Launched some months ago, the Dell Vostro 3300 is a stylish, good-looking 13-inch business laptop. Not only does it have a fashionable, sophisticated all-metal exterior, the Vostro 3300 also offers very good performance in its compact shell.

Design
The new Dell Vostro 3300 borrows design elements heavily from the Dell Adamo XPS ultraportable laptop and the Dell Vostro V13 thin and light laptop. Needless to say, Dell’s previous fashion statement with the slim Vostro V13 laptop is accentuated with the new Dell Vostro 3300 laptop even more. The 13-inch business laptop’s available in three colors — Aberdeen Silver, Lucerne Red or Brisbane Bronze — and its all-aluminum exterior has a smooth finish and feels elegant and premium on touch. The Dell Vostro 3300 is wrapped in aluminum on its screen lid and along its side, but the metal casing doesn’t extend to the laptop’s bottom. Prop the laptop open and you’ll see the Vostro 3300 sports an all-black keyboard deck, palmrest, and touchpad — the laptop’s two toned silver-black color scheme looks stylish and attractive to say the least. Like the Vostro V13, the Dell Vostro 3300 isn’t top-heavy and exquisitely balanced — you can lift the laptop’s screen lid and prop it open with a single finger, without pulling its chassis along the way. The Dell Vostro 3300 is a very well built laptop, with its 13-inch screen firmly supported by two hinges placed along the laptop’s spine.

Unlike the Vostro V13, the Dell Vostro 3300 doesn’t have a protruding spine — but comes with a tray-loading DVD writer driver on its left edge. The slim, compact, 13-inch Dell Vostro 3300 business laptop weighs just 2-kg with a four-cell battery — not as ultraportable as the Vostro V13 or the Lenovo Thinkpad T400s, but it’s not at all heavy. It’s a road warrior, the Dell Vostro 3300 — with its durable build quality and slim, relatively light profile. And with its premium aluminum enclosure, the Vostro 3300 laptop will surely make heads turn whether you’re in a boardroom or sitting in a lounge.

Given its configuration, the Dell Vostro 3300 laptop pretty much cements its place as a no-nonsense, high-powered portable computer.

Usability
The Dell Vostro 3300 offers very good day-to-day usability options. It has a 13.3-inch LED-backlit screen which supports a screen resolution of 1366×768 pixels. But more importantly the Vostro 3300′s 13-inch screen is matte or non-glossy in nature, and supports anti-glare to prevent reflections from popping into your screen’s workspace. The Dell Vostro 3300 laptop’s matte screen is nice and bright (brighter than the Lenovo Thinkpad T400s’ screen) and very well equipped for reading text for extended hours — it can also handle an occasional movie thrown its way. A 2MP webcam sits recessed on the screen’s top screen bezel, and it’s great for video chatting. You can also capture videos and upload them to YouTube or share pics by uploading them on popular photo-sharing sites like Photobucket, etc., through the Vostro 3300′s proprietary Dell Webcam Central software.

The Dell Vostro 3300′s laptop keyboard and touchpad are the pretty much the same as on the Dell Vostro V13. laptop keyboard sports well-sized keys that are tightly packed on the keyboard deck and well laid out. The keys on the Vostro 3300 are shaped differently compared to the keys on the Thinkpad T400s, but they are equally nice to type on — there’s no time wasted in getting into your typing groove on the The Dell Vostro 3300′s laptop keyboard. What’s more, much like the Apple MacBook Pro 17-inch, the Vostro 3300′s keyboard is backlit and spill-resistant like the Thinkpad T400s’. The touchpad is sized identical to the one on the Vostro V13 and sits in a shallow area surrounded by the palmrest and keyboard. The touchpad has a very fine textured finish — almost smooth but not quite — and is gesture-enabled (pinch for zoom, flick to scroll through pages, etc.). We had absolutely no complaints from the Dell Vostro 3300′s touchpad — it provided very good tactile feedback and its gesture-enabled motion worked flawlessly.

Port placement is also well thought out on the Vostro 3300 — card reader and audio ports are located at the front edge. We also like a strip of touch-sensitive multimedia buttons located above the laptop’s keyboard.

Hardware Features
The Dell Vostro 3300 is a very well featured laptop in terms of internal hardware. With an Intel Core i5-520M 2.4-GHz processor (with Intel Turbo Boost and Hyper Threading technology), 6GB DDR3 RAM, 500GB hard drive, and an Nvidia GeForce 310M discrete graphics card (512MB), the Dell Vostro 3300 laptop pretty much cements its place as a no-nonsense, high-powered portable computer. The Dell Vostro 3300′s internal hardware is better than the recently reviewed Lenovo Thinkpad T400s’.

