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Dell Studio 1555 review

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Verdict

Dell brings its Studio 15 bang up to date with a 15.6in, 16:9 ratio display, but patchy build quality limits its appeal

Review Date: 24 Aug 2009

Reviewed By: Sasha Muller

Price when reviewed: £608 (£699 inc VAT)

Overall Rating

Features & Design
3 stars out of 6

Value for Money
4 stars out of 6

Performance
5 stars out of 6

The patchy build quality has a detrimental effect on the keyboard too. The left-hand side of the keyboard is excellent, with the backlit keys providing a luxurious, silky feel and a crisp action. Move to the right hand-side, however, and a squishy base leaves the key action feeling mushy and indistinct.

Stepping up

Performance marks a distinct improvement for the Studio 1555. The range of processors available stretch from budget models right up to the 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9600, with our review model featuring the cost-effective and power-efficient 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo P8600.

And with even the cheapest model boasting 4GB of DDR2 memory (no sign of DDR3) there's plenty of breathing space for Vista's demands, and our application-based benchmarks finished with a nippy 1.19 overall.

The Studio's graphical abilities have also received a major overhaul. ATI's Mobility Radeon HD 4570 leaves the previous incumbent (the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450) choking in its dust, and where the old Studio managed just 22fps, the HD 4570 soars ahead with an average of 59fps in our least demanding Crysis benchmark.

It's enough of a boost to turn it into a capable games machine, and although it struggles with the demands of Crysis' high detail settings, it's sure to handle most modern games with aplomb.

Meanwhile, battery life is reasonable despite the power on tap, with the Studio 1555 achieving a time just short of five hours in our light-use battery tests.

Conclusion

Despite this, it's hard not to come away a little disheartened from our first encounter with the Studio 1555, however. Dell's Studio range of notebooks failed to bowl us over when it strode into view in the tail end of last year and, if anything, the Studio 1555 takes a step backwards from there.

The good looks, solid performance and keen pricing may be enough to tempt some prospective buyers away from its budget rivals but, ultimately, the iffy build quality and mediocre keyboard put paid to its class-leading aspirations.

Author: Sasha Muller

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User comments

My experiences of the Studio 1555

Thought I would add my personal experiences of the 1555 as I bought one when they came out a couple of months ago.

I wanted a good all-rounder that would act as the hub for my startup home recording studio as well as something I could take places with me to do the usual surfing, writing, movie watching and gaming. On all those scores it has proved to be a really good buy.

So far my 1555 has dealt with the hard grind of driving Abelton Live and the recording gear very well, no grumbles just good solid performance. The gaming experience has been good too. Ok, so you can't whack Crysis up to full spec but if you dial things down a bit I've yet to play a game that felt it was suffering on the laptop. My fave TF2 looks and play great though the touchpad is no use at all for gaming. Movies also look good and the sound quality is great, even through the laptop speakers which quite impressed me. Good selection of ins and outs too. Two headphone outputs is quite nice for sitting on a plane or train watching a movie with your friend.

On the down side the screen is a little bit reflective at times, but that is probably my main complaint. The other thing I don't particularly like is the touchpad. It is ok, and I admit I've never liked them anyway but I have found it a bit tricky to set up to the point where I'm happy using it. Certainly the default set up was a real pain.

One thing I would disagree with the PC Pro review over is I don't find the build quality questionable at all. Maybe the reviewer was unlucky or I was lucky? Mine is solid and feels robust and I've even got used to the 'flying wedge' shape, definitely an acquired taste but I like it!

I was fortunate enough to get a very good deal on a Dell offer that brought the cost down to £580 inc VAT and delivery. And that included a slightly better spec than the review version here - a 500gb HD, the longer life 9-cell battery which is proving fantastic, and even a nice dark blue lid ;-). I also got a free return flight to New York thanks to a promotion Dell had on at the time. I am thinking I should take the lappy with me as a little thankyou...

Overall, given the deal I got and the experience so far my Studio 1555 is proving to be an excellent laptop!

By hevster on 28 Aug 2009

not for a Winter sports enthusiast

I loved everything about the 1555 until I look at some skiing photos - these have a really bad purple tinge which once you are aware of this colour cast it becomes slightly apparent in other non-snow scenes. I had no issues at all with build quality, I like the keyboard, screen brightness, sound is excellent but I need to look at skiing pictures and edit skiing videos and I can't live with that purple tinge, and I did look at several 1555 screens. By comparison my M1530 has a delightful screen (1440*900 CCFL) reproducing colurs very accurately.

By downland on 19 Oct 2009

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