Dell Inspiron M101z Laptop Review
Of late, we’ve been seeing quite a few netbooks and at first glance, it looks like the Dell’s M101z also falls in the same category. However, Dell claims it to be the size of the netbook, with the performance of a notebook. The M101z is basically aimed at students and youngsters who are looking for a netbook with good performance and at the same time portable enough to carry around.
The M101z is priced at $569, which is probably one of the cheapest price brackets for a notebook. However, you have better performing notebooks like the IdeaPad Z570 which can score way better in performance and will only cost you a few thousands more. Also there’s a chance that if you like or want the portability that the M101z offers, you should rather go for a netbook like Toshiba’s NB520 which won’t give you as good a performance but at the same time will cost a lot less.
The Dell Inspiron M101z battery life of just over six hours is around 3 hours short of the best netbooks, but it’s still very respectable. The M101z includes a 320GB hard disk rather than the 250GB models in the vast majority of netbooks. There’s still no optical drive, though, so you may need to invest in an external one – though the Dell’s optional drive is a little steep at $85.
Pros:
Very nice keyboard. Excellent navigating components. Fast hard drive. Lightweight. HDMI included. Plays back 1080p HD clips beautifully. Very good speakers for a little laptop.
Cons:
Performance finished in the bottom. Battery life is not as impressive as its CULV counterparts.
Bottom Line:
Though its size is the same as that of a netbook, the Dell Inspiron M101z is more powerful, though it falls short against its CULV counterparts.
Our review sample - Dell's top-end model - features a dual-core Athlon II Neo K325 processor, 4GB of DD3 memory, a quicker 320GB, 7,200rpm hard disk and a premium $499 price tag. That's clearly more than your average Atom or CULV-based machine, and more in line with full-size notebooks such as the Intel Core i3-powered Inspiron 15R.
The 11.6” WLED display is what pushes this notebook out of netbook status, and it certainly does that in a big way. The 1366 x 768 High-Definition screen delivers a great picture with a large spectrum of brightness settings, meaning you can blind yourself or sit in the dark with no strain on your eyes. The one downfall of the screen comes directly from the hinge design of the Dell Inspiron M101z AC adapter, as a result of the hinge position you simply cannot tilt the screen very far back, and it has to be said the viewing angles of the screen are not amazing with some colour distortion if you didn’t get the angle just right.
The Dell Inspiron M101z comes with innards befitting its form factor and target audience. Our review laptop came outfitted with a dual-core AMD Athlon II Neo K325 1.3-GHz processor, 4GB DDR3 RAM, 320GB 7200rpm hard drive, and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4225 graphics. But there are other configurations available at different price points on Dell's website.
For whatever reason, Dell sent us the "Promise Pink" version of the M101z. While it's nice that some of the proceeds of the particular model go to the Susan Komen Foundation for breast cancer research, the almost florescent color and matching swirly pink pattern that finds its way onto the palmrest just wasn't our thing. We tried to call Molly Ringwald and pawn it off on her, but we just couldn't get in touch. We could make pink laptop jokes all day, but more importantly, in usual Dell fashion it's available in three other colors: black, red and blue.
The lovely 1080p video playback also has ATI's Mobility Radeon 4225 graphics to thank. The integrated solution not only performs better than the Lenovo IdeaPad U160's Core i7 / Intel GMA 950 graphics, but also tops some with NVIDIA's last generation Ion platform. Along with those loud speakers, watching Katie Perry and Snoop's "California Gurls" music video was eye-pleasing. It played just as well when we hooked up the laptop to a 40-inch HDTV via HDMI. Even when streaming that HD YouTube video, the chassis remained relatively cool – the left fan was working pretty hard, but at no point did our lap get overly hot.
The key is the dual-core AMD Neo K325 CPU, which offers a much-improved user experience over the single-core Intel Atom found in most 11-inch Netbooks. This $579 configuration of the M101z also includes 4GB of RAM and a 7200rpm hard drive. At the same time, a single-core version, with AMD's Neo K125, is also available for $449--further confusing the Netbook/laptop issue.
As per usual for Dell, the top row inverts the function keys so that you can directly access things such as brightness and volume controls. You can also quickly toggle the Wi-Fi radio, control music playback, check Dell U150P battery life, and output the display when you want to output the picture to a TV or projector.
The Dell Inspiron M101z is one of the noisier ultraportable laptops I’ve tested thanks to the fan noise — but the trade-off is that it offers higher performance than most quieter machines. The laptop measures 11.5″ x 8.1″ x 1.4″ and weighs about 3.4 pounds.
Though our model came with Bluetooth 2.1, according to Dell's UK website new models are now shipping with Bluetooth 3.0. This is a nice bonus, and 802.11n Wi-Fi is included as well. You only get 10/100 Fast Ethernet for wired networking, but this isn’t the kind of machine that will spend much time tethered to a wall socket.
