The Dell XPS M1330 picks up the torch from the popular portable XPS M1210 notebook and carries on the tradition of a nicely designed and excellent performing portable notebook. The M1330 sports an LED backlit screen, Intel Santa Rosa processor, Nvidia 8400m graphics and wonderful 13.3″ portable form factor.

The M1330 of course has the latest Intel platform, dubbed Santa Rosa, that offers faster processor speeds and a new and improved integrated graphics solution in the form of the X3100. Integrated graphics is offered in the XPS M1330 for those that don’t need dedicated graphics. The XPS M1330 I have has a 2.0GHz Intel T7300 processor on board, it has 4MB of cache on the chip and a front side bus speed of 800MHz to help move things along. Though I’m not much of a gamer, I went with the Nvidia 8400m graphics solution just in case I ever need a bit of extra 3D performance in tasks I perform.

System as Reviewed:

• Processor: 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T7300 processor, Santa Rosa chipset (up to 2.4GHz available)
• Graphics: 128MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS
• Screen: 13.3-inch WXGA screen with LED backlight
• Color: Crimson red
• RAM: 2GB (up to 4GB)
• Hard Drive: 120GB 5400 RPM SATA HDD (32GB SSD drive available)
• Optical Drive: Slot-loading dual-layer DVD”RW drive
• Connectivity: Ethernet, 802.11a/g/n (Intel 4965), Bluetooth option (Verizon EVDO optional)
• Integrated VGA webcam
• Ports: HDMI, FireWire 1394, two USB 2.0 ports, fingerprint reader, microphone port, headphone jack, monitor out
• Slots: ExpressCard slot, integrated media card reader (MS, SD, xD)
• OS: Windows Vista Home Premium
• Dimensions: 12.5″ x 9.4″ x 0.87″ - 1.33″
• Weight starts at 4 pounds with 6-cell battery

I paid around $2,000 for this configuration after all was said and done.

Places to buy

You can buy the Dell XPS M1330 via Dell.com, over the phone or from a Dell kiosk. The best place to configure an XPS M1330 is Dell.com. I had to wait over a month for my XPS M1330 to ship after placing the order. This is because I ordered soon after the notebook was announced and Dell had some pretty major production delays, usually Dell will ship you a notebook within 2-weeks or so of ordering.

What you get

• Dell XPS M1330 notebook
• Media Remote Control
• Mobile Stereo Earbud Headphones (1 pair)
• AC Adapter
• 6-cell Lithium-Ion battery (varies based on battery you order)
• User guides and other documents
• Restore and driver dics
• XPS M1330 carry sleeve

Weigh in

One thing I like to always do with any new gadget I get is take it to the scales and see if the weight matches what the manufacturer quotes. Light weight is important with a laptop, the easier it is to carry around the better. According to Dell, the weight of the XPS M1330 is 3.97lbs with the smallest size 4-cell battery. I don’t have the 4-cell battery to weigh it with, but I did get a 6-cell and 9-cell battery so I can offer weight comparisons with those two battery options.

With the 9-cell battery in the XPS M1330 the weight comes to about 4.75lbs.

And when equipped with the 6-cell battery, the XPS M1330 weight is about 4.41lbs. I find it hard to believe that with the 4-cell battery the weight truly is under 4lbs.

Here’s a comparison of the XPS M1330 weight to some similar sized notebooks:

It’s always good to consider how much a notebook weighs when you add in the power adapter for travel weight, here you can see that with the 9-cell battery and power adapter the total weight of the system comes to about 5.5lbs.

Size-Up

Another interesting metric I like to look at is the dimensions of the notebook compared to similar notebooks. The approximate volume (or space the laptop occupies) is calculated by taking the Width x Height x Depth. When the notebook slopes the average height is taken (max height + min height / 2) as the multiplier.

The interesting thing is while the XPS M1330 is incredibly thin at the front, it is actually one of the thicker 13.3″ notebooks on the market when you consider the back area of the notebook where the barreled hinge is. The sloped sports car like look is very cool looking, but I think most people will be surprised at how thick the notebook is at the back.

Looks

The M1330 is available in three different colors: red, white and black. It was a pretty tough decision to make to be honest, I think I’d be happy with any of the colors offered. However, I decided to go with the color that is the most unique and stands out the most from every other notebook out there. The look of the outside is very eye catching and almost sports car like.

