DELL XPS M1710

Seriously powerful mobile gaming grunt with all the bling, from Dell. Yep, Dell.

No, you haven't picked up a copy of laptop monthly -- this not so little notebook puts most desktops to shame. And then kicks the boot in to make sure.
The brand new Dell Inspiron XPS M1710 sports a Core Duo processor, up to a 512MB GeForce GO 7900GTX (yes, that’s a 7900 512M power in a lappy!) and a 17" 1920x1200 screen to boot. Our particular sample arrived clocked in at 2.16GHz, 667MHz FSB with 2GB RAM and a GeForce Go 7900GS. It also lights up red from the front and back grills, and the XPS logo on the lid glows as well – and with a little tweaking, can display 15 different colours, change intensity or be switched off if you’re battery conscious. It’s as if Dell looked up ‘Bling’ in the dictionary and said ‘Right, we want that!’

The system reminds you why they so tactfully renamed laptops to notebooks -- as sitting on your lap it generates an uncomfortable amount of heat -- nowhere near scalding but enough to make your legs sweat, and the weight of it being a desktop replacement slowly gets to you. Make sure to have a table for this one.
The screen is wonderfully sharp and shiny, although there is a fair amount of light bleeding in from the bottom, which may be a distraction for some. There is also slight discolouration in the bottom corners, possibly from the frame around the screen pushing down too hard on the LCD.

The touchpad is excellent, with not only a vertical scroll section but a horizontal one as well, which unlike the horizontal scroll on certain mouses actually works incredibly well.

The usual media player controls adorn the front of the Dell, which allows you to control your audio playing without having to switch applications or use the mouse -- both big bonuses in our books.

Externally it’s connector heaven, with six USB ports, one firewire, headphone and microphone jacks, card reader, network port, phone/line in, tv out, DVI and VGA connectors. A type II PCMCIA slot adorns the side for your expansion needs.

Fortunately the notebook isn't as infested with a large amount of crapware as is expected -- the only real infuriating extras being the particularly poor Internet Explorer image scaling feature, and the little notifications reminding you to update Windows, something which, if we're not mistaken, Windows Update did just fine already. Fortunately these can be turned off through ‘Dell Quickset’ icon in the system tray.

A decent little Media Center clone called MediaDirect is included, as is a quick access button to transform your laptop quickly into an HTPC. Sound is actually decent for a change as well, with an integrated subwoofer sitting neatly inside the chassis.

To give an indication of performance, we stacked the notebook up against our standard desktop testbench in our regular gaming and application benchmarks. As you can see in the results, the M1710 did very well indeed with the 7900 series card no doubt helping it in the graphics test over the 7800 GT laden testbench.

If you’ve got the cash to plonk down on a new system and being portable is your primary concern, you can’t go wrong with this machine. It’s utterly, if not overly, beefy for a laptop and it’s got built-in bling to boot. Seriously, Dell is becoming the new cool.



Dell XPS M1710 Notebook - Buy Now