You also get a host of connectivity options and ports on the Vostro 3300 laptop. There are three USB 2.0 ports on the Dell Vostro 3300, one of which duals up as an eSATA port — in case you have to connect an external hard drive for data transfer. All three USB ports are powered, meaning you can charge USB-powered devices (phones, cameras, MP3 players, etc.) through them. The 13-inch business laptop also integrates faster communication standards like Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, and Bluetooth 2.1 wireless connectivity. The Dell Vostro 3300, like the HP ProBook 4520s or any self-respecting business laptop, integrates a fingerprint reader — placed near the top right of the laptop’s palmrest. Apart from the regular offerings of a 5-in-1 multicard reader, ExpressCard slot, audio in-out and VGA ports, the Dell Vostro 3300 misses out on an HDMI port — we would have loved for the laptop to have an HDMI port but since its primarily aimed at businesses, we think it isn’t that important.

The Vostro 3300 also comes with a SIM card slot under its battery compartment (like the Lenovo Thinkpad T400s) — it’s useful for connecting to wireless 3G and WWANs.

Bundled Software

Dell bundles 64-bit Windows 7 Professional edition operating system with the Vostro 3300. Dell doesn’t compromise on business users’ data and it deploys data security and recovery tools on the Vostro 3300 laptop. As we saw on the Dell Inspiron 14R laptop, Dell DataSafe Online (a convenient way to save your data on to the cloud) works much the same way on the Dell Vostro 3300 as it did on the Inspiron 14R laptop, providing you an easy way to upload and share photos, videos, and other files securely on to your own private data vault on the Web. Dell also has a backup and recovery tool packed in with the Vostro 3300 which is a nice way to safeguard your data. The fingerprint reader on the Dell Vostro 3300 is accompanied by a DigitalPersona software, which guides you through enrolling your fingerprints. Once that’s done, you can login to Windows, websites and applications by just swiping your finger — no passwords required!

Performance
The Dell Vostro 3300 is one of the fastest 13-inch laptop we’ve tested. The business laptop just aced all our synthetic benchmarks with very high scores — 111 on WorldBench 6, 7100 on PC Mark 05, and 8195 on CineBench, respectively — better numbers than any of our Top 5 Mainstream Consumer Laptops. With a 3D Mark 06 score just under 4,000, and if the rigors of work call for a stress-busting activity, you can also do some casual gaming on the Dell Vostro 3300 — we had no problem playing FarCry 2 at high settings on the laptop’s Nvidia GeForce 310M graphics card.

With the fast Core i5-520M processor, ample 6GB RAM, faster 7200rpm hard drive, and a pretty good graphics card, you will not encounter any bottlenecks while multitasking with your work programs on the Dell Vostro 3300. You can also watch a DVD movie or high-def 720p or 1080p HD files on the Vostro 3300 — the movie playback’s smooth and stutter-free, even though the matte screen doesn’t make color and visuals pop as compared to a glossy screen. The onboard single speaker on the Vostro 3300 is modest at best by laptop standards — we recommend plugging in headphones for best results. Owing to its metal exterior, the V3300 laptop heats up a bit — especially near the right palmrest, and prolonged usage on the lap’s uncomfortable. But the heat isn’t as perceptible while working on the Dell Vostro 3300 when it’s perched on a desk.

Battery life is the only blemish on an otherwise stellar performance by the Dell Vostro 3300 laptop. The 13-inch business laptop ships with a 4-cell battery by default, with the option of bumping it up to an 8-cell version. In our synthetic battery test — at full-screen brightness, bluetooth turned off and at Windows 7′s high performance preset — the Dell Vostro 3300′s 4-cell battery lasted for exactly 1 hour. In real-world usage — surfing the Web over Wi-Fi on power save battery mode — we managed to time just 2 hours 30 minutes from the Vostro 3300′s 4-cell battery. If you will predominantly use the Vostro 3300 indoors, this shouldn’t be a huge concern; but if you’ll be travelling a lot with the slim, light 13-inch Dell Vostro 3300 laptop then you should seriously invest in the 8-cell battery.

Bottom Line

All said and done, the Dell Vostro 3300 laptop is a sophisticated 13-inch business laptop, combining elegant style with top-notch performance. The Dell Vostro 3300 is decently priced for a business laptop — it’s available for as low as Rs. 36,000 but our review sample’s configuration sells for a price of Rs. 50,000. It offers much better performance than the Dell Vostro V13, Lenovo Thinkpad T400s, and HP ProBook 4520s, comes with a nice feature set and security software tailored for business usage. If you run your own business or are part of a small organization craving for a premium-looking, stylish compact 13-inch business laptop which is thin and light with excellent performance, we highly recommend the new Dell Vostro 3300.

