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Written by Sasa Pantelic
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Wednesday, 29 October 2008 |
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Page 1 of 2  Last month we tested model 1535 from new Studio series of notebooks from Dell and this time we got another model from same series but with slightly bigger dimensions. For all of you that missed that review we will say that Studio series is intended for home users. Dell Studio 1735 belongs to DTR category (DeskTop Replacement) of notebooks and because of that, most of its characteristics are predetermined.
When we took Dell Studio 1735 out of the box we experienced a déjà vu which was expected because the only differences in design from 1535 model are bigger dimensions and presence of numerical keypad. Surprisingly, besides bigger dimensions keyboard is noticeably firmer then on 1535 model. Area around Enter key and numeric pad bends under pressure but hardly noticeable and not in amount that would disturb anyone. Since keyboard was our main complaint on smaller model this change was right on target. Touch Pad is precise which can be said also for almost noiseless keys below it.
Our model had blue cover but there are available models with different colors and textures. Recently this became standard for Dell notebooks even for pricier business models.
Screen deserves to talk about it only in superlatives. Because it was expected that this display will be used for watching movies, glare screen was quite logical choice. Full HD resolution with nicely saturated colors is going to provide exceptional HD movie watching experience. Thanks to wide viewing angles, working and watching movies on this notebook can be done from variety of positions. When all is summed up this is one of the best glare screens that we saw till now. Speakers are not bad, but they are not suitable for listening of music that has lot of bass.
Cooling solution on this notebook is not quiet but it is very efficient. Warming up on upper side is minimal and noticeable only on part where right hand is held. On bottom side warming is noticeable but still acceptable especially if we take into account built-in components. To be honest, secret behind these results are lower clocks of GPU and memory of graphics card. On the other side lower performances of graphics subsystem in games are expected.
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Although all home users are “put” in same category, sometimes those users have diametrically opposed expectations for their notebook. This time we will put under a spot light their needs for playing games. Dell Studio 17 is name for more than one notebook that are configured differently (same goes for Studio 15 series). Model that we got has very powerful graphics card (for a notebook): Radeon HD 3650. This graphics card, even on lower frequencies, can provide enough power to satisfy not so demanding gamer. Take a look at results of Radeon HD 3650 on regular PC to get some idea about performance levels in games.
Peculiar detail on Dell Studio 1735 is presence of two hard disks. More interesting fact is that those HDDs have same capacity but they are not the same. One comes from Seagate and the other from Toshiba. Our tests showed that Toshiba HDD is slightly faster so we recommend you to use this HDD as your main (primary) disk for OS installation. Dell Studio 1735 that we got in our lab has 4GB of RAM, so if you buy the same model, don’t forget that proper utilization of all that memory can be achieved only in 64bit operating systems.
It also has fingerprint reader even though it is not common for this class. Presence of other connectors can be found in specification but presence of 5 USB ports must be emphasized. Battery has decent capacity but power consumption of this notebook is higher than usual, so autonomy is not its strongest side in case you plan to extensively use all of its potentials. Thanks to optimizations of power consumptions during activities, like text reading autonomy, is prolonged to 2 hours and 14 minutes. Since this is DTR model autonomy is not that important.
Model of Dell Studio 1735 that we got is selling without operating system, so we didn’t find anything interesting beside drivers for Vista OS in the package.
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