Upon opening the M1330 there’s more in the way of excellent design. The touch sensitive buttons along the top of the keyboard are very cool, they light up with a soft glow when pressed. These buttons look stylish and the LED backlit indicator lights alongside them also add a nice design flare. The keyboard is silver in color while the casing in this area has a brushed aluminum look. This gives an overall industrial look to the M1330 indicating that this machine is a mix of both brawn and beauty.

The hinge of the notebook is one of its more unique features. The very rounded and barrel like design gives it a cool look from the side. When first images of this notebook appeared people thought the power button would be integrated into the hinge where you see the Dell, but that’s not the case, the power button is on the top area of the keyboard.

Construction

The XPS M1330 uses a magnesium-alloy casing which makes it feel very sturdy and also makes it look great. The build is very solid, there’s essentially no flex anywhere on the body, it’s firm all over. The double barrel hinge makes for a nice smooth opening movement with the screen, and once opened the screen sits fairly low and therefore gives the notebook a lower overall profile.

The lid of the notebook provides more than adequate protection for the screen. I have the super-thin LED backlit screen, it’s not only a gorgeous screen but also more forgiving when it gets twisted or bent in a manner a normal screen might not hold up so well.

I’d be very confident in this notebook holding up over years of usage, it simply feels like it was built to last.

Under side view of XPS M1330

Ports

The port selection of the Dell XPS M1330 is on par or slightly better than competing 13.3″ notebooks. Again I”ll compare it to what similar notebooks have so you get an idea of where it stands relative to competition

Below is a picture tour of the ports and where they’re offered on the XPS M1330:

Front side

Left Side

Right side

The offering of an HDMI port is really nice, overall there’s little to complain about the ports, although another USB port might have been nice to have.

The selection of buttons are also generous on the XPS M1330, below is a tour of the buttons you’ll find above the keyboard along with some other key features:

Also worth mentioning is that you get a nice built-in remote that fits into the ExpressCard slot, it works well for controlling media across a room.

Keyboard

The keys on the XPS M1330 are nicely spread out, making it easy type on. The keyboard is firm in its feel too, there’s no sponginess or mushy keyboard feeling. There’s little to complain about with the XPS M1330 keyboard.

The touchpad is a little on the small side, but works okay and is responsive. There’s built-in vertical and horizontal scroll areas. The buttons are decent, but they’re not the best I’ve used, they could have a bit more travel to them.

Screen

You can get two different types of screens on the XPS M1330: LED backlit thin screen or regular cathode backlit screen. I went with the superior but more expensive LED backlit screen. This LED backlit screen is brighter, offering 300 nits of brightness. The average notebook screen is about 200 nits, so this screen is noticeably brighter. The LED backlit screen is also somewhat thinner and lighter so there’s an added advantage there. One downside is that the regular thicker screen comes with a higher res 2.0MP camera and the thin LED comes with a lower resolution VGA camera, but who is actually using a web cam to take portrait pictures of their family? The low res camera is actually better for low light situations and for video chat because you can get better frame rates.

The screen resolution is WXGA, that’s about the only option available for a 13.3″ screen notebook. It’s good because it offers easy viewing of images and text, but if the resolution were higher you could fit more on the screen.

The screen has a glossy finish to offer better contrast and bolder colors, but it will mean you get some reflection on the screen in strong lighting situations.

Sound

The speakers for the M1330 are located above the keyboard. The speakers are fairly standard for a laptop, they get loud enough, but the sound is slightly tinny as is the case with nearly all laptop speakers. The volume audio controls are touch sensitive buttons along the top right side of the keyboard. It’s a somewhat hard to use these buttons if you have larger sized fingers. I found the touch sensitive volume control buttons are tough to use, though they look nice, buttons or a volume dial control is easier to use. If you prefer to use headphones to the built-in, you’re in luck. There are two headphone ports to capture audio from, both are located on the front of the notebook.

Performance

The XPS M1330 is configurable with up to a 2.20 GHz Intel Santa Rosa processor at the current time. You can also configure it with an Nvidia 8400m dedicataed graphics card or go with integrated Intel X3100 graphics. The dedicated graphics upgrade to 8400m is pretty steep at $100, so decide whether you truly need it or not. Dedicated graphics will offer better 3D performance, but only if you’re doing some gaming or using applications that demand such things as 3D polygon rendering or shading. If you use a notebook to do work and don’t care about games, just go with the Intel X3100. If you’d like to do a bit of gaming while on the go, definitely go with the Nvidia 8400 options.

