Can powerful and portable successfully mix? Dell thinks it has a working combination
For
Superb CPU performance
Superb graphics performance
Thin-and-light design
High-DPI QHD+ display
SSD, 802.11ac wireless networking
Against
Software sometimes doesn't work well on high-DPI screens
Poor battery life
No ethernet port or optical drive
The promise of using an Ultrabook-sized computer for serious design
work has never really come to fruition, because until recently, mobile
workstations have been a compromise between portability and performance.
If
you want a high-end laptop, capable of running processor-intensive
software about as well as a desktop can, then you can expect it'll be
heavy like the Lenovo ThinkPad T440S.
Ratings in depth
Alternatively
you could opt for a more lightweight machine, but that also means a
lightweight graphics card, processor or both, as with any number of
Ultrabooks like the Toshiba Satellite U50T.
That's
why the Dell Precision M3800 is so special. It's exceptionally powerful
and particularly portable, squeezing a Haswell-based Intel Core i7
processor, an Nvidia Quadro graphics card, up to 16GB of memory and both
an SSD and hard disk into a chassis that's just 18mm thick and weighs
1.8kg. What's
more, the high-end M3800 variants come with a 3200x1800 QHD+ display, a
resolution with higher pixels-per-inch (PPI) than Apple's MacBook Pro
with Retina Display. At super-high resolutions like this, text and
graphics are rendered with a noticeable crispness that makes rich
content such as web pages look stunning. To cap it off, the 15.6-inch
glossy screen is 10-point multi-touch capable too.
And as a
further endorsement, the M3800 looks fantastic. The slim design
complements the silver-grey aluminium cover, with precisely cut curves
and edges that give the laptop an unmistakably professional look, but
certainly not a dull one. A rubbery material surrounds the keyboard,
which is exceptionally comfortable when typing, but may not stand up
well to rough use. The
keyboard is chiclet-style, with well-sized keys for accurate typing.
There's a giant trackpad, which can be tapped or clicked, but no
physical buttons. With Dell's own software loaded in the System Tray,
the trackpad can recognise multi-touch gestures, so dragging two fingers
down scrolls through a web page.
Dell's site offers surprisingly
few customisation options. All M3800 variants come with a 2.2GHz Core i7
4702HQ quad-core processor, which runs at 3.2GHz in Turbo mode and
Quadro K1100M graphics card with 2GB of memory, which goes alongside the
integrated Intel HD 4600. Likewise, all models come with a built-in
twin-antenna Intel 802.11ac wireless adaptor. The
M3800 we reviewed came with a 256GB LiteOn SSD, and a 500GB hybrid hard
disk, which combines a small amount of flash memory with a conventional
disk for speedy access times. A 512GB SSD is available in the most
high-end model.
If you opt for a less-expensive M3800, you get a
1080p-resolution display rather than the QHD+ one, as well as less
memory, and only a hard disk without the SSD.
At the top of the
screen is a 720p webcam, plus two microphones for stereo audio. To our
ears, the speaker quality is great for a laptop, but as ever an external
sound system is recommended for serious music enjoyment. What
you won't find is an optical drive or Ethernet port. If you want wired
networking, Dell has included a USB-to-Ethernet cable in the accessories
box, while the Windows 8.1 recovery files are on a USB stick.
Given the
M3800's thin design, there is a generous selection of ports at the
side. There's HDMI 1.4 and DisplayPort video output, three USB 3 ports, a
USB 2 port and a card reader.
Performance
You might think
desktop performance from a slim laptop is an exaggeration, but that's
just about what Intel's top-end Haswell mobile processors can manage.
CPU benchmark results were within 10 percent of those measured on a
desktop computer with Intel's 3.5GHz Core i7 3770k for comparison. The
M3800 scores 6.36 in Cinebench 11.5, not far off the desktop's 6.8. In
3DS Max, a detailed render that took just over 20 minutes on the desktop
took 22 minutes on the Dell M3800. A great result.
The
specification of the Quadro K1100M closely matches Nvidia's slightly
older mid-range K2000M mobile GPU. One of the big differences with the
newer card is a 45W power consumption, compared with 55W before, making
it easier for Dell to squeeze into the M3800's thin chassis. In
tests this card performed very well, with 42.14 fps in the Cinebench
OpenGL test and a 3DMark Vantage score of p8170, far better than most
laptops of this size. In professional graphics benchmark SPECviewperf
11, it's outclassed by Nvidia's beefier Quadro K3000M and above GPUs.
But
these cards draw more power and require additional cooling, meaning
their inclusion would have necessitated a larger chassis. The Quadro
supports Cuda as well, so Cuda-accelerated software such as Adobe After
Effects should receive a further performance boost with the card when
enabled. The
Intel 7260 wireless adaptor didn't fair so well. Tested with a Western
Digital AC1300 wireless router, we measured 38MB/s transfer rates, from a
distance of one metre. Reasonable, but 802.11ac can be quicker than
that, when used with a three-antenna receiver.
Likewise, the MSATA
SSD didn't produce record-breaking transfer rates. 436MB/s read and
384MB/s write speeds are alright, but from its 4KQD32 write speeds in
CrystalDiskMark, we calculated the SSD offers 70,000 IOPS. Not as high
as Samsung's high-end Evo drives, for example. But
despite less-than-perfect wireless and storage speeds, the M3800's
hardware is tantalisingly attractive. Although there are no expansion
bays, you can easily add a new SSD or upgrade the hard disk by undoing
some Torx screws on the carbon-fibre base. The combination of excellent
performance, high-DPI display and thin design are one of the best in a
Windows laptop. Except for a few problems.
For text and graphics
to appear at normal sizes on the exceptionally high resolution QHD+
display, they need to be drawn at a higher DPI than on lower
resolutions, In Modern UI, this all happens automatically, and in
Windows 8.1, the DPI is automatically set, so all title bars, menus and
text on the Windows desktop look normal. But
load some third-party software and there's a high chance the fonts and
graphics will be so small, the application will be unusable.
Adobe
CS6 and Creative Cloud applications are one notable example. The menu
titles are unreadable and each icon occupies less than a millimetre of
screen space. There are plenty of other examples that cropped up during
testing, and it will take a while before the issue is fully addressed by
Microsoft and software vendors. This
is hugely disappointing, given that the M3800's performance is just the
sort of thing graphic designers want from a portable system. Lowering
the desktop resolution is one solution, which renders the high-DPI
display pointless, and while you could opt for the cheaper 1080p model
instead, the variants available on Dell's site don't offer all the bells
and whistles of those that come equipped with the models sporting a
QHD+ display.
The other problem is battery life. An estimated two
hours, nine minutes in PCMark08 is pretty weak, and a video playback
test with Avatar in VLC saw the battery conk out after two hours 58
minutes, right when the end credits began.
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