Dell Studio 14z Review luxury notebook

Dell Studio 14z Review

Are DVD drives obsolete? That's the case Dell seems to be making with its Studio 14z, a 14-inch notebook that lacks an optical drive. Catering to students and other consumers who are more likely to download software and entertainment than use a disc, this thin and light system ($749 at Best Buy, starting at $649 on Dell.com) is ideal for streaming content and playing digital files. Add in above average graphics performance, courtesy of Nvidia, powerful speakers, and over five hours of battery life, and you have a compelling value. Best Buy even sweetens the deal by throwing in 15 months of free antivirus protection and a copy of Office 2007 Home and Student Edition.

The Dell Studio 14z battery is essentially a sneak peak at what the future holds for mainstream laptops. Its looks aren't futuristic by any stretch of the imagination, but parting ways with an internal optical drive (thanks to the advent of downloadable content) is picking up momentum, and excluding a legacy feature like VGA-Out is forgivable in the long term. In their place, the Studio14z is jam-packed with forward-thinking features, including a fantastic resolution, both DisplayPort and HDMI technologies, and Nvidia's integrated graphics platform. It's the kind of laptop you'll want to take on the road or back to school—that is, if you're ready to leave the past behind.



Key Specs

• Processor: 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8600
• Memory: 3GB RAM
• Storage: 320GB hard drive
• Optical Drive: None (optional)
• Screen: 14 inches (1,366x768 native resolution)
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 9400M G (256MB)
• Weight: 4.85 pounds (with eight-cell battery, as tested)
• Dimensions (HWD): 0.8x13.2x9 inches
• Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium Edition (64-bit)

The Studio 14z comes with the larger 8-cell battery option, online at Dell.com you have the option of getting a 6-cell or 8-cell battery.  The 8-cell costs $40 more online.  It will give you about 25% extra battery life and the great thing is that it does not stick out from the back of the laptop like many other extended life batteries do.  Using the 6-cell studio 14z battery I was able to get 5 hours and 25 minutes of battery life out of the Studio 14z when screen brightness was on the 4th level, wireless was on and just letting the laptop idle (no work was done, screen was just left on).  Under normal working conditions the Studio 14z usually gave me around 4 hours of battery life.  Battery life will of course vary based on usage, but in my experience the Studio 14z has given better battery life than I’d expect and better than many other 14” laptops.

You only have one option to choose from, and that is the NVidia GeForce 9400M. This is a chipset, which means it does not have a dedicated video memory and instead feeds on the laptop’s native memory to power its operation. This can greatly affect the performance of your laptop when it comes to graphics. However, if you have a big enough RAM, this will not be a problem. Having a dedicated video memory is still better though, and ensures better performance for the 14z.



Turning our attention to hard disk space, we can find that the Dell Studio 14z battery replacement is able to hold a large amount of hard disk memory to accommodate those that deal with a lot of files everyday. You can install up to 500-gigabytes worth of hard disk space to the Studio 14z so it can accommodate more music, video and other files.

As its model name suggests, the Dell Studio 14z is given a 14-inch display high-definition display which is capable of two resolutions: 720p and 900p. While lower slightly than the true HD resolution of 1080p, this nevertheless still means there is enough attention to detail which is needed for writing documents, as well as for video and photo editing.

The overall package is good, but as with many thin and light systems you'll have to forgo an integrated optical drive. Dell also limits memory expansion to a single DDR3 SO-DIMM slot, with 1GB of RAM soldered onto the motherboard, so the upgrade from 3GB to 5GB RAM will cost a painful $275. Personally, I'd also like to see another option for color: white; all the others are either too garish (a yellowish "spring green" or "plum purple" -- yuck!), and the black chassis picks up fingerprints like a police detective canvassing a crime scene. The big selling point is of course size; starting at 4.3 pounds and with a relatively small 14.0" chassis, this is a toshiba satellite pro l300 battery designed to be carried around rather than left on your desk. Perhaps the most interesting aspect is that Dell uses NVIDIA's nForce 730i chipset, which means you can get a Core 2 Duo processor and integrated graphics that don't suck.

One of the interesting points of comparison is going to be Apple's standard MacBook. The 13.3" LCD is slightly smaller but the MacBook weighs 4.7 pounds making it slightly heavier. It also includes an optical drive and two SO-DIMM slots. Both use the GeForce 9400M/nForce 730i chipset. Apple lists the battery life for the MacBook as "up to 7 hours" while Dell claims up to 6.5 hours with the 8-cell battery upgrade. If Dell can deliver, we'll have a real contender for battery life compared to MacBooks using similar components.

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