Dell Studio 17: When Gaming Isn't Enough
by Dustin Sklavos on August 26, 2010 12:10 AM ESTBattery Life in a Desktop Replacement
If you aren't expecting much out of the battery of the Dell Studio 17, you're probably right not to. This is a massive 17-inch notebook; in addition to feeding that large screen, the battery also has to power a processor with a 45W TPD and mainstream-class mobile graphics. Dell seems to have been cognizant of this in opting to ship the Studio 17 with a 9-cell battery standard (a 6-cell battery that sits flush with the unit is also available.) Let's see how it fares.
In practice, Dell is able to get far more running time out of this notebook than we expected they would. While it's true that this notebook has the advantage of a 9-cell battery, its relative battery life is nonetheless quite good given the components inside and larger screen. Dell has managed to get a 17" screen, 45W Intel mobile quad-core, and a decent GPU to produce battery life comparable to AMD machines running off of integrated graphics: no mean feat to be sure. Granted, AMD's latest Danube and Nile platforms improve the situation, but Clarksfield processors have never been very battery friendly.
The only question mark is really just how important this kind of useful battery life is on a machine this big. Sure, it's great that it can handle surfing the internet for more than four hours, but the thing weighs nearly eight pounds, and it's mighty wide. The best case I can suggest is that it would be useful for any kind of on-the-go media work, where you need a monitor or just powerful hardware that can run on the battery for a substantial amount of time.
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JarredWalton - Thursday, August 26, 2010 - link
That's why I said "but in some marketing departments..." In theory all the widescreen movies are a better fit for WS LCDs. The reality is that most Blu-ray and DVDs are now using 2.33 as you point out. Not to mention, for laptops it's crazy to pretend that their primary use is as movie devices IMO. If I want to watch a movie from a laptop, either I'm on a plane, or I'm hooking it up to an HDTV.seanleeforever - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
the wider the screen, the less area it has giving the same diagonal size. the entire wide screen thing is to fool the average consumer, simple enough, the "better for movie experience" "better for multimedia" are all bunch of BS.do the calculation you self, a 16:9 screen will have 6% diagonal size than a similar sized 4:3 screen. a 15 inch 4:3 screen can be re-branded as 16 inch 16:9 Wide screen. or simply put, a regular screen needs to be 12.4% larger in area in order to claim the same diagonal size. most Americans are too stupid to do pythagorean theorem and believe 16inch must be larger than 15 inch, let alone the "WIDE SCREEN".
shamans33 - Thursday, August 26, 2010 - link
"Studio 17 features two drive bays, allowing you to continue to use the existing drive for storage. Mine didn't come with the drive tray necessary to use the second bay, but that accessory can be purchased fairly cheaply online."Got any links? :)
Dustin Sklavos - Thursday, August 26, 2010 - link
Let me know if this works: http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/products/Hard_D...cknobman - Thursday, August 26, 2010 - link
How you omit the Acer 5740G series game fps scores from the comparison when it was used for general performance comparison.The Acer 5740G series is a direct competitor to the studio 17. Same size and similar internal components.
JarredWalton - Thursday, August 26, 2010 - link
Well, the 7740G is more of a competitor, since it's 17.3". The 5740G is now discontinued, unfortunately, at least the model with HD 5650. (Actually, I think the 7740G is now phased out as well and online vendors are just clearing remaining inventory.) Probably your best bet is this 7740G (which may disappear soon):http://www.futurepowerpc.com/scripts/product.asp?P...
As for why the 5740G isn't in the gaming benchmarks, we revamped our gaming suite recently. We had some scores for the 5740G in DiRT 2, L4D2, ME2, and STALKER: CoP. We don't have the laptop anymore, though, so some of the test results aren't at the same settings we're now using, and we don't have BFBC2 or SC2 results. That's why we pulled it from the charts. You can find the previous results here, but not all the scores are at the same settings (i.e. "high" is redefined now):
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3631/acer-aspire-as5...
We do have another laptop with an HD 5650 we're reviewing and that should be up shortly. The 5650 is obviously faster than the 4650, but getting it with a system that has everything else you want is the difficulty. Dustin wants Firewire and ExpressCard, which limits options quite a bit.
Jambe - Thursday, August 26, 2010 - link
Glossy = no buy.I'm being a stickler wrt this issue.
Unfortunately that largely limits me to the utilitarian Lenovo devices...
crimson117 - Thursday, August 26, 2010 - link
Why would you buy this thing when you can get a G73 or an Acer Extensa 368d for the same price or a little more?JarredWalton - Thursday, August 26, 2010 - link
Two words: Firewire, ExpressCard.Some more words: I can't fine the Acer Extensa in stock anywhere with a quick Google search; is it EOL now? As for the G73, it's bigger and faster, and it even has a better LCD on the 1080p model, but the least expensive version is $1300 at Best Buy (plus tax) and it comes with the same level of 900p LCD. That's $350 more than what Dustin paid for the Studio 17, and the Dell gets better battery life in addition to the above two words. :)
CSMR - Thursday, August 26, 2010 - link
Useful review, except the title says "Dell Studio 17: When Gaming Isn't Enough", and then half the review is hardcore 3D gaming benchmarks! If even a non-gaming review is mostly about gaming, you give the site a bad name!In general people who care about display quality, and read charts before buying, would get the B+RG 1080p display, so would probably be more interested in charts on that.
Also there's a BIOS problem I've heard in this model, namely that the fan turns off and on even in idle or under light loads. The temperatures are set badly: too low, not well ramped and at too close a range so the switching is frequent. It would be useful to know if you get this problem too.