Dell Studio 14 Laptop heats up racks

Like the Dell Studio 15 Artist Edition, the new Dell Studio 14 (Artist Edition) is a 14-inch laptop that combines excellent performance with very good looks. It's based on Intel's PineTrail processor, the Core i3-350M, and comes with a dedicated ATI Radeon HD 5450 graphics card.

Design & Usability

The new Dell Studio 14 screen lid has a glossy surface with customizable colors which you can configure on Dell's website. Our review unit came with purple colored horizontal lines streaking across its screen lid -- clearly not the best look the Studio 14 has to offer. The laptop preserves characteristic Studio design elements like its dropped hinges, sturdy build quality, slot-loading optical drive and the laptop's overall tapering design. The Dell Studio 14 continues to cloak itself in a simple-yet-functional design, which is admirable. In fact, a lot of its design and build characteristics have trickled down to the entry-level Inspiron series of laptops, as we saw on the Dell Inspiron 15-1564 and Dell Inspiron 14-1464.

The Studio 14 laptop's very well built (better than the MSI CX420 laptop), and its dropped central hinge is sturdy to say the least. The laptop weighs a moderate 2.45-kg, which isn't too bad for a 14-inch mainstream laptop. It comes with a glossy LED-backlit 14-inch screen (1366x768 pixel resolution) with a 16:9 aspect ratio. The Dell Studio 14's screen isn't as large as the one on Lenovo Ideapad Y550, but it is very close to it in terms of image quality. The screen displays crisp, clear text and video, and has very good horizontal viewing angles. The Dell Studio 14's keyboard and touchpad are as good as ever. The keyboard sports large, easy-to-type on keycaps that are closely packed -- they are different than the Ideapad Y550's or MSI CX420's keys, and great for fast typing. The touchpad is very finely textured and a treat to use, and the two mouse buttons are nice to press. If anything, the Studio 14's touchpad lacks multi-gesture support (found on the Ideapad Y550).

Bottom Line

The Dell Studio 14 Artist Edition sells for Rs. 45,300. For that price, you get a pretty decent 14-inch mainstream laptop with a nice screen, very good keyboard-touchpad combo, and one of the best feature sets of our Top 5 Mainstream Laptops. Compared to the Lenovo Ideapad Y550 and MSI CX420, the Dell Studio 14 offers better processor, RAM, and greater hard drive space -- but has an inferior graphics card, in comparison. We would still recommend the Dell Studio 14 over the MSI CX420 if you're looking for a 14-inch all purpose laptop for home. However, if you want a laptop with larger screen and better graphics performance, go for the Lenovo Ideapad Y550.

Tip: If you don't care much about the fancy screen lid, the standard Dell Studio 14 with a similar configuration sells for a lesser price. Also check out the brand new Dell Inspiron 14R laptop which has a cool new design.

Price : 45,300

TAGS:

Dell Studio 14 , Core i3-350M , ATI Radeon HD 5450 graphics card , review, comparison , looks, features, news , laptop, price