Dell Studio 15 Laptop Review

Dell’s Studio 15 is certainly an attractive 15.6” inch widescreen laptop. The design of the Studio 15 is highly customizable, most of the designs costing an extra £29, and both the keyboard and lid having a glossy surface yet neither picking up fingerprints.

Another great design feature is the built in multimedia controls in a row of function keys making access to your multimedia and control of it simple and easy, similar to the Inspiron 17R.

Keyboard backlight

The keyboard has a backlight similar to the Alienware M11x which makes it easy to use under low light levels such as on a train going through a tunnel and the angle at which laptop is, due to the its wedge shape, makes typing particularly easy.

However, one thing that this laptop lacks is a numeric keypad. Nonetheless, this isn’t really much of a problem and more importantly most people won’t realise as the lack of a keypad provides extra space for they keyboard which is certainly comfortable to use. The touchpad is positioned perfectly to ensure that you don’t accidently brush it.

Our Studio 15 came in white with a red stripe

On the particular unit we were sent we found that the wrist-rests and the base of the laptop became uncomfortably warm after pro-longed periods of use something which needs to be taken into account before purchasing.

Intel i3, i5 and i7 processors

The specification of the Dell Studio 15 ranges between the Intel Core i3-350M to the Intel Core i7-72. Nonetheless, all of them come with 15.6” inch widescreen, 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon Graphics Card, 1 year of Dell Laptop coverage and McAfee Security Centre 15 month subscription. However, it is highly customizable as is any Dell laptop and can suit your needs without a doubt.

The Studio 15 comes with a slot CD drive

The unit that we tested has an Intel Core i5-450M processor, the only difference between this and the Intel Core i5-520M is that the 450M can only turbo boost up to 2.66GHz rather than the 2.93GHz that the 520M can clock. However, besides that both of the Intel Core i5 processor laptops have the same specification. The benefit of the extra turbo boost is that if you’re a heavy multi-tasker the i5-520M will be better suited to this.

Dedicated graphics card

A great advantage of the Dell Studio 15's 1GB dedicated graphics card and the native 1080p display is that you will be able to play HD video files with ease in accurate colour screens and you can even connect the laptop to a TV via its HDMI port. However, it’s not all good news there’s no Blu-ray DVD drive so you won’t be able to play the latest and great blu-ray discs.

Ports: plenty!

The Dell Studio 15 has three USB ports, a FireWire port but no eSATA connection but it does support dual-band wireless and can connect to the most recent dual-band routers without a problem. The laptop also features two built-in speakers which produce adequate but somewhat fuzzy sound.

3 USB ports as standard

The weird wedge design seriously takes away from its overall nice looks but otherwise the Dell Studio 15 is a great laptop.

The Dell Studio 15 possesses a great specification for a sub £600 laptop. Any extra features would have been the icing on the cake. It could've done with an eSATA port or even the option of being slightly lighter. Nonetheless, it is still a great laptop.