The warranty can be extended. The keyboard in place here is taken from the Dell Inspiron Mz subnotebook and is quite comfortable to use. The keys have rounded corners and only a short depression depth. The pressure point for keystrokes is easy to feel. Other plus points are the large right "shift" key and the clearly labeled "Fn" keys. The Touchpad is slightly recessed into the surrounding palm rest and is fairly large.
In addition to support for multi-touch gestures, the Synaptics touchpad also has unmarked vertical and horizontal scroll bars. The touchpad buttons have a spongy feel when pressed down. The short depression depth of the keys is, however, quite nice. The widescreen trend has become the standard and Dell dares not stray from this path. The LCD screen measuring 26 cm diagnally The multi-touch support allows for very fluid scrolling. Zooming in and out, on the other hand, appears rather choppy.
The onscreen keyboard pops up on command allowing you to input text. Thanks to the generously wide keyboard, typing on screen doesn't take much getting used to. Nevertheless, typing on conventional tablets feels more comfortable. All in all, the pinpoint-accurate responsiveness of the touchscreen makes for easy use provided you calibrate the screen using the corresponding driver in Windows 7.
Dell has developed the duo Stage User Interface for use of the device as a tablet. This is quite simply a program run by Windows 7 that's more comfortable to use than the regular windows 7 interface in tablet mode. The built-in tilt sensors , additionally, allow you to hold the device upright portrait or side to side for a widescreen appearance landscape like many smartphones. The screen contents rotate to accommodate the way you're holding the tablet.
On top of access to the internet browser, Paint and the Windows 7 games folder, three programs from Samsung can be accessed in tablet mode.
One of the advantages of these programs is the potential for use in connection with Facebook, Flickr and Napster, for example. The biggest weak points of the tablet user interface is the choppy performance of applications , the slow responsiveness of the tilt sensor and the long loading times of individual programs—which cannot be multitasked.
This means that one program does not continue to run in the background after opening a second—as opposed to most multitasking-capable tablets. So, switching back to a previously opened program means that program has to be opened and loaded up all over again.
All in all, it's a nice idea, but straightforward tablets with multi-tasking capability e. Apple iPad function a good deal better. If you don't want to use the duo Stage tablet UI, it can be manually deactivated. The screen measures Dell has come to a peculiar compromise in this area, however. High-quality inch IPS screens In Plane Switching are only currently available in the inpractical aspect ratio of , which doesn't match Dell's aims for a media-focused device.
An order for a special set of screens to be manufactured particularly for the Inspiron duo was likely too small to be carried out. The screen brightness is among many other average notebooks with a glossy LED display. The average screen brightness of This difference is visible.
Other visual weak points of the display include the high-gloss plastic screen, the crack between the screen and display frame letting light shine through and the very broad 3-cm wide frame surrounding the screen.
The breadth of the color space the display can reproduce is an important consideration for professionals in choosing a mobile device. In the color space comparison, it becomes clear that even the sRGB spectrum is not nearly covered—that is to say, Dell did not go with a very good display for the Inspiron duo. Outdoor use is practically impossible with the Inspiron duo and with the right lighting, the screen can even be used as a mirror indoors.
Using the device in rooms without light directly shining onto the screen is easily possible. Nevertheless, reflections still end up popping up. All things considered, a substantially brighter LCD screen or an IPS screen with an excellent range of viewing angles—like in the Apple iPad—would be especially helpful for use as a tablet.
The range of viewing angles here is typical for a netbook. Horizontally, that is, looking at the screen from an angle off to the left or the right, screen contents remain relatively undistorted even at sharp angles. Vertically tilting the screen up or down , only a small deviation from the ideal viewing angle results in color inversion or an overexposed-looking image, rendering printed content unreadable. This tends to limit down the device's potential for use as a tablet.
Within the case, you'll find the most modern of netbook hardware. The greatest advantage of this configuration is the low energy consumption of 8. Dell has chosen not to include a dedicated graphics card, instead falling back on the on-board Intel GMA The graphics rendering of the GMA is limited by the clock rate of MHz , making this combination insufficient for running current games. The device comes with the current version of the GPU driver 8. These components may be replaced, which first requires the loosening of quite a few screws.
