Dell Studio XPS 13 review

The Studio XPS 13 has 802.11b/g Wi-Fi as standard, while Bluetooth is an option, as is a mobile-broadband module. For an extra £98, Dell will let you install your own SIM card beneath the battery. This enables you to access the Internet in almost any location -- so long as you're in an area with 3G cellular coverage.

The Studio XPS 13 package is rounded off with an internal, slot-loading DVD rewriter, a 2-megapixel webcam, a 64-bit copy of Windows Vista Home Premium, Microsoft Works 9, a six-cell battery and 2GB of DataSafe online storage for a year.

Performance
The first thing we noticed about the Studio XPS 13's performance was the fact that it gets hot -- quickly. The metallic underside heats up rapidly, making it uncomfortable to use the device on your lap -- particularly against bare skin. This is almost unforgivable in a modern laptop and, considering the amount of talk we've heard in recent years about laptop heat damaging men's testicles and causing infertility, we'd advise our male readers to be wary.

The laptop's raw performance is certainly impressive. It achieved 4,801 in the PCMark05 test, which is an improvement on the 4,527 achieved by our test XPS M1330, which admittedly used a 2.2GHz Intel T7700 CPU. Graphics performance in the 3DMark06 test was even better, with the Studio XPS 13 scoring a commendable 3,556, indicating that it's far more suited to gaming than the XPS M1330, which clocked just 1,457.

We're still running battery tests on the Studio XPS 13, so check back shortly to see how it fared away from the mains.

Conclusion
The Dell Studio XPS 13 shoots for excellence but comes up short. It's almost as if it's trying too hard in some areas, when less really would have been more. Having said that, it's worth checking out for its very strong performance, relatively solid build quality and wireless capabilities.

Edited by Charles Kloet