With this configuration, you get a notebook that is approximately twice as fast as a typical netbook. It recorded times of 4min and 3min 48sec in our Blender 3D rendering and MP3 encoding tasks, respectively, and its hard drive delivered a speed of 24.65 megabytes per second, which is an average result. Like a netbook, you won't want to use the Dell Inspiron M101z for many media encoding tasks — it was especially slow in our media transcoding test, where it took over 3hr to convert a DVD file into a 1.5GB Xvid file.
The battery life department is also somewhat disappointing compared with its peers. The M101z ships with a 56WH (6-cell) Dell Inspiron M101z battery, which is roughly the capacity of the one found in the Acer 1830T-3721 (58WH), yet their battery scores were miles apart. Lasting 4 hours 30 minutes may seem adequate for laptop, but the M101z's battery score was fully eclipsed by the Acer 1830T-3721's 8:13. The Asus UL80Vt-A1, with a much bigger battery (84Wh), amassed 10 hours' worth (10:10) in the same test.
The M101z is surprisingly capable of rocking out. The laptop features SRS Premium Sound produced by two 1.5 watt speakers located on the bottom front of the laptop’s chassis. These speakers are not capable of producing much bass, but they are capable of filling a room with sound that won’t make you want to cut off your ears with garden clippers. That’s more than can be said for most laptops of this size.
This was a particular shame since the viewing angles (and the hampering of brightness and contrast this brings) are easily evident away from the sweet spot. That said, this is far from the worst offender we’ve encountered and the definition and colour reproduction is otherwise second to none. Elsewhere, stand-out mentions must go to the chiclet keyboard and the remarkable speakers hiding under the front lip – both a joy to use and well above the usual experience you’d expect in this (or any other) notebook class.
This Dell Inspiron M101z charger was a particular shame since the viewing angles (and the hampering of brightness and contrast this brings) are easily evident away from the sweet spot. That said, this is far from the worst offender we’ve encountered and the definition and colour reproduction is otherwise second to none. Elsewhere, stand-out mentions must go to the chiclet keyboard and the remarkable speakers hiding under the front lip – both a joy to use and well above the usual experience you’d expect in this (or any other) notebook class.
Don't expect to run games that put much pressure on the graphics chip (like just about any first-person shooter), but games that turn more to the CPU for their juice can be played with the graphics dialed down. The Dell Inspiron M101z delivered a WorldBench score of 60 in our labs tests, and an unplayable 13.3 frames per second running our Unreal Tournament 3 at high quality Dell U150P battery levels and 1024x768. 1080p video, however, played fine. On the plus side, the sound from the speakers was surprisingly robust.
What we need to expect, on the other hand, is value, and the M101z delivers. The AMD chipset trumps the Intel Celeron 743 within Dell's own Insipron M11z in terms of performance, and the high-end model on test here still costs less than the top end M11z. Frankly it's rather excellent value.
The M101z is priced at $569, which is probably one of the cheapest price brackets for a notebook. However, you have better performing notebooks like the IdeaPad Z570 which can score way better in performance and will only cost you a few thousands more. Also there’s a chance that if you like or want the portability that the M101z offers, you should rather go for a netbook like Toshiba’s NB520 which won’t give you as good a performance but at the same time will cost a lot less.
The Dell Inspiron M101z battery life of just over six hours is around 3 hours short of the best netbooks, but it’s still very respectable. The M101z includes a 320GB hard disk rather than the 250GB models in the vast majority of netbooks. There’s still no optical drive, though, so you may need to invest in an external one – though the Dell’s optional drive is a little steep at $85.
Pros:
Very nice keyboard. Excellent navigating components. Fast hard drive. Lightweight. HDMI included. Plays back 1080p HD clips beautifully. Very good speakers for a little laptop.
Cons:
Performance finished in the bottom. Battery life is not as impressive as its CULV counterparts.
Bottom Line:
Though its size is the same as that of a netbook, the Dell Inspiron M101z is more powerful, though it falls short against its CULV counterparts.
Our review sample - Dell's top-end model - features a dual-core Athlon II Neo K325 processor, 4GB of DD3 memory, a quicker 320GB, 7,200rpm hard disk and a premium $499 price tag. That's clearly more than your average Atom or CULV-based machine, and more in line with full-size notebooks such as the Intel Core i3-powered Inspiron 15R.
The 11.6” WLED display is what pushes this notebook out of netbook status, and it certainly does that in a big way. The 1366 x 768 High-Definition screen delivers a great picture with a large spectrum of brightness settings, meaning you can blind yourself or sit in the dark with no strain on your eyes. The one downfall of the screen comes directly from the hinge design of the Dell Inspiron M101z AC adapter, as a result of the hinge position you simply cannot tilt the screen very far back, and it has to be said the viewing angles of the screen are not amazing with some colour distortion if you didn’t get the angle just right.
The Dell Inspiron M101z comes with innards befitting its form factor and target audience. Our review laptop came outfitted with a dual-core AMD Athlon II Neo K325 1.3-GHz processor, 4GB DDR3 RAM, 320GB 7200rpm hard drive, and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4225 graphics. But there are other configurations available at different price points on Dell's website.
