Dell Vostro V131: Clean, Capable, Affordable

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

Nice input ergonomics, 2 USB 3.0 ports
Inexpensive for an ultraportable

Cons

On the galactic side of the ultraportable class

Our Verdict

You'll have a hard clock determination a more affordable business organization ultraportable, though it's size and weight stretch the definition.

Dell's Vostro V131 is sedately bounteous and a good performer, but has little else to distinguish it from the corporate-targeted ultraportable crowd together. Unless, that is, you count eye-spotting prices for diverse configurations, two USB 3.0 ports, and a generally excellent laid of features.

Our V131 trial unit ships with 4GB of DDR3 remembering, a 7200-rpm insensitive drive, and a fast Intel Core i5-2410 CPU, and is priced at a mere $799–low for a business ultraportable. Withal, that drops to $500 if you can plenty with a Celeron CPU, a smaller 320GB hard aim, and only 2GB of memory. If you'Ra non doing anything taxing with the unit, the little contour is worth considering. Components common to every model include a 13.3-inch, 1366 by 768 display, Bluetooth 3.0, 802.11n wireless, gigabit ethernet, and WiDi radiocommunication display technology.

At 4.1 pounds, the V131 is unquestionably on the heavy side for an ultraportable–probably the reason Dingle refers to IT as an ultramobile. The barrage in the back, which managed 7 hours and 13 minutes of run time, also makes the whole a little thicker than the ultraportable average. A Macbook Air information technology own't, but the V131 is certainly svelter than your average all-purpose laptop. Coming into court-wise, the pewter-and-black V131 is about an 8 out of 10, with clean lines and a tasteful quantity of bling.

The carrying into action of our configuration was quite good, garnering a 118 in our WorldBench test suite. Gambling frame rates are A poor American Samoa you can expect from Intel integrated graphics–or so 30 frames per second only at low detail and 1024 past 764 solution. The unit of measurement's 1080p video playback was smooth, and sound was better than average through the speakers. The webcam maxes come out at 1280 past 720 resolution and is quite a bit drum sander than the average at that resolution.

Two USB 3.0 ports are the big intelligence in the connections category. Nevertheless, as part of a growing trend, the V131 forgoes a mike input in favor of utilizing the dual-array mics happening both sides of the webcam. There is, of course, a headphone jack, plus VGA and HDMI output, a Scandium/MMC card one-armed bandit, and a gigbit ethernet port. Besides included is one of the least ostentatious fingerprint scanners you'll see–it's barely noticeable antitrust below the right-minded side of the keyboard.

The V131 provides a Chiclet-style keyboard that has a very nice feel, As recovered equally slenderly graven keys for secure finger positioning. The layout suffers no undersized keys and, outside of Lenovo's keyboards, is as good as anything you'll find. Both the keyboard and the touchpad are outlined in chromium-plate trim down, with the last mentioned offset comfortably slightly to the appropriate of the space measure. I establish the touchpad a tad too sensitive to tapping, but the feel of the buttons is pleasant.

The V131's $800 toll for our test shape looks even better when you debate that the V131 runs the professional version of Windows 7. Microsoft Office 2010 Starter is on mitt, and as is the average with Vostro machines, you'll find a relatively junk-free software range–just a few useful utilities and Trend Micro's Surety Agent trial. The Dell webcam application is one and only of the better examples you'll see, and digitalPersona is included to mind of the software finish of the biometrics.

The Vostro V131 is going away to draw a lot of attention solely because of its low monetary value. But information technology's no good grabbing person's attention if you can't impress them. The V131 should have no more problem doing that.