Dell Inspiron 14 (Model 7437) review: Slim and stylish, but surprisingly sluggish

Dell’s Inspiron 14 7000-series laptops are sexy-looking beasts boasting forged-aluminum, beveled-edge chasses; 14-inch Gorilla Glass touchscreens; and backlit keyboards. But the absence of an SSD (as a cache or otherwise) has a significant impact on their performance.

These machines look like Ultrabooks, but they're not being marketed as such. Intel controls that standard and while it doesn’t explicitly state that a notebook must be equipped with an SSD to carry the Ultrabook moniker, the Ultrabook definition requires a notebook to operate in standby for at least seven days, and awake from standby with fresh data in less than three seconds. The Inspiron 14 7000 series (I reviewed the Model 7437) can’t do that with a mechanical hard drive, and it can’t be configured with one at time of purchase.

ROBERT CARDIN

Dell's Inspiron 14 7000 series cuts a super-thin profile despite its reliance on a mechanical hard drive. 

Apart from the absence of an SSD, this $850 laptop has a number of good components under the hood, including a fourth-generation Intel Core i5-4200U processor and 6GB of DDR3/1600 memory. But its 500GB mechanical hard drive spins its platters at only 5400 rpm, and its Intel Dual Band Wireless-N 7260 Wi-Fi adapter can connect only to 802.11n networks at a maximum physical link rate of 300 mbps. You’ll need a USB adapter if you want to network at 802.11ac speeds.

The Inspiron 14 produced a generally unimpressive Worldbench 8.1 score of 132. That renders Dell’s machine 32 percent faster than the Asus VivoBook S550CA that we’ve been using as a reference point, but leaves it far behind the consumer-oriented Lenovo Flex 14 (which has an SSD) and slightly behind the business-oriented Toshiba Tecra Z40 (which has a 7200 rpm mechanical drive).

There's no escaping the benchmark hit that a mechanical hard drive causes.

Looking at gaming performance—specifically, BioShock Infinite at resolution of 1024 by 768 with low visual quality—the Inspiron 14 slightly outperformed the Lenovo and the Toshiba, even though all three machines rely on the same integrated graphics processor (Intel HD Graphics 4400). It’s no gaming powerhouse, but it’s fine for less-demanding games like World of Warcraft.

The Inspiron’s 14-inch touchscreen is bright, beautiful, and clear, with excellent color accuracy, deep blacks, and crisp text and images. HD video looks very good on the Inspiron’s display, too. I noticed just a few artifacts in high-motion scenes. The touchscreen is smoothly responsive to multi-touch gestures, and the edge-to-edge glass allows for Windows 8 gestures to be performed quickly and easily.

The Inspiron 14 doesn’t have the most powerful speakers, but they sound better than most laptop speakers. They’re mounted on either side of the chassis, and they deliver just the right mix of bass and treble.

Gaming performance is fairly typical for a laptop with a fourth-generation Intel Core processor and integrated graphics. 

I did notice some anomalies in the Inspiron 14’s otherwise excellent industrial design. The chassis is much wider than necessary to accommodate a 14-inch display, with an unusually wide bezel at the sides and bottom of the display and more than an inch of dead space on the left and right sides of the keyboard. The island-style keyboard sits dead center in the chassis, a placement that renders the wrist rest cramped and uncomfortable. And why are the top row of function keys so tiny—they’re less than 0.25 inches tall—when there’s two inches of unoccupied space right above them?

The keyboard deck itself is flimsy—aggressive keystrokes cause the whole thing to sink slightly—and the flat keys provide very little tactile feedback. The aforementioned backlight provides very uneven illumination, giving the keyboard a marbled look. The touchpad, on the other hand, is quite good, providing swift, accurate movements and mostly smooth multi-touch gestures.

The Inspiron 14's battery life is slightly shorter than Lenovo's Flex 14 or Toshiba's Tecra Z40, but those machines have lower-resolution displays. It crushes our reference laptop, which has a third-gen Intel Core processor. 

