Dell Studio 14: Defining Solid
by Dustin Sklavos on August 19, 2010 2:49 AM ESTDell Studio 14: A Solid If Unexciting Contender
When beginning this review, it felt difficult to find the right tack—the right way to present Dell's Studio 14. Is it remarkable in that nothing in particular is that remarkable about it? That isn't necessarily a bad thing: there's something to be said for a good, balanced design, and we think the Studio 14 has exactly that going for it.
In terms of aesthetics and non-gaming performance, the Studio 14 fills a role and is a testament to the merits of just doing something well. The processor falls right in line with where you would expect it to be and the system feels snappy with the 7200RPM hard disk and 4GB of DDR3. Keyboard flex is a minor issue and the touchpad isn't the greatest, but neither of these are really deal breakers either. The design is nice and understated, looking neither too cheap nor too gaudy. Frankly it's a welcome change of pace in a market where manufacturers like ASUS are still trying to find their feet with mainstream designs, Toshiba can't figure out how to produce an elegant-looking notebook, and Acer builds are powerful for the money but utterly unimpressive externally and saddled with dismal keyboards. There is merit to just looking tasteful, and for some users this is going to be important.
What's more, the Studio 14 positively excels in battery life. It offers the kind of running time that we really want to see become the standard instead of the exception. Dell doesn't price the notebook out of competition, and that competition isn't packing high capacity batteries by default in this price range. Maybe the best part is just how efficiently the Studio 14 uses that high capacity battery, too.
If the unit falters anywhere, it's with the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470, and that's a more complicated situation. Dell can be faulted for pricing the upgrade far too high ($160 for this? Seriously?), but ATI and NVIDIA should both be taken to task for continuing to foist underpowered crap on this market segment. AMD's Fusion APU looks like it might help mitigate this situation somewhat, but it ain't here yet, and it can't be paired with a powerful Intel CPU. ATI and NVIDIA are both playing the rebranding game (ATI with the Mobility 540v and NVIDIA with the G 210M/310M), something we've called out before and will continue to call out until the consumer-unfriendly practice stops.
But with the 5400 series it's almost worse: every other GPU in the Evergreen line received a jump in shader power compared to the previous generation, but the Cedar core the desktop and mobile 5400s are based on is still stuck with a miserable 80 stream processors. Worse still, our own testing confirmed the 5000 series stream processors are generally slightly slower clock-for-clock than their predecessors.
That rant is essentially neither here nor there, though: Dell can really only equip their notebooks with what's available, and odds are good that jumping to a 5650 would've put too sizable a dent in that impressive battery life and perhaps generated too much heat for the chassis to handle. The rest of the Studio 14 is exceptionally well-rounded: quiet, powerful, flexible, portable. There's very little to find fault with in Dell's design, and we happily recommend it without reservation.
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Friendly0Fire - Thursday, August 19, 2010 - link
Uninformed much, wow. The styling is a matter of taste and if you dislike it, go grab your favorite cheap plastic fest, or do you prefer the elitist Macbook?The GPU, wow big deal I couldn't see more than a 1 or 2 FPS difference. Still plays all games really well.
Trackpad, get some program to customize it.
Dustin Sklavos - Thursday, August 19, 2010 - link
...nearly five hours on a six-cell with a dedicated GPU is unexceptional?What's it gonna take to impress you people?
It's true, the machine's a bit heavy, but it's well-built, too, has excellent expandability, and performs very well. I've played with a few 14" notebooks, this is probably one of my favorites.
OCDude - Thursday, August 19, 2010 - link
Why do all laptops under $1000 have to be 1366x768? That is a crappy resolution if you actually want to get any work done on the thing... *sigh*zoxo - Thursday, August 19, 2010 - link
It's not just the resolution, but the gloss. I really wish they'd stop shoving these craps down our throats.bhima - Saturday, August 21, 2010 - link
AMEN BROTHER! The only reason I will probably get an ENVY 15 instead of say, a Sager or ASUS is because it actually offers a FHD matte screen. Seriously, I don't understand why people like glossy monitors. It isn't because of picture quality, because if that were true, the majority of IPS panels would be glossy but they are not.tipoo - Thursday, August 19, 2010 - link
My Studio 15 has a 1920x1080 screen...Its awesome, I hate going to lower resolution ones now.ESetter - Thursday, August 19, 2010 - link
I don't get the critcism related to the GPU. Some computers are just not meant for videogames and the Radeon 5470 is perfectly fine for other usage scenarios. I believe the majority of the notebook market isn't interesting in gaming at all.rootheday - Thursday, August 19, 2010 - link
I think the point is: What value does the 5470 add here over the Intel HD graphics that are included in the processor? For the market that doesn't care aobut gaming, the Intel graphics offers great battery life, good video playback, etc - and you could save $100+ off the price.Dell isn't the only one to do this - if you look at laptops online, you will find lots that advertise as "1GB ATI discrete graphics" or "512MB NVidia discrete graphics" - but are equipped with the NV310 or the ATI5470 like this one. It looks like the only one who benefits here is the OEM who applies a big markup to the card... in a world of very thin margins for OEMs and ODMs, this is one area where they have found they can still milk the customer out of more money with relatively little benefit.
mino - Thursday, August 19, 2010 - link
Give me Radeon 9600M over HD anyday!One word: DRIVERS !!!!
(posting this from G45M and regretting saving $100 back then)
ESetter - Thursday, August 19, 2010 - link
Three main reasons:1) No memory & memory bandwidth stolen from the CPU. Memory used by an integrated GPU can be siginficant. Moreover, I run some CPU-memory intensive code and I want to be sure the memory bus isn't loaded by the GPU.
2) Better drivers and compatibility with graphics APIs (especially OpenGL). I remember writing a simply 2D OpenGL application which had trouble rendering on Intel GPUs.
3) Better UI performance. I've got a Mobility Radeon HD 5470 myself and Aero performance is noticeably smoother than on my previous notebook with a GeForce 8400M. My desktop with a GeForce GT 220 and double of the video RAM is also significantly smoother than my current notebook. I'm not sure how current Intel GPUs compare to the 8400M but I expect them to be in the same league if not inferior.
I'm not sure, but maybe video playback is also better on dedicated GPUs.
Overall, I think there are good reasons for choosing a low-end discrete GPU even if you don't play videogames.