Dell Vostro V130 – Sleek and lightweight travel companion Review

VERDICT:

The Dell Vostro V130 appeals to a niche audience looking for portability and style at the cost of pure performance. While it does well in the design, build quality and portability areas, its poor battery life is unforgivable, making it hard for us to recommend the Vostro V130 for a business laptop.

Look and feel

With a 13.3-inch (screen-size) form factor along with a super-light package that weighs just 1.59 kilograms, the Vostro V130 is extremely portable. Measuring less than an inch in thickness, it is the slimmest enterprise notebook that we have tested in our labs. While being so slim and portable, the Vostro does not compromise on the build quality. Wrapped in brushed aluminum chassis, the V130 feels very rugged yet ensuring a very classy enterprise-like image. We have absolutely no complaints with the V130 in the design and build compartment. The internals are equally high-quality, use of high-grade plastic eliminates any creaks or bends across the entire body. A robust full-sized keyboard complements the design. The trackpad isn’t very “large” but for a 13.3-inch notebook, it feels sufficient. The keys have good feedback but they are a little noisy, making typing quite audible. Trackpad is accurate and smooth but the response is not as fast as some of the other enterprise notebooks, the Lenovo ThinkPads offer better trackpads for sure. The soft touch trackpad buttons are well configured, requiring just the right amount of pressure. We do however miss dedicated shortcut buttons, a feature that is very common with business notebooks. Toggling Wi-Fi on/off and volume controls has to be managed via the function key combination

[RELATED_ARTICLE]The Vostro V130 comes with a 13.3-inch matte screen, a far cry from the usual glossy screens with mirror finish that severely affects legibility under bright-light conditions. The screen quality is pretty good with a good balance of brightness and contrast to ensure that the screen does not appear washed-out when the brightness is set to maximum level. The top of the screen bezel houses a 2.0MP webcam and a microphone for video conferencing.

Features

The V130 includes one of each eSATA-USB combo port, HDMI port, VGA port, Ethernet port and two USB 2.0 ports. One good thing to note is that two airflow vents and all the ports are located at the back. The only exception is the memory card reader, which is placed on the left side. The microphone and headphone ports are conveniently placed on the front. This provides a clutter-free user experience with enough room on either sides of the notebook. However, the slim profile of the Vostro V130 comes at the cost on a significant omission, the optical drive. You will have to buy an external USB based optical drive to fill the void. The V130 includes a charging indicator right next to the power LED on the front edge while the hard drive activity, Wi-fi, Bluetooth, numlock and capslock indicators are placed above the keyboard

Read on to know the performance, our take, specifications, ratings and test results on the next page…

Performance

[RELATED_ARTICLE]The Vostro V130’s is powered by the latest Core i3 platform but it uses Intel’s power efficient ULV (Ultra Low Voltage) series chips. The Intel Core i3-380UM processor in the Vostro V130 is clocked at 1.33GHz and offers 3MB of cache. The 32nm CPU supports hyper threading and has a TDP of 18W. Our test unit shipped with 4GB of DDR3 SD RAM, 320GB 7200 RPM hard drive and was preloaded with Windows 7 Professional.

The overall system performance of the Dell Vostro V130 falls between a typical latest generation netbook and a mid-range notebook. The V130 logged a PCMark 2005 CPU score of 3662, which is more than twice that of the average score from most netbooks that we have tested. Using Intel’s integrated graphics solution, the V130 scored 1142 points in our 3D Mark 2006 benchmark, mainstream notebooks or even business notebooks based on latest Core i3 platform (non ULV) manage PCMark 2005 scores in the range of 5000-6000 points. It is clear that the lower clocked CPU does influence the overall system performance of the Vostro V130. To further check on the performance, we ran some 1080p video clips to check for any stutter or clipping during movie playback, the Vostro V130 managed fine with 1080p content, you can watch HD movies without a hitch. So, summing the performance of the V130, the notebook is fine for daily office use and even reasonably heavy multitasking scenarios, thanks to the 4GB of RAM and the dual-core processor with hyper-threading capabilities. The Vostro will clearly suffer on any gaming applications or CPU heavy application where the lower core clock speed and the integrated Intel graphics will drag the performance down. Accessing large files and switching between multiple applications will not be an issue, thanks to the 7200RPM drive which does offer a marginal advantage over the 5400RPM drives. The notebook runs pretty cool across all applications and the noise levels are also well controlled. This is not a multimedia notebook, but the inclusion of a mono speaker (instead of stereo speakers) below the keyboard is clearly disappointing, the sound is clear but the volume level is limited and eventually the mono sound quality does show its characteristics for even basic applications like YouTube videos and casual music sessions.

Being a business notebook, battery-life for the Vostro V130 is a critical aspect and sadly the performance is disappointing. Using an integrated six-cell battery, the V130 managed a lowly 2 hours and 40 minutes on BatteryMark test. While most business notebooks today manage a batterylife of a minimum three hours and above, the Vostro V130 clearly falls below the average.

 

Our Take

The Vostro V130 stands out with solid build quality, sleek and stylish design and its feathery weight. Even if we were to ignore its lack of core performance, the poor battery life is clearly unforgivable for this segment. Priced at Rs 37,000, the Vostro is clearly the cheapest thin and light ultraportable business notebook, but it compromises by offering a very basic feature set and low battery life. If the 2 ½ hour battery life is not a concern for you and a lack of optical drive does not bother you, the V130 is your cheapest ticket to a business notebook that weights below 1.6 kilograms. For anyone else, the Dell Vostro V3300 which is slightly thicker and heavier than the V130 is a better choice with more performance and features for the same price. If price is not a concern, the Lenovo Thinkpad T420s, the X201 series and the Toshiba Portege R705 are better options for a thin and light ultraportable business notebook.

Specifications
Processor: Intel Core i3 U380; Memory: 4GB DDR3 1333MHz; Chipset: Intel HM57 Express; Graphics: Intel GMA HD; Hard drive: 320GB; Display: 13.3-inch 720p HD LED, Screen resolution: 1366 x 768; Weight: 1.59 Kilograms;

Ratings
Features: 5
Performance: 6
Build Quality: 7
Value for money: 5
Overall: 6

Contact: Dell India Pvt. Ltd.
Phone: 1800-425-4026 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            1800-425-4026      end_of_the_skype_highlighting
E-mail: N/A
Website: http://www.dell.co.in/
Price: Rs. 37,000