The Dell Vostro 1400 is a 14.1″ widescreen offering in the Dell Small Business lineup of laptops. The Vostro 1400 is very affordable, but at the same time a very good quality notebook. You don’t pay much, but you get a lot with this plain looking but high utility notebook.

Specs of Vostro 1400 under review:

• Intel Core 2 Duo T5470 1.60GHz processor
• 14.1 inch Wide Screen XGA
• 1GB 667MHz RAM
• Intel Integrated Graphics X3100
• 80GB 5400RPM Hard Drive
• Windows Vista Basic
• 24X Combo CD-RW/DVD optical drive
• Dell Wireless 1390 802.11g Mini Card
• 56WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion battery
• 1-year warranty

Overview

The Vostro 1400 is considered a portable size laptop, slightly smaller than the mainstream 15.4″ screen you get with the Vostro 1500. The 14.1″ screen is big enough for comfortable viewing, yet the overall laptop size is small enough that it’s quite easy to carry.

The Vostro 1400 is in fact very much similar to the consumer line Inspiron 1420 notebook. The main difference is that the Inspiron 1420 has a brushed paint finish available in 8-different colors. The added benefit with the Vostro 1400 is you’ll get 30-days satisfaction guarantee for returning the laptop, no questions asked and no restocking fee. With the Inspiron line it’s a 15% of the initial cost of the laptop restocking fee.

Places to buy

You can buy the Dell Vostro 1400 via Dell.com, over the phone or from a Dell kiosk. The best place to configure a Vostro 1400 is Dell.com. I had to wait just 10-days for my Vostro to arrive after placing the order. That’s really good in my book.

What you get

• Dell Vostro 1400 notebook
• AC Adapter
• 6-cell Lithium-Ion battery (varies based on battery you order)
• User guides and other documents
• Restore and driver discs

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. According to Dell, the weight of the Vostro 1400 is 5.4lbs with the 6-cell 56WHr standard battery. Putting it on the scales actually shows the weight to be closer to 5.66lbs.

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 6-cell battery and power adapter the total weight of the system comes to about 6.46lbs.

That’s actually quite heavy for a 14.1′ screen laptop, you’ll start to feel that weight if you carry it for long distances.

Size-Up

Another interesting metric I like to look at is the dimensions of the notebook compared to similar notebooks.

At its thinnest point the Vostro 1400 is 1.26 inches, so it’s slightly thicker than your average 14.1″ screen notebook. You can see the Vostro 1400 is precisely the same dimension wise as the Inspiron 1420, this is because they use the exact same chassis.

For the sake of size comparison, I placed the Dell Vostro 1000 15.4″ widescreen budget notebook (on the left) next to the Dell Vostro 1400 (on the right). You can see the 15.4″ screen Vostro 1000 is quite a bit bigger, so if you need to be portable the Vostro 1400 is a better option — even though it’s still not the lightest 14.1″ screen model on the market.

Looks

The design of the Vostro 1400 isn’t meant to turn heads; it’s just supposed to look professional and unassuming. The case has an all black metallic look, it certainly looks solid, I would say even muscular looking. The curved edges also look nice and prevent the laptop from looking too boxy and boring.

On the front left area there are blue LED lights that give a nice accent. The media buttons located above the keyboard are a metallic silver and also add a nice look. The metallic silver latch on the lid looks good and even the Dell badge gives a sense of overall quality to the machine.

Construction Quality

I’m very impressed by the overall build quality of the Vostro 1400. It’s just very solid. The entire case is made of a magnesium alloy that does not flex anywhere. Pushing in on either the lid or the main chassis presents no give. The downside to Dell using such a solid material is that the notebook is heavy for its size.

Worth mentioning is the fact the Vostro 1400 keyboard is sealed to protect from liquid spills and the hard drive is shock mounted to protect it should the laptop be dropped.

Ports

The port selection of the Dell Vostro 1400 is pretty darn good for this size notebook. Again I’ll compare it to what similar notebooks have so you get an idea of where it stands relative to competition

Let’s take a look at the port offerings and locations on Vostro 1400:

On the front side you have status lights, 8-in-1 media card slot, wi-fi catching, dual headphone out, microphone in, and consumer IR sensor

On the left side there’s the power adapter connector, air vent, FireWire, two USB ports and an ExpressCard slot

On the back is the modem and Ethernet LAN port

On the right side is the optical drive, S-Video port, two USB ports, and monitor out.

Keyboard

The keys on the Vostro 1400 keyboard are well placed, I have no complaints there. The feel of the keys is nice too, they have a bit of a grip to them. The travel is a bit shallow and light touch typists will prefer this keyboard over those that like to pound on a keyboard and get a ton of travel with a key. There’s no sag to the keyboard anywhere, it’s very firm. The keyboard is also sealed to prevent any liquid from going into the notebook.

The touchpad works fine, it has horizontal and vertical scroll areas and the mouse buttons are quite nice. It would be nice if there were an on/off switch for the touchpad.

Buttons

The media buttons are located along the top of the keyboard of the Vostro 1400. The keys are a bit small, but they work well. I much prefer having “regular buttons” as opposed to the touch sensitive buttons the HP dv2500t offers. While the dv2500t touch sensitive non-raised buttons might look nice, in reality they’re harder to push. When you push the Vostro 1400 buttons you feel it go in and see an on screen feedback display so you know you’re definitely turning the volume up or down for instance.