Intro – Design – Usability

Launched in late September, the Dell Inspiron M501R (M5010) is a 15-inch laptop part of Dell’s Inspiron series. Compared to the Dell Inspiron 15R, the Inspiron M501R laptop has an AMD triple-core processor and dedicated ATI graphics, trying to stake a claim as a good laptop for home or students. Let’s see if that’s the case with Dell Inspiron M501R.

Dell Inspiron M501R has discrete graphics, which is a bonus at this budget-conscious price point.

Design
The Dell Inspiron M501R is identical to the Dell Inspiron 14R and Inspiron 15R laptop, in terms of looks and design. The Inspiron M501R comes with an attractive glossy screen lid having a smooth metallic finish — you have the choice of four screen lid colors: Black, blue, red, and pink.
The Dell Inspiron M501R reinforces our impression of the new Inspiron series of laptops — they’re no longer foul and uncouth, as they once were. The Dell Inspiron M501R has a shiny polished finish along its palmrest and surface surrounding the keyboard which feels premium compared to other laptops at this price point — kinda like the Lenovo IdeaPad Z460.

Like the Dell Inspiron 14R, the Inspiron M501R laptop has a peculiar hinge design — the laptop’s screen meets the rest of the chassis a little inside the spine, allowing you to better hold the laptop when its screen is propped open. A very good example of thoughtful design, the current Inspiron M501R, 15R and 14R laptops. The Dell Inspiron M501R is very well built and weighs 2.6-kg (with a six-cell battery pack) — which is pretty good for a 15-inch laptop and 200gm lighter than the Acer Aspire 5740 laptop.

Usability
The Dell Inspiron M501R comes with a 15.6-inch widescreen LED-backlit display with 1366×768 resolution. The 15-inch glossy screen isn’t very bright but colorful and has good contrast levels. In an indoor environment, reading text and watching movies are both handled very well by the Dell Inspiron M501R’s 15-inch screen. The laptop comes with a 1.3MP webcam recessed in its top screen bezel which comes handy with videochats.

The Dell Inspiron M501R laptop’s keyboard and touchpad are as good as ever. We like the closely packed, raised keys — they’re very good for typing and offer nice feedback. Although, we did notice a slight flex on the Inspiron M501R’s keyboard — during fast typing bursts — but nothing to spoil the party. The Dell Inspiron M501R laptop’s keyboard has a dedicated number pad.

The Dell Inspiron M501R has a nice wide touchpad nestled between a large shiny palmrest — which doesn’t attract a lot of fingerprints. The touchpad’s surface itself reminds me of very fine sandpaper, it offers very good tactile feedback and plenty of room to move your finger. The accompanying mouse buttons are nice and easy to click, no problem at all.

We shall be reviewing the Dell Inspiron 15R (N5050) laptop today – this is not to be confused with another model which also bears the same classification of ‘Dell Inspiron 15R (N5050) laptop ‘, but comes under the subcategory of N5100, and which features a switchable back-lid.

Design
The review model we received came in an Obsidian Black colouring which covers the backlid and the palmrest – the rest of Dell laptop has a regular black plastic finish. The overall design of this laptop is nothing much to write home about –  it has an overall regular look except for the bulge at its rear, which provides space for the removable battery.

The backlid is glossy and features the Dell logo that is positioned at its centre – by virtue of its glossy nature, the backlid attracts more than its fair share of fingerprints, smudges and scratches. The plamrest, on the other hand, has a matte finish – so you don’t have to worry about fingerprints and the sort leaving their mark on it. The screen bezel also has a matte finish. In a design choice that we saw previously on the Dell Vostro 3450 as well, the keyboard’s background area has a glossy finish – the same goes for its border. While the glossy background surface does provide a contrast to an extent to the matte finish of the rest of the laptop, given that the entire laptop has a darkish colouring, talking of this contrast is a rather moot point – the black glossy background area should contrast better with the Apple Red colour option.

The screen is held in place by a two hinges – the wide centrally located connector also hold the monitor – there is a Dell logo positioned centrally at the lower section of the screen bezel – in place. Both the hinges extend outward to cause a bulge, which is the most distinctive feature of this laptop. The power socket is located on the right side of this bulge.

Features
The overall build quality of this laptop is good. The edges are curved and the entire laptop, when closed, resembles a rectangular slab – there are no angular sides, save for the slight curvature that extends from the base to the front side of the laptop. There is a 0.3 MP camera placed at the top central section of the screen’s bezel.

The power button is located at the top left corner. There are two very slim speaker outlets located at either end of the top part of the chassis – placed below the screen. There are four LED indicators positioned along the front of the laptop, for indicating whether the laptop is powered on, for hard drive access, whether the battery is charging or not and for wireless connectivity respectively.

