The good: Excellent gaming performance; touch-sensitive buttons; slim and light for a midsize machine; good feature set which includes a fingerprint sensor; mini-remote control that stores in the ExpressCard slot.

The bad: No subwoofer; few USB ports; no modem.

The bottom line: Don't let the slim design and relatively light heft fool you. This XPS is one powerful gaming portable with an impressive feature set for work and play.

Read full review of the Dell XPS M1530 »

By Darius Chang, CNET Asia
Dec 4, 2007

The XPS M1730 was a monster both in gaming performance and size, while the XPS M1330 was one of the more portable 13.3-inchers in the market. So what happens if one wants a powerful machine but yet is unwilling to dislocate a shoulder while moving it? Well, the new XPS M1530 may be the answer. Though its footprint is slightly larger than the iconic MacBook Pro, it is almost as slim and light as its Apple rival. The design is also a departure from the US maker's previous offerings and exudes class while presenting a clean look.

Barring a few quirks, the M1530 offers almost all the common features expected of midsized portables and has one of the most powerful graphics performances in its class.

Design
The XPS M1530 comes in a choice of two colors: Tuxedo black or Alpine white. However, the color scheme extends only to the front plastic bezel, with both models sporting silver borders. When we first opened the 2.62kg machine, we were surprised to see a brushed aluminum palm rest staring back at us. Though for some it may look a little rough around the edges, we like the feel of the metal which, surprisingly, did not heat up significantly even when the system was pushed to the limits. It is also quite a bit slimmer than we expected, with dimensions closely resembling those of the MacBook Pro.

To minimize clutter on the keyboard area, physical buttons are restricted to the MediaDirect and power controls. Touch-sensitive keys are given to the CD eject (for the slot-in optical drive), multimedia playback and volume control functions. During our testing these buttons performed flawlessly and, due to the position, rarely caused unintended key presses. The LCD is mounted on a latchless drop-hinge design that reduces the height of the machine when opened. Though it does look more elegant than the traditional hinge, we felt that this causes the screen to be slightly lower than desired for taller users.

Almost all the connectivity ports are located along the flanks, with only the audio jacks and memory card reader fronting the machine. Though this allows for easy access, those who have an external display and audio system setup may be a little unhappy seeing all the wires messing up the desk space. One feature we like that tends to turn up mainly on business portables is the battery indicator located on the cell. Using a series of LEDs it shows the charge level without having to start up the system.

Features
With its strong graphics performance and multimedia features, the XPS M1530 is clearly trying to straddle both roles as a gaming and entertainment device. Though we can say it succeeds very well in the former, there are still a few features which we would have liked to see in the latter. The XPS M1530 also offers a generous trio of connectivity options for external displays, which allow it to hook up to anything from an old CRT TV to the latest high-definition LCD panels.

We'll talk about gaming performance a little later in the review. But for now, know that the 15.4-inch transflective widescreen is powered by the high-end Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT coupled with 256MB of dedicated video memory, and is capable of 1,280 x 800-pixel resolution. The speaker bar above the keyboard produces acceptable audio quality. However, it did not have a subwoofer which would have added more bass. Suffice to say the sound is good enough if you are not picky and we suggest a good set of headphones if you want to enjoy movies and music on this XPS (which may also be the reason Dell put in dual earphone jacks for this machine).

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