Dell Studio XPS 1640 - The Sweet Sixteen

Sweet Sixteen

Make no mistaken assumptions here; Dell knows exactly what it's doing by combining the XPS and Studio brands that they have combined together for their latest notebook, the 16-inch Dell Studio XPS 1640. After all, while the XPS brand was well known to gamers, the stylish Studio brand is relatively new to the consumer market having just launched in June 2008. As such, it makes complete sense to promote the Studio branding by giving gamers an incentive to get one as well. What better way to get some recognition for the new brand than to take the pretty and sexy designs of the Studio brand and throw in the performance of the XPS brand?

So let's start with appearances. The Studio XPS 1640 is certainly sexy enough, though not as pretty as it should be. The choice of going with three different textures for the covering of the notebook does leave us slightly puzzled and here's why: the notebook uses leather for the bottom grip, a matte silver finish on some parts at the top and edges while settling on a black glossy finish for the rest of the notebook. The matte silver shows off the unit's XPS roots while the glossy finish is pure Studio. We're aren't too sure where the leather grip came from, but we're guessing it's more to do with giving the unit a better grip for times where you need to move the unit around.

We'll talk more about the insides on the next page, but for now, here are the pictures of the exterior and our usual table of specifications:-

Less Glossy Black, Please?

If you've read our past reviews, you'll note that as reviewers, we tend to not like glossy surfaces due to the entire impracticality of the whole concept. Unless one day, someone invents either a self cleaning glossy surface or a nanotechnology that prevents the surface from even getting fingerprinted, we would much rather stick with the just-as-nice looking matte surface. Another problem here lies with the reflective screen. Sure it looks nice, but again you'll end up staring at your reflection at full brightness depending on the angle of view. It's definitely not an ideal solution, but we're sure you would understand where we're coming from. We won't deny that the gloss finish adds to the appeal of the notebook aesthetically, but it does come with the above described issues to keep in mind.

Thankfully, the keyboard sticks to a less reflective finish and the keys are actually pretty good to type with. Flex is almost non-existent and our fingers flowed naturally around the keys while touch-typing, and we enjoyed typing on such a responsive keyboard. The touchpad too was responsive and tracked our movements pretty well, so no complaints there. Lastly, for those who have a penchant for typing in the dark, the keyboard and trackpad buttons are backlit with two different brightness settings. We guess Dell really doesn't want you to end up typing (or clicking) gibberish in the dark.

Audio was pretty decent and expectedly so as the unit packs a subwoofer and dual 7W speakers for that extra oomph. Even at full volume, we could enjoy the clarity of the speakers during our trials. Bass was handled with a problem, as was gunfights and explosions which sounded pretty good on the notebook during our movie test sessions.

Interior, What Interior?

Dell has packed a whole load of goodness into our review unit of the Studio XPS 1640 with a maxed out configuration:- an Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 (2.53GHz), 2GB DDR3-1067 RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3670 512MB, and a 500GB HDD for all your storage needs. Pretty respectable specs if you ask us, so we're expecting pretty good performance during our benchmarking section on the next page. If you're looking to upgrade the Studio XPS 1640, don't fret if you can't find a panel to remove. That's because you'll have to remove the whole back panel which can be easily done (though there are a lot of screws to deal with). We doubt there's really a need to do anything as having two sticks of 1GB DDR3-1067 RAM for a total of 2GB should be plenty enough for most uses.

Benchmarking Comparison Setup

Size-wise, there isn't a direct comparison to the Dell Studio XPS 1640 (and if you're thinking of the Lenovo Y650, it's a prototype unit whose specs aren't confirmed). So instead, we took a Sony VAIO AW-17GU and a Toshiba Qosmio G50 (both are 18.4-inch DTR notebooks) which have similar subsystem specs to the XPS1640 for a direct comparison that should paint a good picture of the performance of Dell machine.

