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Dell Adamo review

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Verdict

A stunning piece of design to rival any Apple offering, and the price is surprisingly reasonable

Review Date: 12 Aug 2009

Reviewed By: Mike Jennings

Price when reviewed: £1,156 (£1,329 inc VAT)

Overall Rating

Features & Design
6 stars out of 6

Value for Money
4 stars out of 6

Performance
3 stars out of 6

PCPRO Recommended

Performance and battery life

The gloriously thin design leaves little room for extravagance on the inside, and we were unsurprised to find the Adamo is powered by a low-voltage Intel processor. The 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo U9300 and an accompanying 3GB of DDR3 RAM produced a score of 0.68 in our real-world benchmarks, which is almost identical to that of the Air, with its 1.86GHz SU9400 processor. Neither is astonishingly quick, but for a laptop like this that's plenty of power for office work and other everyday tasks.

As with the Air, this Adamo sports a 128GB SSD. It's not as capacious as we've come to expect in today's laptops, but for the performance and added durability it's a luxurious trade-off we're happy with. If you need more, you could take a step up from this "Admire" specification and opt for the "Desire", which doubles that to 256GB, ups the RAM to 4GB and includes a slightly faster processor.

It also ups the price to £1,899 including VAT, which doesn't really jump out as an attractive deal. The two are identical other than those core specs, so you're stuck with integrated graphics that pretty much rule the Adamo out of gaming sessions. The £1,329 inc VAT base package is more appealing, and puts it on a par with the dearer of the two available MacBook Airs.

It's a very close call on most counts. There's less than a millimetre between them for thickness, but the Dell weighs around 400g more – not that this dampened the gushing appreciation it received in the PC Pro office.

Where the Dell can't quite match its rival is away from the mains. The Adamo managed two hours less than the Air in our light-use test, running out of steam just past five hours – a figure that also falls behind the excellent Sony VAIO VGN-Z31VN/X. Both the Adamo and the Air have fully enclosed batteries – so there’s no chance to buy a new one or fit a larger-capacity unit.

Conclusion

If you’re after a stunning machine that’s been designed from the ground up to make a statement, few will outdo the Adamo, a blissful marriage of superb ergonomics and striking design. It may not be as instantly cool as its Apple equivalent, but Dell has proven it's capable of coming up with a laptop that’s every bit as stylish and desirable.

While the Dell Adamo may not pack the punch of the Sony Z31, given its vastly lower price it's a much more realistic purchase for most consumers. It's light, slim and as gorgeous as a slab of black aluminium has any right to be, so it takes a deserved place as our A List ultraportable of choice.

Author: Mike Jennings

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Comments

User comments

Any chance of a photo of the COA sticker under the magnetic cover behind the screen? I've seen this described but would be interested to see how they've actually done it.

By davidbryant4 on 13 Aug 2009

First truly fair Mac vs. PC comparison?

Could you please do an article pitting Adamo the against the MacBook Air? I think these 2 products are probably as close as you could get to a proper 'like-for-like' comparison.

From where I'm standing, the MacBook Air suddenly doesn't seem so 'expensive' and under-specced. Infact compared to the Adamo, it looks positively better value and better designed!

By ihsan on 13 Aug 2009

David Bryant - I'm hoping to get a picture of the COA sticker today for you, so I'll put it on the gallery when I get my hands on it. That's a lovely little design touch.

Ihsan - I'm workong on it!

By Mikey_Jennings on 14 Aug 2009

Interior image is now in the gallery

David - I've got a picture of the Adamo's interior, now, showing the magnetic strip and the COA sticker beneath.

It's the seventh image in the gallery at the top of the review.

Hope that's ok!

By Mikey_Jennings on 14 Aug 2009

Cheers! Is it a normal size COA sticker or a smaller one?

By davidbryant4 on 14 Aug 2009

Cheers! Is it a normal size COA sticker or a smaller one?

By davidbryant4 on 14 Aug 2009

COA sticker

David - it looks to be a smaller one to fit in that tiny space!

By Mikey_Jennings on 14 Aug 2009

You're right ihsan but the Air is overpriced and so is the Adamo. I do happen to prefer the styling of the Adamo. It looks amazing. Shame it has Dell written on it though

By TimoGunt on 17 Aug 2009

The problem with macbooks is that they have an apple symbol on them and a smug consumer drone attached.

By dodge1963 on 22 Aug 2009

smug consumer drone?

I'm always fascinated by the attitude of some Windows users to Apple users. While Apple-fans take pot-shots at Windows, the Windows fans take pot-shots at Apple USERS. This sort of bigoted response seems to me to stem from a deep-seated insecurity; they think the Apple guys might be on to something, but they're afraid to make the move because they'd have to go form being a Windows "expert" to an Apple "novice", and that sort of challenge to their innate sense of superiority is too scary to contemplate, so they lash out at the people they secretly envy. You see the same kind of thing in Religious Extremists. Sad really.

By lgj001 on 17 Sep 2009

Smug?

I've been led to believe that Apple machines just work so you don't need to be an expert?

Personally, I don't envy Apple or people that own their products, but i do feel sad for people that fall for the hype or believe that buying Apple will somehow gain them more friends.

By rhythm on 2 Sep 2010

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