Dell Inspiron B120 and Inspiron 1300 Ultra Budget Notebook Review (pics, specs)

by William C.

The Inspiron B120 is currently the most inexpensive Dell laptop that can be purchased. It is sold under Dell's Home division and an identical Inspiron 1300 is sold under the Business division. One may think that the B120 could not possibly have much to offer at such a low price, but you will be surprised at how much horsepower this budget notebook has.

Dell Inspiron B120 (view large image)

Specifications of the model reviewed here:

• 14.1" WXGA TFT Display with 1280 x 800 resolution
• Intel Celeron M 370 (1.50 GHz/1MB Cache/400MHz FSB)
• 256 MB DDR2 PC-4200 / 533 Mhz
• 40GB 5400RPM / Toshiba MK4032GAX
• Combo Drive: 24x/10x/24x CD-RW and 8x DVD-ROM
• Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900
• Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN ExpressCard/34 802.11b/g
• Chipset: Intel i915GMS/i910GML
• SigmaTel Sound Card, headphone and microphone/line-in jack
• 56Kbps modem and 10/100 Mbps Integrated Network Card
• Ports: 3x USB 2.0, VGA out, 1x ExpressCard/54 (also supports ExpressCard/34)

Where and How Purchased:

This laptop was purchased through Dell.com for $564.84 including shipping and handling and it came with a $100 Mail-In rebate (final price $464.84). The order was placed on 4/25/2006 and the laptoparrived on 05/02/2006.

Inspiron B120 back left side view (view large image)

Build & Design:

Inspiron B120 closed view (view large image)

The exterior design, although not beautiful, could definitely be much worse. The B120 is mostly black. The back of the screen is gray colored, with a silver Dell logo in the center. Also the keyboard has a gray border surrounding it, which some people may find visually pleasing. The plastic latches on top of the screen seemed a little flimsy, but when it is shut, they hold the base firmly and only a very strong force could break it open. The screen hinges are strong and they don't adjust themselves while moving the laptop from one location to another. When pressing on the back of the LCD the plastic does flex inwards a little bit, however this doesn't cause any ripples on the viewing area.

Underside view of B120 (view large image)

Screen:

Screen latches (view large image)

The screen is a 14.1" WXGA TFT Display with 1280 x 800 resolution. I find it incredible that you can get a wide screen laptop for such a low price. It has decent brightness, not anything blinding, but I personally don't need anything brighter. In my tests I have found that it is still very usable outdoors in broad day light, though I had to turn the brightness to maximum to achieve this.

Speakers:

They are like most laptop speakers, terrible. For listening to radio shows or speeches they do just fine. You can drive up the volume pretty high without having any clipping.

Performance:

When I first got the laptop, I thought what the heck, I'll try running the Unreal Tournament 2004 demo. What I saw was incredible, I got an average frame rate of 49 FPS at 800x600 resolution (note that I used the UMark program to calculate this). The average boot time is about 24 seconds, from the time I press the power button until the logon screen shows up.
It plays HD 480p Quicktime movies at a full 30FPS. Videos in 720p resolution are also playable, but I did notice some stuttering. It may be possible to get better video performance by adding additional RAM.

Benchmarks:

Below is the time it took the Inspiron B120 to calculate Pi to 2-million digits of accuracy using the program Super Pi and comparison to other notebooks.

Notebook	Time
Dell InspironB120 (1.50 GHz Intel Celeron M 370)	2m 25s
Dell Inspiron e1705 (2.0GHz Intel T2500)	1m 12s
Sony VAIO FS680 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 53s
IBM ThinkPad T43 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 45s
IBM ThinkPad Z60m(2.0 GHz Pentium M)	1m 36s
Fujitsu LifeBook N3510 (1.73 GHz Pentium M)	1m 48s
Dell Inspiron 6000D (1.6 GHz Pentium M)	1m 52s
Dell Inspiron 600M (1.6 GHz Pentium M)	2m 10s
HP Pavilion dv4000(1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 39s
Asus V6Va(Pentium M 1.86 GHz)	1m 46s
Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 18s

PCMark05 Results:

PCMark05 Results
HDD - XP Startup	5.67 MB/s
Physics and 3D	50.36 FPS
Transparent Windows	76.22 Windows/s
3D - Pixel Shader	4.17 FPS
Web Page Rendering	2.09 Pages/s
File Decryption	36.92 MB/s
Graphics Memory - 64 Lines	265.77 FPS
HDD - General Usage 3.7 MB/s	3.7 MB/s
Multithreaded Test 1 / Audio Compression	N/A
Multithreaded Test 1 / Video Encoding	N/A
Multithreaded Test 2 / Text Edit	41.22 Pages/s
Multithreaded Test 2 / Image Decompression	8.27 MPixels/s
Multithreaded Test 3 / File Compression	1.7 MB/s
Multithreaded Test 3 / File Encryption	9.15 MB/s
Multithreaded Test 3 / HDD - Virus Scan	7.64 MB/s
Multithreaded Test 3 / Memory Latency - Random 16 MB	6.01 MAccesses/s

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?pcm05=356172

HDTune Results:

(view large image)

Heat and Noise:

I have an old HP Pentium III 700MHz laptop that gets so hot after being on for a short period of time, that it is uncomfortable to keep on my lap. So I was very pleased to find out that the B120 stays much cooler. A nice thing is that only the area around the CPU, which is in the back left, gets warm and not the entire underside. I also discovered that the CPU fan, the only one in the laptop, is a Sunon Maglev. This model of fan doesn't use ball bearings, but magnetic levitation, so it is much quieter and more reliable, as there are less parts to wear out. The DVD drive is also very quiet and cannot be heard when playing a DVD.

