The Intel 802.11a/g/n wireless radio delivered strong throughput of 44.5 Mbps at 15 feet and 24.3 Mbps at 50 feet. While the Studio 15 isn't as powerful a gaming machine, it might be the more practical choice for people who want to unplug it and use it around the home. It lasted 4:45 on the LAPTOP Battery Test (Web surfing via Wi-Fi), whereas the average mainstream laptop makes it to 3:46 (the ASUS N61 lasted 3:28). With that large battery comes notably long battery life. Although it adds heft to the notebook, it should be noted that it still weighs the same as the ASUS N61, which has a six-cell battery. The bottom line: the Studio 15's gaming performance is good for a mainstream laptop, but isn't necessarily the best you'll find in this price range.Ĭlick to enlargeFor $849, our configuration came with a nine-cell battery. And while the Studio 15 achieved max frame rates of 110 fps and 54 fps in World of Warcraft and Far Cry 2, the N61 made it all the way to 223 fps in World of Warcraft (oddly, it peaked at 33 fps for Far Cry 2). The N61 scored 5,997 on 3DMark06, more than 2,300 points higher than the Studio 15. The difference in graphics performance is pretty striking.
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Then again, the average notebook in this weight class fares even worse.įor $50 more, the ASUS N61Jv-X2 comes with a discrete Nvidia GeForce GT325M GPU card and a full gigabyte of video memory. Unfortunately, its frame rates at native resolution (1366 x 768)-18 fps for both World of Warcraft and Far Cry 2-aren't nearly as playable. Its score of 3,654 bests the mainstream category average of 3,442, while its frame rates-averaging 110 fps in World of Warcarft and 54 fps in Far Cry 2, both at 1024 x 768 resolution-steamroll what the average mainstream notebook manages (69 and 31 fps, respectively).
With a discrete ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 graphics card and 512MB dedicated video memory, the Studio 15 isn't exactly a slouch when it comes to gaming.
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When it came to heavier-duty computing, the Studio 15 transcoded a 114MB MP4 file to AVI using Oxelon Media Encoder in 57 seconds, whereas the average mainstream laptop takes 1:04. Luckily, we still felt productive spending hours working on the laptop. In fact, at one point, our primary desktop computer crashed, and we were forced to do all of our work on this machine. Even doing things such as poking around the Control Panel felt zippy.
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In addition to multitasking in our browser-skipping from one of many open tabs to another- we were able to do lots of everyday tasks, such as install software for our Flip camcorder, quickly. The Studio 15 also took 10 extra seconds to boot up, for a total of 1:07, which is a more practical concern for users. Likewise, both machines have 7,200-rpm, 500GB hard drives, but while the Studio 15 transferred a 4.97GB mixed media folder in three minutes (a rate of 28.3 MBps), the N61 completed the same test at a rate of 33.7 MBps (for the average mainstream laptop, the rate is 22.5 MBps). The difference is likely attributable to the N61's higher-octane Nvidia graphics. The $899 ASUS N61Jv-X2, for instance, has the same processor and RAM, and scored 5,841 on PCMark Vantage, a performance benchmark, while the Studio 15 notched 5,735 (the category average is 4,179). While it's worlds better than the average mainstream laptop, it performs comparably to, if not slightly worse than, similarly priced notebooks with identical specs. The Studio 15 comes armed with a 2.26-GHz Intel Core i5-430M processor and 4GB of RAM. This is the best notebook webcam we've tested recently. Sure, there was some lag, but it was surprisingly subtle. When we filmed video at the same high resolution, we were skeptical: normally, video at resolutions higher than 640 x 480 show lots of motion blur, but this one was mostly smooth. Our test shots were brightly lit with brilliant, accurate colors, and we could make out details in everything from the fuzz on our sweater to the shine in our hair. The 2.0-MP camera takes wonderful 1600 x 1200 photos. Dell's Webcam Central software has an attractive interface, loaded with tons of fun filters.