Dell Precision M6400 Covet review

It's an immensely well-constructed chassis too, rigid as a drillmaster's cane and extremely tough: there's absolutely no give, no rattle, no flex anywhere; even the screen, with its metal latches, resisted our ham-fisted attentions.

It isn't the world's lightest laptop at 4.34kg, but if you need to transport this machine from office to office, or the oil rig for that matter, we're confident it will cope.

Pop open the lid, and you'll find more to adore. The edge-to-edge 17in 1,920 x 1,200 screen, though glossy and prone to reflections under office lights, is in every other way superb. It's an RGB LED panel, and is capable of rendering 100% of the Adobe sRGB colour space - a feature more commonly found on high-end professional monitors. It's bright and clear, with punchy colours and no hint of graininess, and its slight red push was easily adjusted out using Nvidia's control panel. To reduce the bright display's effect on battery life, there's also an ambient light sensor to automatically control brightness.

The keyboard is equally accomplished. Each key has a soft, positive break and at the end of the keystroke, your finger meets a solid, yet slightly cushioned base. It's supremely comfortable to type on. There's room for a number pad on its right hand side, the keys are backlit (this can also be controlled by the ambient light sensor) and set into keyboard's centre is a trackpoint for mousing - an option to the more standard touchpad below.

Don't look away yet, though, as there's more to drool over. The touchpad - as well as being sensitive, accurate, and boasting a set of buttons as comfortable as we've ever come across on any laptop - is backlit. Tap a small logo in its bottom left corner and it glows to life, with four customisable "buttons" along the top, and a timeline scrollbar along the bottom - ideal for video editing.

Elsewhere, there's a fingerprint reader, dual-band draft-n wireless in the shape of Intel's Wi-Fi Link 5300 chipset, Bluetooth, and a very good selection of connections arrayed around its edges. On the left there's a full-size six-pin FireWire port, two USB sockets, a slot-loading DVD writer, 8-in-1 memory card slot, smartcard reader and PC Card reader. On the right you'll find D-SUB and DisplayPort outputs, Gigabit Ethernet, ExpressCard/54, one USB port that will supply charge while the laptop is off, and a powered USB/eSATA combo port. To the right of the touchpad on the wristrest is also a touchless smartcard sensor.

This is an absolute beast of a laptop, make no mistake, whose only real weak spot is its battery life; despite its whopping nine-cell battery it lasted just 2hrs 15mins in our light use test. But this is no ultraportable, designed instead to be moved from base to base, rather than used intensively while out on-the-road, so it's not a deal breaker.

It's not particularly cheap, and neither can it boast the whizz-bang toys of the Lenovo W700ds. But if your company is in the market for a serious mobile workstation and money's no object this machine is the one to beat. It's incredibly fast, beautifully built and makes a statement like no other laptop in its category.

Author: Jonathan Bray