I’m a sucker for thin, pretty laptops that deliver great battery life, and the Dell Inspiron 14 7000 Series certainly fits that bill (although it’s not particularly light, weighing in at 4.4 pounds). Since my computer life revolves around word processing, browsing the web, and watching the occasional online video, this model’s mediocre benchmark performance isn’t a showstopper.

You’ll need to decide for yourself if that—or its $850 price tag—are showstoppers for you. Lenovo’s Flex 14 costs $100 less, but it has a lower-resolution display and isn’t nearly as pretty. Toshiba’s Tecra Z40 costs considerably more, but its CPU has Intel’s vPro management feature set and it’s more than a full pound lighter.

Sarah is a freelance writer and editor based in Silicon Valley. She has a love/hate relationship with social media and a bad habit of describing technology as "sexy."
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Toshiba PX35t review: This budget all-in-one is quick, stylish and a great choice for the student

Toshiba PX35t-A2210 $930.00 The Toshiba PX35t-A2210 is a relatively powerful all-in-one desktop machine. While it is more expensive than the rest of this field, it delivers the performance and features to back up its price tag.

If looks are your top priority, Toshiba’s PX35t-A2210 ($930 as of 8/30/13) will surely woo you with its slim, attractive design. This 23-inch AIO sports a glossy full HD touchscreen, modern-looking wireless peripherals, and a third-generation Intel Core i3-3120M processor. It also boasts 6GB of DDR3/1600 RAM, built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and a roomy 1TB, 7200rpm hard drive.

There's plenty to like about Toshiba's PX35t-A2210, but its sharply angular mouse isn't one of them.

But looks aren’t everything, and the PX35t-A2210 isn’t just a pretty centerpiece for your desk, it’s also a good all-around performer, delivering a Desktop Worldbench 8.1 score of 131. That means it’s nearly one-third faster than our baseline machine, the Acer Aspire A5600U-UB13 . You won’t mistake the PX35t-A2210 for a top-of-the-line gaming machine, but it’ll do just fine managing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations; surfing the Web and checking email; and streaming HD clips from Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube.

The PX35t-A2210 relies on the Intel HD 4000 Graphics processor integrated into its CPU, rather than a discrete graphics card, but it can still handle many graphics-related tasks without falling over and dying. It outperformed the rest of the field with our BioShock Infinite benchmark, for instance, delivering the game at 26.6 frames per second (albeit with resolution of just 1024 by 768 pixels and image quality at Low). It took a first-place finish with Dirt Showdown, too, delivering the game at 47 frames per second (here again, with resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels and image quality set to low). This PC won’t have any problem with less visually intense games, such as MMORPGs. Simpler photo- and video-editing tasks won’t be an issue, either.

The Desktop Worldbench 8.1 chart is repeated here, so you don't have to have to go back to the previous page to see an overall performance snapshot.

Toshiba outfitted the PX35t-A2210 with a glossy 23-inch multitouch screen with native resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels. It’s a very good display, but it’s not perfect. While it’s extremely bright, and images look crisp and clear on it, colors look a little dull and whites have a yellowish tint. It’s also not the most accurate touchscreen I’ve used. There were several moments in my testing when I accidentally hit the link below the one I was trying to tap. Multitouch gestures are smooth and seamless, but the glass has an ever-so-slightly tacky feeling to it, which can make gliding across its surface a little tough. But it’s a much better input device than the PX35t-A2210’s mouse, which is a modern-looking angular thing that felt uncomfortable and sharp in my hand. The keyboard, meanwhile, delivers shallow tactile feedback but accurate typing.

The Toshiba PX35t-A2210 is attractive, usable, and relatively powerful. It’s a great choice for college students looking to balance work and play, since it performs basic administrative tasks with ease and can also play streaming HD video without a hitch. It has excellent Harman/Kardon speakers (with a Sleep and Music feature that lets you play your digital media player through them), and an ample collection of other I/O ports: Four USB 3.0, two USB 2.0, and one HDMI input (so you can plug in a cable/satellite set-top box or a videogame console).