Battery Life and Portability Index

With 16-inches of screen realty to worry about, battery life probably isn't a strong point of the Studio XPS 1640, and our tests does show that this is true to a point. After all, the Studio XPS 1640 with its six-cell battery (and there's also an optional 9-cell variant) lasted for about 132 minutes on our DVD looping test. That's just enough for our standard full-feature movie to finish (though we did miss out on the credits). Power consumption too was calculated to be much lower than the 18.4-inch DTR notebooks, which is understandable given the smaller screen panel.

For our Portability Index, the XPS 1640 didn't fare too bad here for its segment. Naturally, we weren't expecting any fantastic numbers due to its form factor, battery life and weight - all attributed to its general size and product segmentation. As you can see on our graph below, it's pretty much a good figure compared against the other 17 and 18-inch notebooks we've reviewed before.

System Benchmarking

On PCMark05, the Studio XPS 1640 performed quite similarly to the larger Sony VAIO AW-17GU and the Toshiba Qosmio G50, with scores just a little under. This is most probably due to the hard disk of the Studio XPS 1640, as there's quite a big difference in the HDD test scores, 3653 marks compared to the 5279 marks of the AW-17GU and the 5127 marks of the G50. As such, this accounts for the slightly lower overall system scores that we noticed for the PCMark05 test. It's not much a concern for day-to-day usage though, so we aren't brooding over this too much. Those dabbling in very demanding video editing that needs high throughput however, might want to give it a try before swiping that credit card.

Moving on to PCMark Vantage, you'll find that the results from the Studio XPS 1640 is slightly affected by the hard drive as well and is apparent again why in the HDD Test Suite. Despite this, it's not something that one should be too concerned about as the other test suites showed that it managed comparable results and in fact did notably better than expected in the Productivity test suite. The gaming suite's results were fine and the differences in results are attributed to different GPUs.

Gaming Performance

With the Studio XPS 1640 using an ATI Mobility Radeon HD3670, we were expecting some decent gaming results, and our tests using 3DMark06 and Far Cry 2 revealed that we're just about right in this regard. The 5035 marks score for 3DMark06 puts the unit almost on the same playing field as the Toshiba Qosmio G50 which uses an NVIDIA 9600M GT. On Far Cry 2, the frame rates were just slightly under the G50's results on Very High settings. Sure they may seem low, but you'll find that most games should be playable if some game quality settings are toned down a little.

Dell-ish Delight

If our experience with this 16-inch Studio XPS 1640 is anything to go by, then we're happy to report that it's been a pleasant and entertaining one so far. We quite like the nicely spaced backlit keyboard, responsive trackpad and decent speakers. The slot-loaded optical drive also blends in quite nicely with the overall design and the unit retains much of the design of the XPS machines while obtaining a very Studio-like style, so to speak.

We're not so in love with the glossy surface and reflective screen however, and if you're one of the more fingerprint paranoid folks or those who find it annoying to stare at your own reflection, we'd like to stress that you're probably not going to change your mind on liking this unit. We do advice giving it a try though, as you'll find yourself bowled over by the other charms of the unit that we've highlighted earlier. And of course there will still be folks who do like the gloss finish and wouldn't mind the extra hassle that comes with it. Performance too was satisfactory, and battery life was not too bad given its size. Only the hard drive's raw performance was found lacking, but fortunately it had little effect on the notebook's overall performance.

The Studio XPS 1640 is pretty affordable too. Its starting price of S$2149 is pretty much an attractive price point for a large screen notebook that will appeal to most. For that amount, you'll be getting an Intel Core 2 Duo Processor P8600 (2.4GHz) with a smaller 3MB cache and a lower resolution screen (1366 x 768 pixels). If you're keen on getting the same specifications as our review unit, then be prepared to fork out about S$2771 which the notebook would then be decked out with a T9400 processor, a Blu-ray drive and a higher resolution 1080p screen (1920 x 1080 pixels). That's a reasonable difference in cost for these three primary upgrades.

If you're none too fussy or picky, you'll find that the specs of the base model should be more than sufficient and that's definitely a good deal for the Studio XPS 1640 (as with our better configured review unit too).

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