Product Reviews

The launch of Intel's Core Duo processors has given laptops a real shot in the proverbial arm. These dual-core chips are far more powerful than their predecessors, they don't get as hot and aren't as big a drain on a PC's power. But there's a catch - laptops that use these processors tend to be a bit pricey. However, Dell's Inspiron 6400 costs just £699 and runs off an Intel Core Duo T2300.

Power to the people

The 6400 isn't the most powerful Core Duo laptop we've ever seen. The Sony VGN-FE11H, which won a Best Buy award last month, also uses a T2300 and it scored 108% in our benchmarks. The Sony has twice as much memory as the Dell though, which is why its score is so much better - 108% to Dell's 86%. The Sony also did a lot better in our 3D test - that's to say that the Sony could run it while the Dell can't. The Intel graphics chip in the Dell isn't up to 3D gaming, unless the games you want to play are at least a couple of years old, and even then it might struggle. That said, the Sony costs £300 more than the Inspiron 6400. For this price, we were very happy with the way the Inspiron performed. And there was one area in which the Dell did do better than the Sony - it lasted for 4 hours and 18 minutes in our battery test, compared with just under 4 hours for the Sony. This is an extremely long battery life and we were very impressed.

In wide angle

We tend not to bang on about things like mice, keyboards, trackpads

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and so on unless they're really good, really bad or noteworthy in some other way. In this case we can't quite decide whether it's a case of "bad" or "noteworthy in some other way". The keyboard is well-spaced, and the keys are nice and large - handy if you have big fingers. On the other hand, the keys feel a bit loose, and the buttons on the trackpad are slack - you get used to it, but it takes a while. We loved the screen, though. It's big and shiny, it displays clean, bold colours, and its widescreen aspect ratio is perfect for watching DVDs. The 1680 x 1050 resolution also gives you lots of Desktop space to play with - though if you're short-sighted, the tiny size of all the icons and labels will cause you to squint.

If you don't feel like booting into Windows and only want to listen to some music, you can use Dell's MediaDirect software. Just press a button on the laptop and instead of booting up, the PC goes directly into the playback software in a matter of seconds. You can then watch DVDs or video files on your hard disk and listen to music in most common formats. It's simple, quick and works beautifully. And, unusually for a laptop, it's actually worth using the 6400 to listen to a few tunes, because its speakers are surprisingly good. We're not talking hi-fi quality, we'd say it's about as good as a cheap cassette-radio, but that's much better than most budget laptops.

Beautiful, but big

The one thing about the 6400 that screams 'budget laptop' is its size. Dell appears to have used the same old chunky Inspiron design that it's been using for a couple of years. This isn't a catastrophe, it's just a bit chunky. The Inspiron weighs in at an imposing 3.1kg - not unbearably heavy, but you won't forget it's in your bag.

On the bright side, its build quality is good, but the lid flexes more than we'd like, a common problem with budget laptops. Ideally, we'd have preferred a dinky new design that was a lot slimmer and lighter than this - but for this price we can live with the chunky one we got.