Editor's note: This all-in-one was reviewed as part of a roundup for back-to-school season. You can read that story, along with reviews of the five all-in-ones we compared it to, here.

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Review: Acer's Aspire U (model A5600U-UB13) is a stylish AIO with a few minor flaws

Done up in black and clear plastic, the Aspire U has a clean, modern look. The computer looks like an oversize picture frame, supported in the front by a clear plastic panel running its width and in the back by an articulating kickstand. This design lets you angle the Aspire U from nearly flat on the desk to nearly straight up. It’s an effective design if you have plenty of desk space or table area to work with. If you want to buy an all-in-one to maximize storage area in a small workspace, forget it: The area behind the Aspire U is completely blocked off.

ROBERT CARDINThe clear front panel gives the Acer Aspire U a modern look, but it prevents you from sliding the keyboard underneath the PC when you’re not using it.

The styled-to-match wireless keyboard and mouse bundled with the Aspire U are both pleasant surprises. The keyboard has a slightly sloppy feel, but the keys offer plenty of travel and feel quite nice overall. The up and down arrow keys are half-size, which makes them difficult to use, but the keyboard includes a numeric keypad that you can use for navigation (when Num Lock is turned off). The mouse has a nice heft, and it tracks well on just about any surface.

The touchscreen display responds well to finger movements, and the Aspire U has one of the nicest webcams out there. It’s HD, and it provides very smooth video—significantly smoother than usual. The Aspire U can also respond to hand gestures via said webcam, though in truth it's a rather strenuous and inaccurate way to navigate Windows.

The A5600U-UB13 model of the Aspire U that we tested was sprightly enough, subjectively—once the Windows 8 operating system worked its caching magic. Until things were cached, however, the sluggish 1TB, 5400-rpm hard drive caused windows and applications to open rather slowly. This is a machine that you’d rather have hibernate or sleep than shut down, lest all that caching go for naught. Acer doesn’t offer an SSD option, which would have worked miracles in both perceived and actual speed.

The A5600U-UB13 is a middle-of-the-road performer, which is why PCWorld decided to use it as the reference machine for Desktop WorldBench 8.1 tests. It’s powered by a dual-core Intel Core i5-3230M mobile CPU (all-in-ones often use mobile components because they don’t require as much cooling) and 6GB of DDR3/1600 memory. As is typical of lower-priced AIOs, the A5600U-UB13 relies on the Intel HD 4000 graphics processor integrated into the CPU, so don’t expect to play hard-core games on this machine. Although it managed to squeeze out 47.5 frames per second in Dirt Showdown (at a dialed-down resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels and with visual quality set to low), it ran Crysis 3 under those same settings at less than 18 fps.

The 23-inch display has a native resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, and it offers both an HDMI input (a convenient feature for connecting a gaming console, a cable/satellite set-top box, or a Blu-ray player) and an HDMI output (great for connecting a second display). A tray-mount DVD burner (not Blu-ray) sits on the right side.

ROBERT CARDINA tray-mount DVD-burner sits on the right side of the Acer Aspire U.

You’ll find two USB 3.0 ports, a card reader, and microphone and headset jacks on the left side. As the front edge of the Aspire U is always in contact with the desktop, you have to turn the unit around or lay it on its face to access the ports in back, namely three USB 2.0 ports, gigabit ethernet, and the aforementioned HDMI connections. The machine is outfitted with 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 adapters, so you can keep cable clutter to a minimum with just the one cord running to the external power brick.

Movies look very nice on the Aspire U. In the owner’s manual, Acer describes a remote control and coax input, but the U.S. models have no TV tuner, and the coax input is missing in action. Standard input-select and up/down navigation controls are on the lower-right side. Sound from the Aspire U is clear, but thin. Acer would do well to copy Vizio’s example of providing a subwoofer with its all-in-ones.

Most AIOs are difficult to open, but with only two screws on the back of the Acer A5600U-UB13, I decided to see if it was upgradeable. Acer says this voids the computer's warranty, but there are no anti-tamper stickers, so there's little warning to consumers who buy one.

