

 

All my drivers are from the dell website, which is why I don't understand the 1.0 graphics thing.

 

I really enjoyed reading your review and previewing your picture!

Kudos!

Hoping soon...the SXPS 13 comes out in *red*


Cin

 

nice review and also for your score staying at 1.0
all you have to do is go here

C:\windows\Performance\WinSAT\DataStore

and delete any files inside DataStore and refresh your score and
it should update