Holiday Buyer's Guide: Notebooks
by Dustin Sklavos on November 15, 2010 9:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Guides
- Holiday 2010
Best Mobile Workstation: Dell Precision M6500 (Starting at $1700)
Figuring out the right workstation machine to recommend actually proved fairly difficult. Lenovo offers a healthy selection, but tend to be priced fairly high (though there's something to be said for a workstation that includes a built-in second screen). HP's EliteBook series offers their well-respected Dreamcolor screens, but those add a nasty $600 to the pricetag of the notebook.
In the end we went with the well-respected, well-known Dell Precision M6500. The M6500 is compelling because it offers all the accoutrement we want from a workstation: every form of modern connectivity, the most powerful Intel processors on the market, workstation-class graphics, and best of all, a 16:10 aspect RGB LED backlit screen. It's also capable of supporting up to four DIMMs of memory (maxing out at a staggering 32GB) and has three drive bays that can be configured for RAID. You can read more about it in our full review.
Put simply, the M6500 offers everything while starting at a reasonable price (currently $500 off at the time of writing!), and for that it's easy to see why it's our primary pick for a workstation notebook. Toss in a quad-core 740QM, 2x2GB RAM, and the stunningly beautiful RGB LED display and you're still looking at a fairly reasonable $2250.
Workstation Runner Up: Sony F Series (Starting at $1000)
Of course, if you can't afford the fat price tag on the M6500, you may find your options in the marketplace painfully limited. ExpressCard and FireWire are becoming increasingly rarefied, but Sony has your back with their F series. These notebooks were recently updated with the i7-x40QM processors and 400M GeForce parts, and they offer all the connectivity trimmings.
The flipside is that the Sony F series is a consumer-grade notebook capable of handling workstation-level tasks, but you lose a lot making the downgrade. You can still get a 1080p screen, but it's going to pale in comparison to the 1920x1200 RGB LED backlit screen the M6500 can bring to the table. You're also going to be reduced to a single drive bay, less memory, and less powerful graphics. Unfortunately, it also wins by default. Sony is really the only company outside of Apple producing notebooks with this level of connectivity for this market.
Other Alternatives?
We already mentioned the HP and Lenovo brands as being viable mobile workstation candidates. Lenovo has the 15.6" ThinkPad W510 starting at $1300, with a $250 95% gamut LCD upgrade available. The Quadro FX 880M is the workstation version of the GT 330M, which is at least a big step up from the anemic 360M. The bigger ThinkPad W701 and W701ds have similar features relative to the M6500, but with a starting price of $2500 ($3300 for the dual-screen model) you can understand why these are simply alternatives. HP's EliteBook line retreads the same ground: there's the Quadro FX 880M in the EliteBook 8540w, only with a fast dual-core i7-640M, or the larger 8740w bumps up the size, performance, options, and price. Like HP and Lenovo, Dell also has the smaller Precision M4500 available in a 15.6" chassis.
If your work is buying the workstation, our recommendations probably won't matter much—you get whatever the IT department decides—but unless you have a sale or other special offer, Dell looks to win handily in bang-for-the-buck.
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DBissett - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
This model doesn't come up on Dell's website. How about a CURRENT model number?nirolf - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
It's the XPS 15. I too had this problem, as even searching their website for "L501x" returned inconclusive results. Maybe a correction could be made in the article.plewis00 - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
This is partly Dell's fault - you'll find their machines with names like 'new Studio 17' but the actual model number will be Studio 1745, etc.If you search for XPS 15 on the net, you inevitably end up with websites misnaming and listing the XPS M1530 15" notebook computer which was a 2008 model (albeit a very nice looking one! And, in my opinion, better looking than the new 2010 XPS 15).
Evil_Sheep - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
-Interesting that only Dell and Asus got top PC recommendations. Actually I respect that: most websites have a manufactured diversity of brands in their recommended lists, probably to appease their advertisers. But also maybe it reflects that Anandtech seems to review a lot of Asus's and Dells. Where are the HP's, Lenovo's and Sony's?-I noticed you co-recommended the Asus U30Jc and U35Jc after you fairly slagged the U35 in your review and said the U30 was the preferred choice. Is this a subtle change of heart?
-The alternative recommendation in that category was the Toshiba Portege R700 but I don't think it makes sense to consider them as competitors since they aren't really in the same market. The R700 is in the "Macbook Air" category (funny how Apple has a way of creating its own market space): ultra-light and ultra-portable with power limitations, ideal as a 2nd computer for someone who wants more than a netbook, or as a primary computer for an undemanding user. The U30/35 on the other hand are clearly in the Macbook 13 space: a full-powered notebook that is still very portable. This is the so-called "thin and light" category, though I wish someone would come up with a name that is less awkward and ambiguous.
-There is a workstation recommendation...nothing wrong with that except it seems a bit unnecessary since there are only 3 self-described competitors in that space (HP, Dell, and Lenovo) and you can't go wrong with any of them. And the number of people looking for workstation recommendations are probably quite small (as you mentioned) since IT depts often procure them, and in addition few need those capabilities in the first place.
-No DTR/17" multimedia recommendation? Seems like an important category.
Not to be overly critical. I like the picks and it's a good overview generally.
Powerlurker - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
HP is widely regarded as pretty much the bottom of the barrel reliabilitywise.Dug - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
I think the MSi GX640 or 660 series should be at the top for gaming.It is fairly lightweight compared to others and has an ATi 5870 or 5850.
I personally like the 640 because of the 1680x1050 resolution and i5 processor.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
Having tested the GX640, the keyboard is one of the worst I've personally encountered... almost to the point where I'd prefer the Acer keyboard. It just feels all around horrible when you consider the cost of the laptop, and it should be trivial to change it out, since just about anything would be an improvement. I can't comment personally on the GX660 or GX740 though, so perhaps they're better.Jeff7181 - Wednesday, November 17, 2010 - link
I love Lenovo ThinkPads... it's going to be a tough sell to get me to buy a different brand when I upgrade. I can't believe none even made it as a runner up or alternative. My R61 is great... has the power and memory run several virtual machines for my studies, can do media encoding and light gaming and barely gets warm to the touch while staying quiet. AND it gets 4-5 hours of battery life on the battery that came with it in Feb. of '08.MrMist - Wednesday, November 17, 2010 - link
I think the Asus 1018P with the N550 CPU is an interesting ultraportable, and it would be interesting to see it compared with the other alternatives here.erwos - Wednesday, November 17, 2010 - link
You do realize that the 1015PN does not have Optimus out of the box, right Jared?