The good: Excellent battery life; good value for money.

The bad: Previous-generation chipset; heavy for a thin-and-light.

The bottom line: The Dell Inspiron 13 is great for those hampered by a tight budget but who still want a competent and power-efficient thin-and-light with a decent design.

Read full review of the Dell Inspiron 13 »

By Darius Chang, CNET Asia
Oct 13, 2008

The 13.3-inch display size has been gaining popularity as it straddles the portability of a 12.1-inch ultraportable with the larger screen estate, integrated optical drive and full-sized keyboard of a 14.1-inch thin-and-light. Dell's first venture into this market was with the entry-levelVostro 1310, which targets small and medium business users. It was a no-frills machine lacking in consumer features.

Though the new Inspiron 13 aims for the budget segment, we were surprised to find a Core 2 Duo processor in a machine which cost under S$1,300 (US$939.24) (most laptops at this price range use Pentium Dual-Core chips to save costs) and offers excellent battery life. The only caveat is that the chipset is based on the older Centrino platform instead of the newer Centrino 2. The latter would have offered even more power savings and stronger graphics performance, though it would have also driven up the cost as well.

It may not be able to stand toe-to-toe with entertainment models such as the HP Pavilion dv3000 when it comes to features, or have the stylish looks of the Sony Vaio VGN-SR12GN. But, at a few hundred dollars cheaper, users with tight purse strings will probably close one eye and take up what the Inspiron 13 has to offer.

Design

It may lack the dashing good looks of a Vaio SR notebook while weighing a hefty 2.2kg (even more than the heavy Pavilion dv3000), but for a budget thin-and-light the Inspiron 13 still maintains a pleasing design. Taking a cue from the more expensive Studio line, this Inspiron's rounded hinge, slot-in optical drive and glossy blue exterior give it a touch of class. With a footprint of 318 x 238 x 38.37mm, it doesn't take up too much space in a backpack or messenger bag, either.

Unlike the rest of the Inspiron series, which come in a range of eight shades, this thin-and-light has only a single color option--Pacific Blue. Fortunately, it did not compromise on other features such as multimedia control and battery meter. Above the full-sized keyboard lie a row of touch-sensitive playback and volume control keys which give the Inspiron 13 some entertainment value. The power cell sports a line of five LED lights that display the charge level in 20 percent increments without having to power up the machine. The touchpad is responsive enough with two scroll zones, and we like the generously sized mouse buttons gracing the bottom of the trackpad.

Features

In a marked departure from its online business model, the Inspiron 13 will be available only through retail outlets in regions such as Malaysia and Singapore. Hong Kong residents can order this machine online but are limited to a single fixed configuration with options to extend the warranty. Though the Inspiron 13 didn't exactly wow us with its feature set, it still gives a lot of mileage for the money.

The 13.3-inch widescreen transflective display runs off the integrated graphics processor with a native resolution of 1,280 x 800 pixels. In order to keep the Inspiron affordable, the chipset is based on the older Centrino platform along with the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) X3100 video card. The latter does not have the performance of the newer GMA X4500HD found in Centrino 2 laptops, though the GMA X3100 is still more than capable when it comes to decoding DVD movies. The integrated graphics card does not have its own memory, but instead draws up to 256MB from the system RAM for image-rendering purposes. If your Inspiron 13 has only 1GB of memory, we advise upgrading to at least 2GB in order to maximize graphics performance. A VGA port allows hooking up with projectors and monitors, with no HDMI or S-video outputs in sight. However, we did not expect either to be present in an entry-level portable.

Tags: Video Card, GPU, Dell Computer Corp., Dell Inspiron, Intel Centrino

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