The media buttons on the Vostro 1500, the larger 15.4″ screen brother to the 1400, are located at the front. I think I prefer the buttons at the front for quick access, but I guess they’re less prone to getting bumped when placed toward the back of the keyboard such as they are on the 1400.

The Wi-Fi catcher on the front side of the notebook is a nice button to have. You simply push it and it lights up green if it detects wireless access points in the vicinity. It can also be used to turn wireless on/off.

Screen

Dell offers up to WXGA+ (1440 x 900) resolution on the Vostro 1400, it’s nice to have extra viewing real estate but not have resolution so high that you can’t read text. Your options for the screen include a WXGA glossy, WXGA non-glossy or WXGA+ glossy screens.

The screen is very bright, I’m very pleased with that factor. Unfortunately, just like with some of the Inspiron notebooks, there’s a bit of graininess on this screen if you stare hard enough — it’s more noticeable on a white background screen. I used Astra32 to detect who the maker of the screen was and it appears it’s made by AU Optronics.

With the glossy screen colors are bright and bold, but you will get reflection from strong lighting. Viewing angles are so-so, about average among other notebooks.

Sound

The speakers for the Vostro 1400 are located above the keyboard. I was quite amazed by the loudness and quality of these speakers, I watched a movie using the Vostro 1400 and was stunned by how loud it got, it was completely audible from across my apartment and the quality was good — not at all tinny. A big plus in this area for the Vostro 1400!

Performance

As usual with Dell notebooks, the Vostro 1400 can be configured until your hearts delight. That said, this is an Intel based notebook so a selection of Core 2 Duo processors is your only choice. That’s good news though since this is the top mobile processor family on the market. If you’re just going to be using this notebook for business tasks then a low to mid-range Core 2 Duo like the T5470 1.60GHz will be fine. If you know your needs are a bit more demanding, then you can pay more for a faster Core 2 Duo such as the Intel T7700 2.40 GHz processor ‘ be aware you always pay a bit of a premium just for having the fastest processor, even if the speed gain isn’t really that much.

One thing to make sure of is that you get 2GB of RAM if you opt for Windows Vista and at least 1GB of RAM if you opt for Windows XP. It’s still the case that overall performance will be faster if you go with 2GB of RAM and Windows XP (all else being equal), Vista is just slower — though arguably has more features.

Hard Drive wise your only option is 5400RPM speed, looking at Dell.com now you can select capacity ranging from 120GB to 250GB. When I ordered the base amount was 80GB which for my needs was fine. As usual costs have come down and if you order now you’ll get more for your dollar than even two months ago.

Below are a couple of benchmark scores for the Vostro 1400 under review. You can see that it does not match up to other notebooks tested in PCMark05, but that’s because this Vostro 1400 does not have dedicated graphics, they’re Intel integrated. If you want better overall system scores, go with the Nvidia 8400 options and a faster Core 2 Duo processor. Cinebench tests the dual core rendering capabilities of a processor, the T5470 processor does okay here — but again, it’s not the fastest Core 2 Duo so get a T7500 2.0GHz if you need faster.

Noise

The Vostro 1400 is very quiet, at no time did it get really loud with fans. Basically you won’t hear this notebook at all in an environment with ambient noise, and if you’re in a library it won’t get loud enough to annoy anyone. The optical drive is the noisiest component, and that’s only when it’s spinning up a DVD.

Heat

The Vostro 1400 stays mostly cool, the left touchpad does get slightly warm when the notebook is being pushed hard, but the right palmrest stays cool. The bottom of the notebook also warms up a bit, but nothing drastic by any means. Under normal usage processor temperatures seemed to remain around 50C and never went past 65C during any benchmarking tests. Heat will not be an issue with this notebook for the average user.

Battery

The 6-cell battery gave me about 2.5 hours of battery life while it was mostly idling but with wireless on and the screen at about medium brightness. My guess is you could maybe stretch the 6-cell battery to 3 hours. More realistically you’ll get about 2 hours of battery life under normal usage. Not bad overall, but definitely not the best.

Conclusion

The Vostro 1400 is definitely a great notebook for the price. I got mine for around $600 after using a coupon, which is an insane deal. The build quality is quite excellent and the though the look is kind of bland, it’s not horrible. Some people might even prefer the all black look over the more flashy Dell Inspiron color options. Another really nice thing about the Vostro 1400 is the fact that you get a 30-day return policy, no questions asked by Dell, if you decide it’s not what you want.

Though the configuration Vostro 1400 I got was fairly budget and on the low end, the performance can be really amazing if you get a high-end processor and Nvidia 8400m graphics card. Options for built-in Verizon EVDO is certainly nice to have for those that want to be connected while on the road too. The only problem with being on the road with this laptop is that, for a 14.1″ laptop it’s kind of heavy and chunky, so it’s not the easiest thing in the world to lug around.

Pros

• Excellent performance when configured with faster Core 2 Duo processor and Nvidia card
• Good screen options
• Very cool running and quiet notebook
• Excellent build quality, very solid
• Very good wireless connectivity options
• Good price

Cons

• The design is kind of bland
• Not a thin-and-light, it’s a bit bigger than average 14.1″ notebook
• Screen has some graininess to it