What if we told you there was a way to have the svelteness and power of Dell's $1,500
Adamo for less than half the price? You'd be interested, right? That's exactly why we've been trying to get
a Dell Vostro V13 in-hand since its launch a few months ago. Besides starting at $449 – our unit's configuration rings up at a higher $844 -- the less-than-an-inch-thick, aluminum clad Vostro V13 promises five hours of battery life and good-enough everyday performance. Sure, it was created for small business types, but its blend of style, performance and price had us convinced that it
could be the best ULV laptop out there. Ah, but is it? We'll tell you everything you want to know after the jump in our full review.
Look and feel
No matter how you look at the Vostro V13, it's clear that it inherited its handsomeness from the flashier
Dell Adamo – its screen lays on top of the bottom deck and its bottom is enclosed with a solid piece of aluminum. Though you won't find the Adamo's glossy lid or silver trim, the V13's brushed aluminum, champagne colored lid has a more understated business look that we actually prefer. Like the Adamo, most of the ports – a
USB, a combo eSATA/USB, Ethernet and VGA – lie on the back edge. The right side makes room for an SD and an ExpressCard/34 slot, but that's all you'll find along the slim, flared edges. The front edge is home to its mic and headphone jacks.
We're most impressed with the .65-inch V13's thin bod, and after doing some comparison, we've determined it's the thinnest budget CULV lappie out there – the
ASUS UL50Vf is an inch thick and the
Acer Timeline 1.1-inches. The 3.5-pound chassis is also lighter than the 4-pound Adamo, and it's easy to tote from the desk to the couch with just a hand. Still the V13 feels incredibly solid, and its build quality is remarkable for the price -- the entire casing along with its reinforced zinc hinges are as rigid as it gets.
Keyboard, touchpad and screen
In what is obviously a cost saving move, Dell hasn't extended the aluminum casing under the lid, and instead the deck is covered in black, matte plastic. The full size keyboard, while comfortable to our digits, has a bit too much bounce and flex to it. We should also mention that we happen to like the clickyness of the keys, but those that prefer a quieter typing experience may not dig the V13's typing experience. Honestly though, it would be hard for a ULV laptop's keyboard to best that on the
Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 13 -- we're still madly in love with it.
For the first time in a long time, we don't have absolutely horrible things to say to a touchpad. The pad itself is quite spacious, and though the dedicated right and left mouse buttons are a bit mushy, they are absolutely tolerable. Even more surprising is that multitouch gestures were decently responsive – two finger scrolling was smooth as was pinching to zoom. Can we get a Hallelujah!?
The V13 has one of the nicest screens we've seen on a budget laptop. The 1,366 x 768-resolution, 13.3-inch matte display doesn't kick back any glare, and the horizontal viewing angles were quite good when watching
Desperate Housewives on Hulu. Vertical angles are a bit worse – when we titled the screen backwards we lost some of the brighter coloring. Regardless, we much prefer it to the glossy screen on Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 13 and the ASUS UL50Vf.
Performance and battery life
Like most ULV laptops, the V13 isn't a powerhouse, but it definitely holds its own for the basic productivity chores and Web browsing. Our unit was configured on the higher end with a 1.3GHz Intel Core 2 Duo S7300 processor, 7,200rpm 320GB hard drive and 4GB of RAM, all of which provided acceptable performance for simultaneously writing this review in Microsoft Word 2007, toggling between tabs in Firefox and listening to Lady Antebellum's new album in iTunes -- hold the judgment, please. We expect going down to 2GB of RAM or using the lower end Celeron /
Intel Core 2 Solo processors will diminish performance a bit, but it
will knock you into a $600 price bracket and we suspect that performance would still be good enough for basic activities. On the graphics front, it still uses Intel's GMA
4500MHD -- so while it could handle 720p and 1080p videos, it's going to have nothing on the NVIDIA GT335M-equipped
Alienware M11x when it comes to 3D gaming.
| |
PCMarkVantage |
3DMark06
|
Battery Life |
| Dell Vostro V13 |
2687 |
556 |
2:39 |
| ASUS UL50Vf |
3724 |
827 / 3438 |
6:10 |
| Alienware M11x |
2689 |
654 / 5593 |
4:30 |
| Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 13 |
N/A |
905 |
5:12 |
Battery life is where the Vostro V13 comes to a screeching halt. On our video rundown test the V13's six-cell, 30Wh battery lasted only 2 hours and 39 minutes with brightness set to 65 percent. That's more than half the runtime of the ASUS UL50Vf. Even worse is that because of its solid aluminum build the battery cannot be swapped out. There's really no good news when it comes to battery life here -- the reality is that you'll spend more of your time looking for an outlet with this ULV than others out there. Because it's a small business laptop, Dell bundles the V13 with its own BackUp and Recovery software, but other than that the desktop arrived quite clean.
