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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JarredWalton - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link
Fixed, thanks.StrangerGuy - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
For those who are lucky enough to purchase one, 3820TG with 5650m is the undisputed king of ultraportables...Zero contest when talking about the ~$800 price range.satyr451 - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
100% agree! I looked around at a pile of laptops and that system (Acer TimelineX 3820TG) is nothing short of amazing for the price. I just got it a few days ago and I'm all around impressed with it. It looks nice, has great battery life, feels solid and the specs on it are great. Also, I don't mind the keyboard at all.mschira - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
There is one model missing from the list: the Sony Vaio z-series.The light gaming powerhouse!
Having a GT 330 and up to i7 CPUs, a high definition screen in a 1.4 kilo 13" package is simply amazing.
And it not more expensive than similarly speced MacBook Pro 15".
If you recommend the apples, you have to consider the Sony, too.
Worse I hear Anand complaining that all the notebooks are alike that there is no model standing out.
How does the z-series not stand out?
Cheers
M.
Evil_Sheep - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
Anandtech didn't overlook the Z, but they noticed it stood out mostly in the wrong way: price. At $1700-2000 it even makes Apples look like a bargain.It's a nice machine but an overpriced niche product. If Sony dropped some of the bleeding-edge specs and released it at $1000-1200 they might not just be a bit-player in the notebook market.
mschira - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
But claiming that the Sony Z-series is overpriced it simply wrong.Yes they start at a whooping 1800, but then they come with a 128Gb SSD and with fast i5-460, 4 Gb of ram.
Try it yourself, for 1800 you get a Macbook pro 13 with an SSD but a slower CPU.
Yes the Z-series is expesive, but that's because the ONLY come with SSD.
And a fast one!
Now I hear Anand tell us all the time we WANT SSDs in our laptops.
M.
mschira - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
P.S. and whe you max them out the Sony Z series is 2800, but that's with a 8GB ram 256 SSD, i7-640 an Nvidia GT335 and a highdef screen.The mac 15' clocks in at a whooping 3500$ if you try to match this.
M.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
Comparing with the MacBook isn't doing your argument any favors, as we've already established that they're fleecing the customer. Two 64GB SSDs will run about $220 at Newegg (and they'd actually be higher performance models than what Sony uses in all likelihood). Plus putting SSDs in RAID0 is stupid unless you're using models with excellent resiliency and garbage collection; I think Sony is using Samsung SSDs, which have neither feature.So start at a basic 13.3" laptop size. Acer gives you that in the 3820T for around $700. Now upgrade the keyboard to something decent with backlighting; that will cost around $50 tops. Put in Optimus 330M for around $100. Make a slick carbon fiber chassis for $100. Upgrade to dual SSDs for $150 (subtracting the standard HDD cost). Fingerprint reader and Bluetooth for $75. Upgrade the CPU to the i5-460M for $100. Toss in a good 900p LCD for $200 (being generous here). Add all of that up and we're looking at a base cost of around $1475, and I figure the above prices already account for the R&D department. So, your "Sony VAIO Z tax" looks to be around 22% -- just like Apple's MacBook tax I guess.
Is it an awesome laptop? By most accounts yes, though now I'd like to see the 420M in there instead of the 330M. But like the MacBook, you need to understand that you're paying significantly more for the "Sony experience". And honestly, dual HDD bays in a 13.1" chassis seems more like a case of proving you CAN do something as opposed to doing something people are clamoring for. I'd rather have a single 128GB SSD with good TRIM support than RAID0 64GB SSDs--or a single 256GB SSD with TRIM instead of RAID0 128GB SSDs. Or a bigger battery, or better cooling, or whatever. Again, not that the VAIO Z is bad, but it's almost an exercise in excess.
mschira - Wednesday, November 17, 2010 - link
Well if only there was 13" laptop with a Gt330. Or any other decent GPU for that matter. Of course I would not say no to an even better GPU (is the 420 better that the 330?).Or any real light 13" with a fast CPU for that matter - heck ANY notebook under 2k with a decent GPU - (maybe the alienware, but 11" is too small).
Nobody said the Sony Zs are cheap, but not more so than MacBook, and everybody seems to thinks it's kinda O.K. for them.
(Evil_Sheep even suggested the Sony prices make Mac look like a bargin - not so. Mac's are in fact more expensive, while weighting more).
Not sure what sort of SSD Sony is using, but I don't think they have really hard drive Bays in a 13" casing. They offer up to 4 SSDs in RAID and they sure don't have 4 bays.
In fact I would prefer a standard drive bay myself, so I can get a decent Sandforce SSD in case the factory build in models fail.
M.
narayanagame - Thursday, November 18, 2010 - link
what non sense are you talking...there is no competition for vaio z for its specs at that price..
i understand sony premium but vaio z is completely reasonable and i am being modest here.
whatever laptop u consider wont match vaio z with its specs for 3lb weight..
vaio z is marvelous.
look, u think 1800$ is premium price and in my country vaio z starts at 2200$ and i still feel its good enough.
in real there is no laptop that has as good specs as vaio z at its weight for that price.compare it with whatever you like nothing ll match atleast till CES 2011
now dont compare with macbook's,they are underpowered with shiny looking casing.
the main thing that goes for apple is good screen and battery life and aesthetics and for these they charge easily 40% extra.
if you think properly battery ability ll wear off within 1 and half yr and you wont be able to replace yourself.