Keyboard and Touchpad:

Keyboard view of B120 (view large image)

I have nothing to complain about withthe keyboard. I am happy with the placement of all the keys and there is no learning difficulty when switching over from a full size keyboard to the B120's. It has a full size backspace and the Fn key is placed in between the Ctrl and Windows key. The touchpad works well, but unfortunately there is no scroll button.

External Connectivity:

The B120 has a VGA out that can be used to clone or extend the desktop. When running an extended desktop both screens can have full 32-bit color. Unfortunately it only has one ExpressCard/54 and no PCMCIA slot.

Left side view of Inspiron B120 (view large image)

Wireless:

My order included a free Dell Wireless 1390 card that performs very well. I get good reception when I am two stories above my wireless access point. This card works fine with Netstumbler.

Battery:

Included with the basic B120 configuration is a 29WHr 4-Cell Lithium Ion battery. I was able to play a DVD for 81 minutes at maximum screen brightness and the sound set to 25%. This is unfortunately not enough time to play most movies. The battery will last longer if the laptop is only used for web browsing. For an additional $99 a 56 Whr 6-Cell battery can be purchased, that would last about 156 minutes while watching a DVD.

Operating System and Software:

Windows XP Home came preinstalled with my B120. There was no OS installation CD included, instead there is a 3 GB hidden partition on the hard drive that holds the restoration files. It would probably be a good idea to backup these files onto a DVD, so that you won't need to buy a new copy of Windows when the drive fails or a virus deletes the partition. Besides the usual demo software, PowerDVD DX v5.5 and Sonic DigitalMedia LE were installed.

Linux:

Everything but the sound card and wireless card are properly detected and installed when I boot from a Knoppix LiveCD. The wireless card can be made to work with Ndiswrapper. The sound card driver however seems to have some major issues, one of them being that the speakers won't turn off when you plug in headphones.

Conclusion:

I am very impressed with the performance and build quality of the Inspiron B120, as I had very low expectations when I ordered it. Prior to having the B120, I belonged to the anti Dell crowd and only bought it because the price was so low. I was actually shocked when I first used it. The battery life could be better, but for the price I paid, I can't complain too much. With a RAM upgrade this should be a great student or work laptop that can master all Microsoft Office applications with ease and also perform certain multimedia tasks. I definitely recommend the B120 to anyone that can't or doesn't want to spend a lot of money on a portable computer.

 

good review.
you might want to fix the cpu name on the super Pi benchy.
it's definitely not a core duo.

 

this notebook is actually like $400 on Dell right now. Crazy. The processor that was listed as a Core Duo in that Super Pi chart is supposed to be a Celeron (slight difference there) and I messed up the editing for. Fixing it now...it's actually a Celeron M 360.

 

Good review. Its nice to see a budget notebook that could actually be worth buying.

 

Wow, indeed great review, My sibling got a B130, simular but it has 15.4 in. Other then that, great notebook.

JC

 

I love my B130... I was a bit iffy on it when I ordered it, but after getting my hands on it for a couple days, it's been fantastic. It's a little bit more upscale than the B120 (1.8 Ghz Centrino, 15.4 inch screen, and 1 gig of ram, 80 gig HD), but it's from the same class. I particularly like the construction. Very solid and sturdy. When you hold it in your hands, you can really tell that it's put together quite well. I like the way it looks too. This silvery enamel crap that the other dell models are sporting these days dont apeal to me. For that price tag, you cant beat it.

 

Good job, William!

I'd also like to add my (boyfriend's) experience with this laptop. I got B120 for him for Christmas/New Year, so he's had it for less than five months. After a couple of months, there appeared a small crack on the lid, a little over 1" long. Neither one of us know how it got there, and the laptop goes out only about once a month, so it seems that the lid is quite fragile.

The crack is near the latch, but it does not wrap all the way around to the latch, so it seems like the latch did not cause it. On the positive side, I noticed it at least 1 but probably 2 months ago and it has not grown since then, so I'm not exactly worried about it. Once again, however, this laptop stays indoors 98% of the time, so it could be just a matter of time.

Overall, I agree that it's a great laptop for the price. I ended up being out of the pocket only $250 with the same configuration, but that's only coz I got skillz and the incompetence of offshore tech support is my gain. It's possible that I could confuse them more and get more money out of them, but the game had gotten old. More to the point, even at $400, it's definitely a great buy that will fit many users' needs.

Malia

 

Damn str8

 

How did you get the same laptop for such a low price?

 

I would purchase this before I purchase a Used laptop.

Do you plan on Upgrading mem? Would you be able to install a dual core chip if you wanted too?

 

no, wrong chipset

 

What the hell is with the cheapest-ass laptop around looking spiffier than those other silly-looking white-bumpered clowns from Dell?

 

Hey watch your language.

JC

 

I'm gonna have to agree. I much prefer the look of that B series laptop over the regular Inspirons. The black and gray is just much more appealing and professional than white and silver. This is one reason I'm very happy with the M90... it has the black. Reminiscent of the current Latitudes which are black and gray and the old Latitudes which were all black.

 

Is there an way to record audio from my Dell B120 such as internet radio live audio streams? Do i need to install another soundcard other than the one that comes with it? Ive made recordings using various software that allows you to record audio. I save it as an mp3 file, but when i play it, i hear nothing. A friend of mine is using the Audacity program and it he can record on his computer, but it doesn't work on mine. Any advice would be great.

 

Make a new thread. Don't a question inside of a review thread.