Dell's Studio 15 greatly impressed us last year by combining power, usability and features at a truly affordable price, and even won our award for best laptop of 2009. It has now been updated with Intel's latest quad-core technology, making the Studio 1557 even better.
Performance is staggering. The Intel Core i7 processor more than doubles the power of the previous dual-core Studio 15.
Multiple applications can run simultaneously with stunning speed and reliability, making this one of the most powerful laptops you can buy at this price.
ATi powered
Graphics performance is equally impressive. The dedicated ATi graphics card is designed to smoothly process high definition (HD) video and also provides power for basic gaming. An HDMI port is in place for connecting to an HDTV.
Predictably, this power impacts on mobility. While previous Core 2 Duo models ran for as long as 293 minutes, this latest machine runs for just 186-minutes. Bear this in mind, as a Core 2 Duo machine provides ample power for most users and Core i7 will be overkill for many buyers.
The impressive build quality of the previous model remains and you can customise the chassis with various colours and designs. The glossy lid of the basic model is a magnet for fingerprints, but a tougher matt finish can be added for £29.
The keyboard is equally well made and extremely comfortable to use. All the keys are large and feature a smooth, tactile finish and respond accurately and quietly, even when typing at speed. The entire board is also backlit, making it easy to keep working in low light conditions.
Bright screen
The 15.6-inch widescreen panel is equally well made and ideally suited to entertainment use. Impressive brightness levels and strong colour and contrast bring photos and videos to vivid life.
The capacious 320GB hard drive will easily hold all of your music and photos, while the 8-in-1 card reader provides comprehensive support for storage card formats. A slot-loading, dual-layer DVD rewriter is also in place and can be upgraded to offer Blu-ray support for £100.
Rounding out the impressive specification is 802.11n Wi-Fi, Gigabit Ethernet and an eSATA port for high speed data transfers to external drives. An integrated webcam is also in place and Microsoft Works software is installed as standard, providing basic home office tools.
Building on its already strong foundation, the Studio 1557 makes stunning quadcore performance truly accessible to the consumer market. While the restrictions it places on mobility are unfortunate, they were inevitable and do little to flaw this impressive portable.
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chris0
April 25th 2011
1. I just want to add few truths to this article, as it is such articles that eventually persuaded me to buy a 1557 (on which I'm typing this very comment).
The truth is that laptop has a very serious design flaw with its cooling system. Just google "dell studio 1557 overheating" to view the endless list of posts by users complaining about this issue.
The CPU and GPU are both connected to the same heatsink and fan via heat pipes, however this system appears to be totally inadequate for cooling the device. The problem also appears to get worse over time, probably due to dust accumulation in the fan.
After around 10 months my machine overheated enough to destroy the motherboard. To be fair to Dell, they replaced the board under warranty within a week, but for a week I had no laptop and the cooling problems still continue. Furthermore I had to completely reinstall all my software following the maintenance.
Leaving the laptop idling on a flat surface is enough to cause it to become extremely hot over time. So much so that I genarally have to leave it balanced in a position that allows for increased airflow through the vents, eg. hanging over the end of a table.
Using the laptop on one's "lap" is a particularly unpleasant experience, and one with I try to avoid as much as possible, thereby rendering the machine fairly useless as a "lap"top. Infact, so hot does this machine get that I generally avoid using it as much as possible in general, prefering my 3 inch smartphone for most tasks such as web browsing.
After just one year, the battery life has been reduced to around 45 minutes, quite possibly due to the extreme heat, which I believe is very detremental to battery wear. I am not particularly convinved that so much heat is not causing problems for any of the other components either.
Just a couple of other observations: Whist the machine looks quite good in the pictures, the chassis is made mostly of cheap plastic and it also feels cheap and nasty. The keyboard and tracker pad buttons are quite clunky, and the graphics card (Radeon 5470) really has woeful performance under any kind of heavy 3D load.
In summary I would absolutely advise anyone not to buy this machine. The overheating is just totally unacceptable and makes the machine extremely unpleasant to use. I am planning to get rid of mine as soon as the new Llano laptops appear in a couple of months. I will also never be buying a Dell again. They are cheap, but they are cheap for a reason, and it is worth paying the extra for something that is a pleasure to use.
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