Dell Studio 14: Defining Solid
by Dustin Sklavos on August 19, 2010 2:49 AM EST
The Studio 14 LCD: It's Bright at Least
Of course, if there's one part of mainstream notebooks that threatens to remain utterly unexciting, it's the screens. While the 14” TN panel used in our review unit sports better-than-average viewing angles, it's still a glossy TN panel.
One thing the display does have going for it is raw brightness. With a maximum output of ~325 nits, this is one of the brightest mobile displays we've seen. That's the good news; the bad news is that contrast ratios still suck, with black levels coming in at a grayish 1.7 nits. So once again we have a bright display with a contrast ratio well shy of the desired 500:1 (or higher) mark set by the likes of Apple's MacBook Pro line and other higher quality laptops.
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Wolfpup - Thursday, September 16, 2010 - link
I really hate that Dell has such terrible GPUs in everything except their Alienware, and I guess their single Studio XPS (which has all kinds of issues) lines.I mean looking at this, it would be fine, but it's a joke next to what Asus offers for the same price. Heck, my Asus from NINETEEN MONTHS AGO cost the same price, has a superior Geforce 9650GT (32-core part, probably marginally better than AMD's 120-core part...compared with this one's 80-core part), and a somewhat worse CPU (2.4GHz Penryn Core 2 versus 2.26GHz Corei5).
I mean the bottom line is my Asus notebook has what I consider a better mix of hardware, for the same price...only it's nineteen months old. That's nuts. And of course when I bought it it was the same deal, Dell's stuff was weirdly low end. That new Asus n83 or whatever it is looks so much more appealing for this size and price range... probably double the GPU power and a bit more CPU power too.
caffy2103 - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - link
Just bought mine for $599 plus $34 tax on Dell