For whatever reason, Dell sent us the "Promise Pink" version of the M101z. While it's nice that some of the proceeds of the particular model go to the Susan Komen Foundation for breast cancer research, the almost florescent color and matching swirly pink pattern that finds its way onto the palmrest just wasn't our thing. We tried to call Molly Ringwald and pawn it off on her, but we just couldn't get in touch. We could make pink laptop jokes all day, but more importantly, in usual Dell fashion it's available in three other colors: black, red and blue.
The lovely 1080p video playback also has ATI's Mobility Radeon 4225 graphics to thank. The integrated solution not only performs better than the Lenovo IdeaPad U160's Core i7 / Intel GMA 950 graphics, but also tops some with NVIDIA's last generation Ion platform. Along with those loud speakers, watching Katie Perry and Snoop's "California Gurls" music video was eye-pleasing. It played just as well when we hooked up the laptop to a 40-inch HDTV via HDMI. Even when streaming that HD YouTube video, the chassis remained relatively cool – the left fan was working pretty hard, but at no point did our lap get overly hot.
The key is the dual-core AMD Neo K325 CPU, which offers a much-improved user experience over the single-core Intel Atom found in most 11-inch Netbooks. This $579 configuration of the M101z also includes 4GB of RAM and a 7200rpm hard drive. At the same time, a single-core version, with AMD's Neo K125, is also available for $449--further confusing the Netbook/laptop issue.
As per usual for Dell, the top row inverts the function keys so that you can directly access things such as brightness and volume controls. You can also quickly toggle the Wi-Fi radio, control music playback, check Dell U150P battery life, and output the display when you want to output the picture to a TV or projector.
The Dell Inspiron M101z is one of the noisier ultraportable laptops I’ve tested thanks to the fan noise — but the trade-off is that it offers higher performance than most quieter machines. The laptop measures 11.5″ x 8.1″ x 1.4″ and weighs about 3.4 pounds.
Though our model came with Bluetooth 2.1, according to Dell's UK website new models are now shipping with Bluetooth 3.0. This is a nice bonus, and 802.11n Wi-Fi is included as well. You only get 10/100 Fast Ethernet for wired networking, but this isn’t the kind of machine that will spend much time tethered to a wall socket.
With this configuration, you get a notebook that is approximately twice as fast as a typical netbook. It recorded times of 4min and 3min 48sec in our Blender 3D rendering and MP3 encoding tasks, respectively, and its hard drive delivered a speed of 24.65 megabytes per second, which is an average result. Like a netbook, you won't want to use the Dell Inspiron M101z for many media encoding tasks — it was especially slow in our media transcoding test, where it took over 3hr to convert a DVD file into a 1.5GB Xvid file.
The battery life department is also somewhat disappointing compared with its peers. The M101z ships with a 56WH (6-cell) Dell Inspiron M101z battery, which is roughly the capacity of the one found in the Acer 1830T-3721 (58WH), yet their battery scores were miles apart. Lasting 4 hours 30 minutes may seem adequate for laptop, but the M101z's battery score was fully eclipsed by the Acer 1830T-3721's 8:13. The Asus UL80Vt-A1, with a much bigger battery (84Wh), amassed 10 hours' worth (10:10) in the same test.
The M101z is surprisingly capable of rocking out. The laptop features SRS Premium Sound produced by two 1.5 watt speakers located on the bottom front of the laptop’s chassis. These speakers are not capable of producing much bass, but they are capable of filling a room with sound that won’t make you want to cut off your ears with garden clippers. That’s more than can be said for most laptops of this size.
This was a particular shame since the viewing angles (and the hampering of brightness and contrast this brings) are easily evident away from the sweet spot. That said, this is far from the worst offender we’ve encountered and the definition and colour reproduction is otherwise second to none. Elsewhere, stand-out mentions must go to the chiclet keyboard and the remarkable speakers hiding under the front lip – both a joy to use and well above the usual experience you’d expect in this (or any other) notebook class.
This Dell Inspiron M101z charger was a particular shame since the viewing angles (and the hampering of brightness and contrast this brings) are easily evident away from the sweet spot. That said, this is far from the worst offender we’ve encountered and the definition and colour reproduction is otherwise second to none. Elsewhere, stand-out mentions must go to the chiclet keyboard and the remarkable speakers hiding under the front lip – both a joy to use and well above the usual experience you’d expect in this (or any other) notebook class.
Don't expect to run games that put much pressure on the graphics chip (like just about any first-person shooter), but games that turn more to the CPU for their juice can be played with the graphics dialed down. The Dell Inspiron M101z delivered a WorldBench score of 60 in our labs tests, and an unplayable 13.3 frames per second running our Unreal Tournament 3 at high quality Dell U150P battery levels and 1024x768. 1080p video, however, played fine. On the plus side, the sound from the speakers was surprisingly robust.
What we need to expect, on the other hand, is value, and the M101z delivers. The AMD chipset trumps the Intel Celeron 743 within Dell's own Insipron M11z in terms of performance, and the high-end model on test here still costs less than the top end M11z. Frankly it's rather excellent value.
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