Dell Inspiron 14z

PC World - The Dell Inspiron 14z laptop makes a clear statement: You are probably a student, you want a whole lot of battery life on a Windows 7 machine, and you probably don't care much about performance. A small, sleek portable, the 14z mainly looks good and has a very long battery life. There's nothing wrong with it, as long as you know exactly what you're getting. As reviewed, the 14z would cost about $849--a sizable chunk of change considering its lack of horsepower. At first sight, this model seems to be an echo of the Dell Studio 14z that we reviewed just a few months back.

The Inspiron 14z is a pretty notebook. At 13.4 by 9.5 by 1.1 inches, it's slim and sleek, with lines that suggest speed from its edging to the shape of its hinge. A silver wristpad encircles a sleek black keypad and monitor frame, while the distinctive silvered-circle Dell logo rests on the top of the machine in the middle of a clean, slick paint job. It feels a little heavier than it looks, with models starting at 4.4 pounds, but this is still an easy machine to throw in a small bag or to carry under your arm without worrying about its weight--or about looking too much like a nerd.

Our review system shipped with a 64-bit version of Windows 7, 3GB of memory, a 1.3GHz Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo SU7300 processor, and Intel's integrated graphics--a package that led to a disappointing PC WorldBench score of 66, well below average. Unsurprisingly, any try at gaming that needs a strong 3D push also stutters to the point of uselessness. So the good news about this laptop is that your student won't spend much time goofing around with it. But word processing and Web browsing, even with a heavy load of Office apps and Firefox tabs open, moved at a more than reasonable pace.

While WorldBench performance disappointed, battery life was something else all together, creeping 10 minutes over 7 hours before the 14z finally took a bow. With a full-size keyboard and a widescreen 14-inch monitor, there's a real place for a laptop with that kind of stamina. This is a complete flip from the results that we saw Dell's Studio 14z--that machine emphasized horsepower (and a discrete GPU) over battery life.

The case feels sturdy, and the latchless lid feels good and stiff, holding the screen in place. The monitor is quite bright, with a nice pop to its colors. Its top resolution of 1366 by 768 isn't bad for the screen's size--text is easy to read, and icons are easy to pick out. With both streaming video and DVDs, playback was consistently smooth and clear. The biggest issue with the screen is its extraordinary glossiness, though it does have a nice level of brightness and color. Even if you prefer the shine of a glossy screen over a less-reflective matte-style LCD, the Inspiron's screen is simply too glossy. In anything but the gentlest lighting with the whitest objects on the screen, you'll be able to pick out details of your own reflection. On the bright side (get it?), the VGA- and HDMI-out ports let you see what you're doing.