There's an mSATA slot inside, hidden on the back of the motherboard, and easier-to-access mini-PCIe and SODIMM slots on the front of the motherboard. The hard-drive caddy is in plain sight, held in place by a single screw. Upgrading the memory or adding an internal TV tuner would be easy. Upgrading to an SSD? No so much.

ROBERT CARDINYou need remove just two screws to take off the Aspire U’s back. Unfortunately, doing so will void Acer’s one-year warranty.

Replacing the hard drive is no problem, but you would need a very capable cloning program that understands UEFI. The Aspire U is one of those rare computers with a UEFI BIOS that doesn't support booting from legacy MBR media. That means you can't boot from a flash drive or even normal optical boot discs (although it did boot using a factory-pressed Windows 8 DVD). There is a utility called Rufus that will create UEFI boot media, but the lack of legacy boot capabilities is a serious barrier to repair, recovery, and testing other operating systems. Acer does make a non-UEFI BIOS available on its website, but we were unable to cross-grade to it.

Because of the warranty and boot issues, Acer said that consumers should contact the company about replacing failed components, such as a hard drive. Perhaps you can live with that for the warranty period, but the UEFI BIOS issue could be problematic after that.

When all is said and done, the Aspire U is an attractive mainstream family computer with average to good components, performance, and features. It's a good pick for those on opposite sides of the spectrum: People who never see themselves repairing or upgrading their own computer, and tech-savvy types who want an upgradeable AIO and are capable of working around the UEFI issue.

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Juilliard, and now he power-mods his car for kicks.
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Top 10 Most Stylish Smartphones

Admit it. A smartphone’s appearance is just as important in your decision making process as the carrier, data speeds, OS and screen quality. No one wants a boring looking slab of a handset. To help you make the right call, we’ve rounded up the finest looking phones for your viewing pleasure.

We got our first glimpse of the Sony Xperia S at CES this year and were all aglow about its glowing bottom. The Xperia S's elegant design stays true to the boxy but never harsh Sony Ericsson aesthetic. But what we love most is the thin, translucent light bar that wraps around the bottom section of the phone and lights up when you unlock or notifies you when you receive a call or a message.

Hands-on with the Sony Xperia S

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Samsung Series 5 Ultra: Slim and Stylish, but Not an Ultrabook

The Samsung Series 5 Ultra is the company's first foray into the Ultrabook market (if you don’t count the Series 9, which predates the Ultrabook brand). There's just one problem: It weighs nearly 4 pounds, and measures 0.82 inch thick. In other words, this 14-inch laptop is closer to a regular ol' ultraportable than it is to an Ultrabook.

Ultrabooks are high-end, ultrathin notebooks defined by Intel as being 18mm (0.7 inch) thick at the most--but that specification is for models with screens 13.3 inches or smaller. With the advent of the Series 5 Ultra, Intel has stretched the requirements to make 21mm (0.83 inch) the standard thickness for machines with 14-inch or larger screens. Nevertheless, the Series 5 Ultra looks a little, well, thick, especially when it's sitting next to other Ultrabooks. In fact, it looks almost as chunky as my 15-inch MacBook Pro, which measures 24mm (0.95 inch) thick.

Needless to say, the Series 5 Ultra hardly inspires the same oohs, aahs, and oh-my-gosh-that-laptop-is-so-thins as other Ultrabooks do.

But there's a reason that this particular laptop is so comparatively hefty: It has both a DVD-RW drive and a 500GB hard drive. Our review model, priced at $950 (as of March 30, 2012), features an Intel Core i5-2467M processor, 4GB of RAM, and Windows 7 Home Premium. It also has built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, and a 16GB solid-state cache drive that helps it boot quickly and resume from hibernate more rapidly (a necessity for Ultrabook branding).

The Series 5 Ultra sports a minimalist design and looks an awful lot like Apple's MacBook Pro line. The laptop's cover is a smooth, lightly brushed slate-gray aluminum with a small silver Samsung logo on the left side. The interior is largely the same: smooth, lightly brushed, and slate-gray, though not all of it is aluminum (just the wrist-rest area is metal; the remainder is plastic). The laptop feels sturdy (and heavy, for an Ultrabook), though the hinge is a little squeaky.

