Intro
The Dell XPS M1330 is a slick, travel powerhouse laptop small enough to actually be used in an airplane or airport coffee house. You get most of the bells and whistles of a larger laptop without the weight and chunkiness. As always, Dell offers tons of stuff to customize your build: Bluetooth, different Wi-Fi options, as well as an expanded batter pack. Plus, it’s just so damn sexy.
Design
This to me is was the biggest factor in buying a 13.3 inch laptop. Of all the laptops I looked at (sorry I didn’t bother looking at the Macs), this was the one that stood out the most. It’s thin, the keyboard is encased in brushed aluminum, and above the keyboard is a touch sensitive row of keys for DVD playback, sound intensity manipulation, and Media Direct initialization. On the leading edge, you got dual headphone jacks, a Mic jack, and an SD media port. The disc tray is a slot load, which is a welcome change, and though this laptop comes with all the standard I/O ports (USB, IEEE and VGA), it also comes with a HDMI port. A nice surprise is that where your dummy PCI express card usually would sit there is a media remote included with your purchase.
I found the keyboard to be a bit annoying. I can’t quite put my finger on what the fault is, but I find myself retyping words on this laptop more so then on my others. As sweet as having a HDMI port is, without the option for Blu-Ray or HDDVD, it is really more of a nice thing to have as opposed to a necessity.
Screen
The design of the screen is easily the awesome feature. The model I put together came with the LED backlit thin screen with the native resolution of 1,280×800 and VGA webcam. Picture comes through crystal clear on this 13.3 inch and the screen itself is one of the thinnest I have seen (maybe 1/3 a deck of cards). There is a built in VGA webcam dead center and above the display on the bezel. With a very crisp picture, even the most avid webcam user will not be disappointed.
Really, I can’t think of a thing wrong with monitor. Without a doubt, one of the best I have seen.
Performance
With the Intel Core 2 Duo T9500 as the brains of my system, I have yet to find a task that cannot be accomplished with this system and with surprising speed. You can run your doc programs, movies, Internet Explorer, and ITunes programs all at once with no indication of slow down. I opted for the NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400, which isn’t exactly the fastest laptop video card, but once you get outside of the 17 inch desktop replacements, the 8400 is really upper end. I myself am not much for PC games (I grew up on NES and Sega Genesis and like the feel a controller in my hands), so I couldn’t give you a very detailed description, but I was able to get a hold of a copy of Call of Duty 4 and it ran well enough to be playable. Just don’t expect this to play Crisis at 60fps.
Once again, I haven’t found anything in the way of performance to be disappointed in.
Battery Life
My config came with the nine-cell battery, which I have gotten to run at half brightness at idle for just under 5 hours! On the movie test, I was able to watch The Godfather from start to credits and still had maybe 15 minutes to spare. I definitely recommend the nine-cell battery pack, but know that it makes the laptop an awkward shape and adds weight. It does set the keyboard at a better type angle however, and allows better airflow through the bottom vent.
Conclusion
This mofo is the bomb. It’s sexy as all hell, portable, light, and best of all, it works. I love my Dell and it is a travelers dream. It’s categorized as a thin and light laptop, but I think a better description would be a travel/desktop replacement, as that is what I use it for. My next laptop review will be the smallest you can go before you just have a web book, the Sony Vaio TT.
1850.00 USD$ as reviewed
ERS rating - five stars
www.dell.com
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