Two types of display are available -- an LED lit model and a traditional CCFL version. If you have an extra £82 to spare, we'd recommend the LED version. Not only is it brighter than the CCFL version (300cd/m2 versus 220cd/m2), but it should, in theory, enable longer battery life and is kinder to the environment. Both have a native resolution of 1,280x800 pixels, which is par for the course for a screen of this size. The aforementioned 2-megapixel webcam is only available with the CCFL screen -- the LED version only has a 0.3-megapixel camera, for some reason.
Hi-def aficionados will be pleased to hear the M1330 includes an HDMI port. Dell also promises a Blu-ray drive as an option, which gives the yummy prospect of using the laptop as a portable Media Center machine. In its current incarnation, the only optical option is an ultra-slim 8x DVD rewriter. This supplements the standard 120GB hard drive, though there are 160GB (5,400RPM) and 200GB (7,200RPM) options for £47 and £176 extra respectively. If money isn't an option, and you're more concerned about drive speed and reliability than storage space, a 32GB solid-state drive is available for an additional £458.
The M1330 has excellent wireless connectivity. It has 802.11a,b,g Wi-Fi, plus 300Mbps 802.11n compatibility. More importantly, it has three separate Wi-Fi aerials installed in the lid. These not only provide greater wireless range, but the fact there are three aerials means the M1330 is MIMO capable. That is to say it uses multiple-input multiple-output -- a method of data transmission using multiple analogue signal paths to increase throughput and range. We also like the fact it has an optional integrated Vodafone 3G SIM card so you can surf without being in a Wi-Fi hotspot.
The M1330 package is rounded off with a copy of Windows Vista Home Premium Edition (Ultimate is an extra £94) Microsoft Works 8.0 and a one-year premium support warranty that gives you priority over non-XPS Dell owners.
Performance
The M1330 is quick, as you'd expect from an XPS laptop. It registered a
PCMark 2005 score of 4,527, which is among the highest score we've seen
in a laptop of this size. It was slower than the Lenovo ThinkPad T61p, but beat our Sony Vaio CR series laptop, which used a 1.8GHz CPU.
3D performance was fairly good. Its 3DMark 2006 score of 1,457 was much more impressive than the 762 achieved by the Sony Vaio CR. We wouldn't go as far as to say the M1330 is a gaming laptop -- far from it -- but it won't shy away from games like Half-Life 2, Doom 3 and the like.
We didn't expect much in the way of battery performance, and we didn't get it. The laptop lasted 83 minutes in our BatteryEater test, when using the accompanying six-cell battery. A nine-cell battery is also available for an extra £12, so you may want to purchase this if you intend to be away from the mains for any great length of time.
Conclusion
The XPS M1330 is one of the best Windows-based laptops we've seen. It isn't quite as stylish as a MacBook,
but it's probably the best-looking Windows laptops on the market. If
you don't mind the fact it's a Dell, (and why should you?) then our
message is go forth and purchase.
Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Kate Macefield
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User reviews11
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David Hamtaro 7 April 2011
Good: Nice cool design, cool colour - red. Light and portable.
Bad: Sluggish.
Comment: While for the first few months it works fine, problem start to evolve after more than 6 months. Screen is getting dimmer, can't read it outdoor. The startup speed also getting really slow, despite using it only to read news and surf the net. Experience dvd drive collapse more frequent too, Dell Media Direct software keeps popping up.
Blackfreighter 4 May 2009
Good: Nice design, nice spec, very good screen.
Bad: Graphics card burns out, DVD drive doesn't read if there are any scratches.
Comment: This laptop is a lovely product, well specified and aesthetically well thought out. Sadly, it is rendered useless by a fault with the graphics chip, which will kill the laptop, eventually, and a DVD drive that has issues.
My version of this machine lasted for a year before the graphics died, leaving me with a doorstop.
XPS_user 13 August 2008
Good: The form factor, the LED display and the performance.
Bad: Affected by the NVidia m8400/m8600 GPU problem.
Comment: The XPS m1330 and m1530 are great notebooks. Sadly however, I would caution against buying the XPS m1330 or any other laptop (from Dell, HP, Acer, Asus or Apple) that comes with the faulty Nvidia m8400 or m8600 graphics GPUs. Nvidia has finally admitted that there is a problem involving "a weak die/packaging material set" in their GPUs (see http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1215037160521.html).
These laptops are dying at an alarming rate. Mine died 3 times in the last 10 months. In each case the GPU was the cause and the "fix" was a motherboard replacement. The problem is that there is no guarantee that the replacement will last!
DELL and other manufacturers have offered graphics drivers and system bios updates that cause the system fans to run more frequently thereby delaying the failure. However, they are yet to address the real problem which is faulty hardware. HP has offered free warranty extension for affected systems but other manufacturers including Dell are yet to follow.
There are hundreds of articles like this one (http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/26/dell-explains-nvidia-gpu-issues-throws-out-bios-updates-to-help/) that describe the problem. There are even videos on YouTube showing XPS m1330 dying ( see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkw47rprZU8).
To make matters worse, the XPS m1330 has inferior heat sink design that makes the faulty GPU even more vulnerable. Some users have come up with a mod that improves the heat sink using a piece of copper (see http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3725405). Dell doesn't recognize the heat sink design as a contributing factor and subsequently won't recommend the heat sink mod.
So keep an eye for updates on this saga. In the mean time, stay clear of affected laptop models and configurations until the manufacturers own up to the problem and recall or offer upgrades for affected systems.
See all 11 user reviews