After removing the keyboard and the inner chassis, you have access to the RAM and hard drive. The HDD can only be replaced by another hard drive with a height of 7mm. The elevated application performance in combination with 2 GB of RAM enables the system to run smoothly without long loading times or windows popping up too slowly.
At points , our test device is on par with other current notebooks e. Older devices with single-core processors rank in way behind at about to points lower. This is furthermore confirmed by PCMark 05, which gives our test device an overall score points.
Since the introduction of dual-core CPUs in notebooks, programs respond smoothly and even multi-tasking causes no big problems under typical office use. The results of the synthetic gaming benchmarks from Futuremark are not up to par, since only the on-board graphics card comes into use. Both current and older notebooks with this graphics card have very similar scores. The more powerful Intel GMA HD on-board graphics card manages a substantial improvement in performance at points.
The upcoming release of the AMD Brazos platform means the currently dominant Intel Pine Trail platform will get a run for its money, especially in the area of 3D performance. The Inspiron duo ranks in just about average compared with similarly equipped notebooks according to PC Mark , which evaluates the system as a whole for its office performance. At points, the Convertible lands a good deal ahead of the Samsungs NF , which earned points with identical hardware. Depending on the particular model, the Dell Inspiron duo is equipped with either a GB od GB hard drive, of which we reviewed the smaller retail model.
This component allows for rendering of HD material. With most notebooks, this feature either comes at an extra cost or is up to you to install yourself. What's interesting is that other devices with the Intel Atom N but without the decoder manage to run this film smoothly, but at a much higher CPU load.
Playing the trailer for "Skyline" p, x Pixel via YouTube is piece of cake for the duo Convertible. The gaming performance is, however, not improved by the decoder, leaving it at quite a low level. Older games are only playable at minimal graphics settings, the low resolutions don't make the games very enjoyable.
In Idle mode the Inspiron duo runs silently reaching a noise level of only The fan is off most of the time and the subtle hum of the hard drive is sometimes audible. The HDD itself produces Under heavy use, the noise level rises substantially to a maximum of The duo is cooled by a small fan and a copper heat pipe, that do a good job together. Due to the very small exhaust vent, warm air doesn't leave the case quite fast enough, causing some heat accumulation around the fan.
The max temperature of The case warms up a bit , but the velvety case surface keeps heat in check. In idle mode, the case only reaches a comfortably cool max of Dell has carefully considered the question and has made a wise choice in placing the speakers at the sides of the laptop. The sound quality is decent, the high notes sound good and the max volume is fairly loud.
Even the bass is noticeable, albeit subtle. It sits over the Windows 7 interface and, although intuitive, features a few quirks that make it sometimes confusing. You can't travel back through some menus, for example. The touchscreen isn't as accurate as we would have liked either, which can be frustrating, but once you get used to it, browsing the web and selecting music is surprisingly quick and easy — and offers a much more intuitive experience than in netbook mode.
Portability-wise the device is no problem to carry around, but the minute battery life is a little disappointing. There's no doubt the Inspiron Duo is flawed by a few issues, but we thoroughly bought into Dell's vision of combining the netbook and tablet, and flipping between the two to carry out different tasks is intuitive and fun. North America.
Home Reviews Computing. You can't deny Dell some hard-fought gee-whiz cred with the new Inspiron Duo. In a world of commoditized portables, it is nothing if not a unique product. Show it off to your friends; it looks like a netbook, and you pop open the laptop-like clamshell and wait for the bored expression to appear. Then comes the sucker punch: you rotate the screen horizontally within its frame and snap the laptop back shut. Ta-da, it's a freakin' tablet, bro! People are duly impressed. It's a neat trick and, at the very least, a clever feat of engineering.
But what is the Dell Inspiron Duo? Cut through the mystery and you will find — sorry to burst your bubble — a Windows netbook with a rotating touchscreen. This is the problem with dual-function gadgets in general: They rarely do either of the things they're designed for very well.
As a netbook, the Duo is at least passable.
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