Attractive but weak. The V13 is one of Dell's Vostro range of small-business notebooks, though you wouldn't know it to look at it. Its extremely slim exterior, with design elements borrowed from the Dell Adamo Thirteen, brings a touch of style to the dull business arena. The newcomer hopes to offer increased productivity and security, and is equipped with the latest technology. Find out how successful it is in our comprehensive review.
But the Vostro's Achilles' heel, as mentioned, is its battery life. The six-cell battery pack is rated at a skimpy 30 watt-hours; it did deliver the two hours that the Windows Taskbar indicator promised, and it's possible that tweaking the settings (or focusing on office rather than multimedia apps) might stretch another 15 to 30 minutes from it, but there's no way you'll get a half day or more of untethered work.
Can you remember when the Dell Adamo was announced? It was a gorgeous aluminium wafer of a laptop with an astronomical thousand-pound price tag that never looked justified. At the same time, Dell's range of boring Vostro laptops was plodding along, providing a cheap, business-like alternative to the company's higher-end Latitude machines.
Dell’s latest ultraportable laptop—otherwise known as the poor man’s Adamo—is a great looking machine, constructed with durable and premium materials at a decent price. Its specifications aren’t cutting edge, but it’s so much faster compared to most netbooks which use Intel’s low-cost Atom processor. The biggest criticism of the Vostro V13 is that its svelte design results in poor battery life and the inability to swap out the cell or system memory.
Dell's Vostro range is aimed at business users, and the notebooks are usually a bit on the chunky side, as is often the case for business notebooks. Depending on how you choose to configure it this notebook could come in at a very affordable price. With no optical drive it will be immediately out of the running for some people, but for others it could prove a solid choice with sharper than usual looks.
You know where you stand with business-oriented laptops. They're chunky, dull-looking machines with all the pizazz of a rainy afternoon in Chester. Dell's Vostro range has been a case in point: a collection of low-power, low-charisma laptops likely to appeal only to the most frugal of IT department bean counters. A fine piece of design married to a surprisingly low price. The features list is short, and the single-core performance stinks, but you can't argue with the price.
With this particular model's performance restrictions in mind, it's hard to give the V13 an unhesitating recommendation. If you want to use it for much more than simple web browsing and editing you could find yourself up against frequent performance bottlenecks. While there's little to complain about in terms of portability, the lack of high-end business features mean some companies will have reservations about rolling these out to dozens of users.
Dell’s sturdy and stylish small business notebook trades battery life for its thin profile. Much like the Adamo XPS 13 and the Latitude Z600, Dell has created another attractive notebook that is not only more expensive than its peers, but it comes up short in terms of endurance. At $991, only well-heeled business users won’t balk at this model’s price, especially when you’re getting only 4 hours of battery life.
The Dell Vostro V13 we got for test sells for Rs. 36,000. It's a little more than the Acer Timeline 3810T, but it's thankfully not overly expensive like the original Dell Adamo. We think that the Vostro V13 is a pretty good laptop for business professionals. It is suitable to do office productivity work, surf the net and other light work. Although we see the activity of burning CDs and DVDs decreasing day-by-day, thanks to the advent of flash drives and high-speed internet, many people still use an optical drive regularly. If you are one of them, then cross this off your list, or learn to live with an external optical drive. The Acer Timeline 3810T in comparison now sells for Rs. 32,000. It's got 3 USB ports (instead of 2 on the Vostro), an HDMI port and a better battery life. Thus, the Acer gives more value for your money. But if you are smitten by the Vostro V13, then we'd advise you to go for the one with a Core 2 Duo SU7300 processor, which will ensure smoother operation.
The Dell Vostro V13 is a slimline, 13.3in business notebook with plenty of style and a very sturdy body. It feels great to use and it has a decent amount of power under the hood. You can purchase the Dell Vostro V13 for £422, and this includes a one-year, next business day warranty. We think it's a great model to consider if you're after a slim, light and reasonably powerful laptop with a roomy screen and keyboard. However, we hate the fact that the battery is sealed and that there are only two USB 2.0 ports.
Dell's Vostro V13 is a slimline, 13.3in business notebook with plenty of style and a very sturdy body. It feels great to use and it has a decent amount of power under the hood. Dell's Vostro V13 is a strong, comfortable and stylish ultraportable for business users. We like its screen, keyboard and touchpad, but we think the sealed battery design is a drawback. Nevertheless, for $1299 and with a one-year, next business day warranty, it's a sweet proposition.
74.43%: This rating is bad. Most notebooks are better rated. This is not a recommendation for purchase.