A variety of graphics cards are available with the Studio 17. There's the default Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 -- which is pants -- plus a variety of Nvidia and ATI cards. Ours shipped with the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650. It's by no means a gaming best, but it is a very capable card for tasks such as watching HD movies and even playing the odd game -- at low resolutions.
There's
a pretty good array of software included with the Studio 17. It comes
with the 32-bit version of Windows Vista Home Premium, plus Microsoft
Works 9.0, and the Dell Dock -- a blatant rip-off of the Dock in Apple
OS X. This sits at the top of the screen and gives you fast access to
common applications such as media players, Web browsers and the like.
Performance
The Studio 17 is a true desktop replacement, so it's fair for us to
assume it'll offer good performance. Unfortunately it failed to run our
PCMark 2005 and 3DMark 2006 benchmarks, despite our efforts. Based on
anecdotal testing, however, we believe it performs close to the
similarly equipped MacBook Pro. We'll update the review if we manage to get the benchmarks to run.
One of the things that impressed us most about the Studio 17 is the way in which it runs -- very cool and very quiet. You can actually put it against your naked flesh without it burning your skin off. Likewise, you can use it in a quiet room late at night without the cooling fans waking your loved ones. Battery life isn't great -- just 2 hours, 20 minutes in our BatteryEater reader test, but then again, we can't imagine many people trying to take a laptop this size on a train.
Conclusion
The Studio 17 is by no means as attractive or desirable as an XPS
laptop (excluding the gaming XPSs, they're pig-ugly), but it is
slightly more appealing than an Inspiron. With that in mind, it
achieves its objective: to be cheaper than an XPS without sacrificing
too much in the way of looks.
Laptops such as the Asus M70 offer more in the way of storage and connectivity, but the Studio 17 just about holds its own.
Edited by Nick Hide
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User reviews8
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Ryan O'Callaghan 23 July 2011
Good: The screen is nice, keyboard is the best I've used and the touchpad has a nice feel.
Bad: The build quality is awful.
Comment: I bought this laptop 2 and half years ago and when I first ordered it I was super excited because it looked like a fantastic laptop and I thought if a laptop was going to cost £450 I would be great. Oh how I was wrong, within 4 days of having it I had to reinstall the O/S and I had to manually install all the drivers from about 5 separate discs. I'm not sure if you have to manually install the drivers, but it was very tedious and took hours.
Good: I really like the screen if I'm honest, and I can't complain about the keyboard or touchpad, infact it's the best I've used and I hate to use any other. It used to run rather fast but since I reformatted it, it just didn't feel the same, I lost 50 GB of memory and I couldn't for the love of me get it back. The speaker quality was very even at it's loudest and it is rather loud for a laptop.
Bad: Within 7 month's the laptop became immobile, I couldn't move the laptop because the hinges just completely didn't work. It's a big floppy mess, when I moved the laptop from my computer chair(where it lives now) about 7 wires snapped, I was devastated because I thought my laptop was just destroyed. Although these wires had snapped, everything still worked and I have no idea how. My power button no longer existed, there was just a loose wire that if I touched with my finger it would turn on/off. The only way to turn it on is to use the multimedia buttons on the front of the laptop.
Overall: If you're looking for a laptop that you want to move around(which is the idea of a laptop) do not get this one. Spending a minimum of £400 on this laptop would be idiotic, surely there are much better options for that price?
Ryan O'Callaghan 23 July 2011
Good: The screen is nice, keyboard is the best I've used and the touchpad has a nice feel.
Bad: The build quality is awful.
Comment: I bought this laptop 2 and half years ago and when I first ordered it I was super excited because it looked like a fantastic laptop and I thought if a laptop was going to cost £450 I would be great. Oh how I was wrong, within 4 days of having it I had to reinstall the O/S and I had to manually install all the drivers from about 5 separate discs. I'm not sure if you have to manually install the drivers, but it was very tedious and took hours.
Good: I really like the screen if I'm honest, and I can't complain about the keyboard or touchpad, infact it's the best I've used and I hate to use any other. It used to run rather fast but since I reformatted it, it just didn't feel the same, I lost 50 GB of memory and I couldn't for the love of me get it back. The speaker quality was very even at it's loudest and it is rather loud for a laptop.
Bad: Within 7 month's the laptop became immobile, I couldn't move the laptop because the hinges just completely didn't work. It's a big floppy mess, when I moved the laptop from my computer chair(where it lives now) about 7 wires snapped, I was devastated because I thought my laptop was just destroyed. Although these wires had snapped, everything still worked and I have no idea how. My power button no longer existed, there was just a loose wire that if I touched with my finger it would turn on/off. The only way to turn it on is to use the multimedia buttons on the front of the laptop.
Overall: If you're looking for a laptop that you want to move around(which is the idea of a laptop) do not get this one. Spending a minimum of £400 on this laptop would be idiotic, surely there are much better options for that price?
Ryan O'Callaghan 23 July 2011
Good: The screen is nice, keyboard is the best I've used and the touchpad has a nice feel.
Bad: The build quality is awful.
Comment: I bought this laptop 2 and half years ago and when I first ordered it I was super excited because it looked like a fantastic laptop and I thought if a laptop was going to cost £450 I would be great. Oh how I was wrong, within 4 days of having it I had to reinstall the O/S and I had to manually install all the drivers from about 5 separate discs. I'm not sure if you have to manually install the drivers, but it was very tedious and took hours.
Good: I really like the screen if I'm honest, and I can't complain about the keyboard or touchpad, infact it's the best I've used and I hate to use any other. It used to run rather fast but since I reformatted it, it just didn't feel the same, I lost 50 GB of memory and I couldn't for the love of me get it back. The speaker quality was very even at it's loudest and it is rather loud for a laptop.
Bad: Within 7 month's the laptop became immobile, I couldn't move the laptop because the hinges just completely didn't work. It's a big floppy mess, when I moved the laptop from my computer chair(where it lives now) about 7 wires snapped, I was devastated because I thought my laptop was just destroyed. Although these wires had snapped, everything still worked and I have no idea how. My power button no longer existed, there was just a loose wire that if I touched with my finger it would turn on/off. The only way to turn it on is to use the multimedia buttons on the front of the laptop.
Overall: If you're looking for a laptop that you want to move around(which is the idea of a laptop) do not get this one. Spending a minimum of £400 on this laptop would be idiotic, surely there are much better options for that price?
See all 8 user reviews