I would recommend against getting the 2.20GHz processor in the M1330, I simply can’t think why you would need such a powerful processor in such a small machine, the 2.0GHz I have is more than sufficient and offers amazing performance.

Make sure to get at least 2GB of RAM, you can configure up to 4GB of RAM. For most people 2GB will be sufficient, but with Windows Vista as the OS more RAM can only help — Vista is a memory hog.

I got a 120GB hard drive that spins at 5400RPM, which is a modest speed and probably somewhat of a bottleneck for this system. If you’re all about system speed you could go with the very expensive Solid State Disk (SSD) option but you can only get up to 32GB of storage space with that. Once Windows Vista is installed on that 32GB drive and other applications Dell installs you have very little space left to store files, so think hard before going with the SSD — even though it may be tempting (although the $600 cost upgrade might make that a lot less tempting).

I ran PCMark05 on the XPS M1330 to get an overall system performance score, you can see that the M1330 performs extremely well with a 4,572 score. It trounces notebooks larger than itself, such is the power you can pack into this machine if you configure it with high-end components.

Optical Drive

One very cool thing worth mentioning with the XPS M1330 is that the optical drive is slot loading, meaning you don’t have to pop out a tray to put a CD or DVD in. You just insert a disc a little way and the drive will pull it in. Just push the eject button to make the system pop a disk out. It’s a great touch and in general more functional than a tray. At the moment a DVD burner is the only option for the type of slot loading optical drive you can get.

Battery

There are 3 options for types of battery with the XPS M1330: 4-cell, 6-cell or 9-cell. If you’re traveling, such as doing cross country flights, the 9-cell is what you’ll want. If you’re just bopping around town or campus then the 6-cell should suffice. If you’re at a desk all day then the 4-cell is best since you won’t need battery life anyway.

I got a 9-cell and 6-cell battery. With the 9-cell battery installed and using the screen at full brigthness and watching a DVD I got about 3 hours and 20 minutes of battery life. Under normal usage (office work and Internet) and screen set to half brightness with the 9-cell battery I got close to 5 hours of battery life.

Using the 6-cell battery under normal usage (office work and screen brightness at half) I got around 3 hours of battery life.

Of course the other major factor to consider with the battery option is the size. The 9-cell and 6-cell are seen above, the 9-cell is much larger and sticks out of the notebook meaning that it is heavier and elevates the M1330 in terms of height at the back.

XPS M1330 with 6-cell installed:

XPS M1330 with 9-cell battery installed — noticed it elevates the back of the notebook further:

Noise

Really the noisiest part of the M1330 is the slot loading optical drive. When you put in or takeout a DVD it’s pretty loud. Other than that the hard drive is quiet and so is the fan. The keyboard and mouse buttons are not too clicky either, so if you use this in a library you should be okay as long as you’re not popping DVDs in and out of the drive.

Heat

The palm rests on the M1330 get pretty warm, I think this will bother some people, but personally it doesn’t worry me so much. The heat on the palm rests never gets overly hot or uncomfortable, but it is certainly noticeable. The underside of the M1330 gets warm too, but it’s still ok to be using on your lap. Overall it’s not the coolest notebook out there in terms of surface temperatures, but internal temperatures remained quite low even when running benchmarks. The processor temps never came close to 70C, remaining in the 50C to low 60C range.

Conclusion

I really love the XPS M1330 in terms of its looks, portability and just overall cool factor. The performance for this sized notebook is absolutely amazing as well. This notebook is great for those that want to be portable and have power on the go, plus be fashionable at the same time. If you’re just sitting at a desk all day doing work, this notebook is overpriced and does not make sense for you. Overall there’s a lot to love about the M1330 and it’s easy to recommend.

Pros

• Stunning design, color options for the lid is great
• The LED backlit screen is absolutely gorgeous in terms of looks and brightness
• Fantastic performance and the option to really configure a powerful notebook
• Slot loading DVD burner is great
• Good multimedia options and HDMI port for high quality video output
• Keyboard is nice to use

Cons

• Gets a bit warm
• Order processing time was long, hopefully that changes
• Can be pricey if you configure it with all the high-end options
• Media buttons are a bit hard to use, but look nice
• Touchpad should be bigger