New Laptop Dell XPS M1530 Review
Build and Design The Dell XPS M1330 has received high praise for its design and feature set in a 13.3" portable form factor, but the most popular selling laptops are in the 15.4" screen size. Dell, being in the business of selling more laptops and making customers happy, figured it would be wise to offer something that's larger and appeals to more people. And that's exactly what the M1530 is -- a larger version of the M1330. As we said in our First Look article, it's as if Dell put the M1330 on steroids and the M1530 is the end result -- the laptop size increased proportionally and it's also more powerful in its new form. The design and look is mostly the same, the keyboard feels the same, the touch sensitive controls are replicated and for the most part the ports are the same (though you do get an extra USB 2.0 port on the M1530). That said, when we compare the M1530 and the M1330 side by side we can't help but think the design of the M1530 is "overweight" in comparison. Keyboard, Touchpad and Media Controls The keyboard on the XPS M1530 is fairly similar to the XPS M1330, with obvious reasons. The keyboard is firm with virtually no flex and the keys have excellent travel and cushion. The XPS M1530 is really quite a pleasure to type on. The only complaint I have for the keyboard is that if your fingernails are slightly long they might get caught under the keys, this shouldn't be a problem for most males though. The touchpad works well enough, though it's seems a little on the small side given the size of the notebook. The mouse buttons have excellent travel and cushion, though I did feel like they made a bit too much of a "clicking" sound when pressed. The good news with the touchpad is that it's responsive, has dedicated scroll areas and the textured feel is good. A series of touch-sensitive media buttons with blue LED backlights are located above the keyboard similar to the buttons on the M1330. One nice feature about the media buttons is that the blue LEDs only stay lit for a fraction of a second after being pressed, so they won't distract you by staying lit all the time. Dell also includes a Media Center remote control that fits neatly into the ExpressCard slot on the side of the notebook. This is a great accessory for presentations or if you want to control a DVD from across the room. Speakers The speaker quality was "acceptable" for a notebook without a built-in subwoofer. Based on the M1330 that one of our editors owns I would suspect that the speakers in the M1530 are the exact same part as the speakers used in the M1330. Performance and Benchmarks Without any tweaks to drivers or removal of software, the machine performed very well -- the 2.20GHz Core 2 Duo processor and Nvidia 8600M GT 256MB card will satisfy most gamers with exception to those more hard core, and will certainly please the average PC user. The 3DMark benchmarks might look unusually high at first glance, but the Nvidia 8600M GT card in the M1530 uses GDDR3 RAM instead of the more common GDDR2. Frame rates for games like the Crysis demo and Call of Duty 4 were all quite playable and smooth with a few moments of lag during Crysis.
The speakers for the M1530 are located at the top of the keyboard area above the media buttons. There's not much to write home about the speakers, they get loud enough with minimal distortion, but the sound is slightly tinny as is the case with nearly all laptop speakers.
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