Dell’s XPS 14z isn’t exactly an ultra book, but it is slender at 23mm, without missing out on an optical drive or ports.
OK, it does rather look like a certain well known range of computers, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and it’s not as though that company owns the colour silver to speak of. The XPS 14z won’t be available until mid November, but Dell’s sent out a release today detailing the specifications of the XPS 14z, a 23mm thin 14″ 1366×768 notebook that packs Core i5 or Core i7 processors, 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 520M graphics and 6GB of onboard memory. Pricing is stated to start at $1199, although as with all things Dell there’s a fair amount of customisation that can up that price depending on your choices. [Dell]
Molokov
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 3:17 PMWait, so is it 14mm or 23mm?
What’s the weight?
Sean
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 3:23 PMDell Fatbook pro?
Alex Kidman
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 3:37 PMD’oh. Fixed now, thanks.
Weight is listed as “starting at 1.98kg”
Kazi
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 9:20 AMDell has finally delivered a fat version of Toshiba Portege R600, 2 years too late.
Greg
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 3:36 PMShame about the screen resolution, hopefully there’s an option to beef it up.
1920×1200 or similar on that screen would be amazing.
Joe P
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 4:05 PMThat photo in the article reminds me of the old Apple powerbook g5…lol
MotorMouth
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 4:40 PMExcept the Powerbook’s lid would have been five times as thick. That said, the lid does seem to be the only impressive looking part of this thing. My old XPS 13 looked much cooler.
Symkx
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 4:19 PMDouble the weight and thickness of MacBook Air 11″ and still same resolution? lol
MacBook Pro is same thickness with better features since 2006… Congrats to Dell to catching up with that!
Ozoneocean
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 4:26 PMThat comparison is ridiculously fatuous- the whole point of this device and the article here is the extra optical drive; which is responsible for the thickness and is a feature that the Airs have always lacked.
Of course it’s a silly idea to have it in there in the first place, since it’s probably not very good anyway and there are much better external solutions readily available, but that’s not the point.
Symkx
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 5:38 PMI didn’t compare 2 machines. that would be ridicoulus.. my point was it’s stupid to make a 14″ laptop with 2.0kg weight and ship it with such a low-res display!! Put a full HD or at least 1600×900 panel and I won’t complain.
MotorMouth
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 4:56 PMStrangely enough, this is not the only laptop Dell makes and, given the price, I’d suggest it probably sits in the lower end of their range.
When I bought my first laptop a few years ago, I specced up half a dozen brands before settling on a Dell XPS M1330 for around $2500. To get a MacBook to meet my spec I would have had to go to 15″, when I wanted something small and light, and it would have cost me nearly $4800 by the time I bought Windoze for it (almost none of my software runs on MacOS). Even then, the MacBook would have just met my minimum requirements in most areas where the XPS offered up a heap of other stuff on top. My nephew has been using the XPS since he started uni a couple of years ago and after more than 4 years it is still going great guns. Dell make a lot of krap but their good stuff is really, really good. OTOH, even the top spec Macs are just OK (I use one at work every day).
Symkx
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 5:42 PMI used to have a M1330 too. I agree with you on price point. but not the quality. I know that a MacBook Pro with same power was at least a grand over M1330, but it had a far better screen, better range of connection (FW800), and MUCH MUCH nicer trackpad (M1330′s trackpad is ridiculous!). I made the same decision as you did and went with M1330, but I regretted it shorty after. Yes, you pay top price for a MacBook Pro, but there are reasons for it. Everything you pay for is not specs written on piece of paper…
Ozoneocean
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 4:21 PMNormally I’d be happy that they didn’t skimp on features, but the optical drive really IS likely a waste of space here- external drives are pretty cheap and light these days, as well as being good quality, while internal lightweight drives are not (in my experience).
They’ve filled up half the base with a crappy, slow drive that has a short use-by date. What a massive wasted opportunity to get a better form factor.
MotorMouth
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 5:00 PMI disagree, I doubt I will ever buy a laptop without an optical drive. I have enough krap all over the place as it is, I don’t need an external drive hanging off my machine or it’s port replicator. Until companies start shipping software on other media and I am no longer able to buy albums on CD, I will need to have regular access to an optical drive. Having it built in is the obvious best solution.
Ozoneocean
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 5:49 PMIt’s not a good solution, it’s a bad for the reasons I stated- Its performance will degrade faster than any other type of drive and it will quickly become dead weight and useless space inside the laptop.
Even without an internal drive it’s childsplay to set any drive on your network to a shared network drive so you can simply install anything over the network from then on.
Cameron
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 8:41 PMThat doesn’t work too well if you’ve got a game with DRM. It will usually want the real original CD/DVD in your local drive.
Cameron
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 4:34 PMLink to page doesn’t work……
Cameron
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 4:42 PMHrmm link is fixed now, but it just goes to dell.com.au website. The product isn’t actually on the website at all…….
Why would dell send out product details when they don’t even bother to update their website?????
Cameron
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 4:43 PMLOL, Dell live chat –
Agent (ANZ_Ian_Eow): “I am sorry but the XPS 14z is not available in AUS/NZ region”
Greg
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 5:08 PMYeah, the live chat agents are pretty useless.
Pat
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 4:45 PMI’ve always thought the keyboard looks hideous.. Everything looks fine except the keyboard.
WagD
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 3:23 AM“The Screen: A Crying Shame” http://www.anandtech.com/show/5007/dell-xps-14z-lots-of-features-in-a-small-package/5
“The XPS 14z was designed to deliver a 14-inch laptop in the dimensions of a 13-inch. Including a slim-bezel panel is a big part of enabling that design goal. There are a limited number of choices for these 14” panels. One of the things Dell is exploring with our component vendors is enabling higher resolution panels in slim-bezel designs for future notebooks.”
http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/direct2dell/b/direct2dell/archive/2011/10/24/introducing-the-xps-14z-amazingly-thin-incredibly-powerful.aspx