Wrap-up
The Vostro V13 -- or what we have taken to calling the poor man's Adamo -- has us all torn. Its thin and sturdy design (the very thing we love so much about it) is what causes its unacceptable battery life and the inability to swap out the cell yourself. When it comes to budget ULV laptops, the Vostro V13 is the best choice out there when it comes to thinness and design, but for those that put more value on battery life (and graphics for that matter) we have to recommend the ASUS UL50Vf. Good luck convincing yourself to forget about this form factor, though.
posted March 17th 2010 2:00PM
my battery life improved substantially after several charges. i get over 4 hours from a charge. mind you i bought the solo core version which uses half the power of a dual core and replaced the hdd with a 40gb ssd from intel (x25-v).
I was tempted by this but went with a Lenovo U350 instead. No aluminium and not quite as thin as the Dell of course, but excellent build quality and great keyboard. Battery time is also better, although not on par with Asus and Acer. And it has HDMI!
I was seriously considering getting this laptop, but I could never find a truly compelling configuration. At the lowest tier, it's underpowered, and at the highest tier, it's too expensive for what it is. In between, there are other laptops that either offer more advantages or make fewer sacrifices. Combine all that with the less than stellar battery life, and you'll quickly find yourself looking elsewhere.
not holding judgment on music, but on itunes... how did you run itunes there without it crashing?
I swear to God, if the Asus UL30jt doesn't come out soon, I will kill myself....
The Asus UL30jt has a robust set of features and is the most impressive 13.3" laptop I have ever seen!
Come on ASUS!!
Oh, and the review was great. I really appreciated it!
Typing this on my 1+ month old V13 and I have to say it is amazing what $479 CDN got me.
I'm running the Celeron model (dumped Linux and installed W7) and it's more than sufficient for basic email, surfing, etc. I even play Battlefield 2 on it and it runs fine a low details/resolution.
The keyboard has the design of the Studio XPS line but is indeed cheap sounding/feeling.
I used to own a Macbook Air and this cheap Dell feels superior in build quality - particularly the screen/hinges. Conversely, the screen is terrible by comparison...washed out colours, terrible vertical viewing angles, and low contrast.
I would generally consider 2:39 to be "less than half" of 6:10, rather than "more than half" ... but your point stands.
Honestly, what's the point of getting an ULV if not for the battery life? My Y550 with a P8700 Core 2 Duo, and a 240m graphics chip gets the same battery life, yet it comes with increased performance, and the same price.
Really need to improve the battery life, that's the major reason of getting an ULV, if not THE reason.
13 inch powerhouse under an inch thick? Good graphics AND good battery life? Well that just doesn't exist...
Haha wow get a Macbook already. Sell your bike if you need to. There's no use having a computer that runs half the speed of smell.
No judgment made - Lady A's new album is awesome!!!
Looks like I may have a new recommendation for an ultra-portable.
All laptop vendors test their battery life with the lower end CPUs, and lower end specs, if you select a more powerfull (and more power demanding cpu), your battery life will also be reduced from the advertised run time.
I'm still using a 700m but think this machine is the best looking machine I've seen. I prefer the battery and port layout over a machine with swappable battery and i/o on the sides. I am concerned by the screen and battery life comments, more so the screen. I hope Dell refreshes this one, 640UM, improved screen, 50 wh battery, hdmi.
Forgot to mention ssd. After putting a Runcore in the 700m I would never be without again.
I just received my Vostro V13, what a beautiful machine. Battery life doesn't seem any worse than the Asus N10J netbook it replaces. The V13 looks professional and feels great. This will not be a computer for everyone but it'll certainly suit my work needs just fine.