Monitor
The 15.6-inch glossy screen does a good job of displaying text and video. The viewing angles are decent – two people, sitting within comfortable distance of each other, should be able to watch the screen without having to see the darkish hue appear over the particular picture/video.  The screen can be titled backwards to an angle of approx 120 degrees.

Keyboard Usability
The Dell laptop keyboard features chiclet keys, but comes without a dedicated numpad. Given that this is a 15.6 screen laptop, Dell could have easily incorporated a numpad, given how there is a lot of free space around the Dell laptop keyboard border area. Typing on this keyboard was not too pleasant an experience given the springy tactile feedback from the keys. Interestingly Dell has added a function button for disabling the touchpad – which is a very handy feature to have, especially when typing a document, and when you don’t want your cursor to keep moving just because your palms came in to contact with the touchpad. Acer was the only manufacturer I had seen who implemented this feature, and its a welcome addition by Dell. I hope they continue having this feature in  other Dell laptops as well.

The smooth textured touchpad is very responsive, and features two mouse buttons. I did find that the mouse buttons tended to depress too much when pressed – the buttons would depress to the extent that your fingers would be touching the border of the touchpad. This was quite an irritant – Dell could have really done with steadier mouse buttons.

Hardware
The Dell Inspiron 15R features a Second Generation Intel Core i3 2310 processor (2.1GHz), 4GB DDR3 RAM, a 500 GB (5400 RPM) HDD, and Intel HD graphics.

The left side of the laptop chassis features, one Ethernet port, one VGA port, an HDMI port, one USB 2.0 port and headphone and microphone jacks. On the right hand side you would find an optical drive and 2 USB 2.0 ports. At the front of the chassis, you would find a multi-card reader – positioned to its left, you would find the four LED indicators. It also features Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/ n and Bluetooth 3.0 wireless connectivity.

More details can be seen on this review’s “Specifications” page.

Software
The laptop comes pre-installed with Windows 7 Home Premium service pack 1. Among the Dell software included on this unit are the Dell DataSafe local backup, Dell DataSafe online, Dell Stage – includes MusicStage, PhotoStage and VideoStage, Dell Support Centre and PC Checkup and Dell webcam Central which allows you to add some interesting effects to your photos.

Among the other pre-installed software are McAfee Security Centre trial edition, Roxio Creator Starter Edition, and Skype.

Performance
The Inspiron15R  laptop received a score of 99 on the Worldbench 6 benchmark – for comparisons sake, that would be 2 points more than what the Lenovo IdeaPad Z570 scored. This Dell laptop should be able to cope with carrying out your daily tasks and performing most multiple processor and memory intensive tasks without any issues – save for gaming. During synthetic testing, the laptop’s hard disk recorded an average read speed of 72.5 MB/s and recorded a PC Mark Vantage score of 5547.

Given that the laptop has the integrated Intel HD graphics, playing contemporary games shouldn’t really be considered as a viable option on this laptop. This is not a downside in any way as the laptop was never intended for such a purpose, and if you were indeed looking for a more moderately priced machine to play games on, you would be better off looking at other options – such as the Lenovo IdeaPad Z570. Having said that, you just might be able to get away with playing some of the retro games, run at appropriate settings, on this Inspiron 15R laptop,

Watching both 720p and 1080p HD videos was a comfortable experience. The sound output from the built in speakers, is appropriately loud for a small to medium sized room, although higher frequency sounds do tend to sound quite screechy. Listening through headphones would be the best option.

Throughout our testing, the Inspiron laptop did a good job of keeping itself cool, which is a positive aspect for any laptop. However when used for an extended period of time or when running some intensive tasks, you do notice that the mid-to-top left section of the laptop’s base, that is next to the exhaust, heats up slightly and becomes quite warm to the touch. Moreover, the laptop was barely audible during operation, which is another positive to take from this laptop.

The laptop’s six-cell battery lasted for 1 hour 32 minutes through one of our battery tests, at high performance mode, and having the wireless internet mode enabled – this result is pretty much the norm we have come to expect of mainstream laptops. Having said that, you should be able to extract around 4 plus hours out of the laptop’s battery for doing lighter every-day work such as browsing the web and listening to music.

Upgradability
The entire base is a single cover slot, and the entire base will have to taken off – we tried to remove it, but to no avail – to look at the Inspiron laptop’s innards. Consequently, in case you are thinking of upgrading this unit, that task is better left to Dell, and is not an activity that I would encourage regular users to engage in.

Bottom Line

The Dell Inspiron 15R is not exactly a laptop that will awe you with its design – the same can be said of its tech specs as well. It has a simple design and its specs are oriented towards those users looking to get a home laptop on an economical budget. In our test benchmarks, it performed well. However given some of the laptop’s drawbacks, such as the keys being springy, there are better alternatives available in the market, at a similar price range – one such alternative would be the Lenovo IdeaPad Z570.