Dell Studio 15 review

Like most of Dell’s recent laptops, the Studio 15 is available in a range of colours. Unlike the Inspiron 17, none of the four lids (blue, green, purple or red) cost any more. The laptop is attractive and feels well built and sturdy.

The 15.6in widescreen display means there’s plenty of room for a large keyboard with full-sized keys. A soft, silky texture on the keys makes them comfortable to use, while their backlight makes them easy to see in all lighting conditions. Plenty of feedback helps quick and accurate typing, and the amount of travel makes it feel like a desktop keyboard. A large accurate touchpad sits in front of the keyboard, but its buttons are a little spongy.

Thanks to its 4GB of RAM and 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo P8600 processor, the Studio 15 was extremely quick in our applications benchmarks, scoring 70 overall. It’s also one of the few laptops here powerful enough to play modern 3D games, thanks to its ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 graphics chip. It managed 20fps in our Call of Duty 4 test, but you’ll be able to get smoother frame rates by dropping the resolution or turning off anti-aliasing.

Playing games or watching films is a pleasure on the 1,366×768 display. It’s very bright, with an even backlight, good contrast and fantastic colours. Viewing angles aren’t very good, however, and you need to be sitting face-on to get the best image quality. You can connect the laptop to an external display using the HDMI or VGA outputs. Usefully there are two headphone sockets so two people can enjoy music or movies without disturbing anyone else.

The 320GB hard disk is big enough for most people’s files, but other laptops at this price tend to have 500GB models. At 2.7kg, the Studio 15 is light enough for the occasional journey. Whether you’re out and about or using it around the home, the near four-hour battery life will prove itself useful.

With decent battery life, good performance in applications and games and a reasonable price, Dell’s Studio 15 is a great all-rounder.