The laptop has more ports than the average Ultrabook, probably because the machine is thicker than the average Ultrabook. On the left side, it provides a fold-out gigabit ethernet port, two USB 3.0 ports, VGA-out, HDMI-out, and a combined headphone/microphone jack. The right side is mostly dedicated to the tray-loading DVD-RW drive, but Samsung also squeezes in a lock slot, a USB 2.0 port, and a four-in-one card reader. That's a lot to pack into an Ultrabook, and the other Ultrabooks we've seen have had no more than one USB 3.0 port.

You won't find much on the keyboard deck of the Series 5 Ultra--just a small silver power button, a moderately roomy touchpad with two discrete buttons, and, of course, the full-size Chiclet-style keyboard. The keyboard is fairly comfortable to type on, though the matte-black keys are a little small and give slightly weaker-than-average feedback.

The touchpad is less impressive: It's smooth but not very sensitive, and the buttons feel cheap. In fact, on our test unit the left mouse button appears to sit lower than the right one, and feels as if it will break after a few months of normal usage. The touchpad supports multitouch gestures, such as pinch-to-zoom and two-finger scrolling, but the results are somewhat jumpy and inaccurate. For example, when you try to scroll with two fingers, Web pages jump up and down erratically instead of moving smoothly.

A thin, silver bezel surrounds the Series 5 Ultra's matte 14-inch screen. At the top of the bezel is a webcam, complete with a pinprick LED that indicates whether the webcam is turned on (in other words, exactly the way Apple's MacBook Air is set up). The screen looks pretty good. It has a native resolution of 1366 by 768 pixels, which is a little low for a 14-inch display. By comparison, the Asus Zenbook UX31E has a native resolution of 1600 by 900 pixels, and a 13.3-inch screen. Likewise, Apple's 11-inch MacBook Air has a native resolution of 1366 by 768 pixels--but, of course, its screen is smaller.

The Series 5 Ultra's screen is extremely bright at its brightest setting (perfect for working in direct sunlight), and color representation is mostly accurate, though colors sometimes look washed out. The screen's temperature seems a little on the cool side, which means that whites occasionally take on a bluish tint. That effect is hardly noticeable, however, unless you turn the brightness up and look at a mostly white screen.

In PCWorld's WorldBench 7 benchmark tests, the Series 5 Ultra performed well for its category with a score of 95. This means that the Series 5 Ultra is only 5 percent slower at general computing tasks than our baseline reference PC, which has an Intel Core i5-2500K processor, 8GB of RAM, a 1TB hard drive, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti graphics card.

The Series 5 Ultra didn't do quite as well in our graphics tests, as it relies on Intel's integrated graphics technology. In our Crysis 2 graphics test, the Series 5 Ultra spit out only a wimpy 23 frames per second (low quality, 800 by 600 resolution). The machine did better in our Dirt 3 test, with frame rates ranging from a decent 40 fps (low quality, 800 by 600) to a not-so-decent 13 fps (high quality, 1366 by 768 pixels).

Samsung's Series 5 Ultra may not be a gaming machine or even a multimedia powerhouse, but it does have a DVD-RW drive, which is more than any other Ultrabook can say. Video looks good on the Series 5 Ultra, though high-resolution content occasionally suffers from artifacts such as blocks--especially in motion-heavy scenes--and general choppiness. The speakers, located along the top of the keyboard, produce loud but thin and bass-less sound.

Here's the thing: Samsung pitches the Series 5 Ultra as the first Ultrabook to sport an optical drive. But it's not, because it's not an Ultrabook. Sure, it may (barely) hit the 21mm thickness mark, but it contains a hard disk drive (along with a cache SSD for speedy startup) and it weighs 3.9 pounds. Don't get me wrong, this is a decent ultraportable laptop--it's just not at all what I think of when I think "Ultrabook." Still, if you're looking for a small laptop with more ports and functionality than an Ultrabook, the Samsung Series 5 Ultra is your machine.

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