Dell Studio 15

Midrange notebook offers better brain than looks




OFFERING MORE-FLEXIBLE OPTIONS than Dell's budget-minded Inspirons-but still priced well south of th emore upscale CPS line- the company's new Studio line (starting at $749 and available in 15- and 17-inch varieties) hits a midrange sweet spot, delivering everything the mainstream consumer could ask for.
Dell offers the Studio in a wide assortment of colors (our Studio 15 test system came in midnight blue), though the Dell designers got too artsy with the drip-like imprint design on the glossy wrist rest. A recessed lid hinge and clean lines rescue the Studio line from aesthetics hell, howevew.
The Studio 15 delivered solid marks on our PCMark05 test suite, but it did even better on Our Windows Media Encoder and iTunes-encoding tests. Our unit came with a 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450 discrete graphcis card, which wasn't as strong a performer-if you want to play the latest games, look elsewhere. The included six-cell battery lasted a respectable 2 hours and 6 minutes on our DVD drain test.
At our test unit's $1,999 price, you get 2GB of RAM to go with a top-shelf 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo T9300 processor; in its current configuration, unfortunately, the Studio misses out on Intel's recently launched Centrino 2 technology.

The ample connection options include an HDMI port, five USB ports, FireWire, a multiformat memory-card reader, and a PC Card slot. Wireless connectivity comes courtesy of built-in 802.11b/g Wi-Fi. You also get a built-in 2-megapixel Webcam residing above the screen.-Asa Somers.
source: Computer Shopper October 2008.
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