Dell launches Precision M3800 portable workstation range

Dell Precision M3800 workstation
Dell's latest addition is a pint-sized powerhouse

Dell has introduced its new Precision M3800 Mobile workstation, a 15.6-inch laptop whose existence was revealed back in July 2013.

Although the company doesn't call it an Ultrabook by name, it sits comfortably in that category with a 18mm thickness and a weight of just under 1.9Kg thanks to a chassis made up of carbon fiber and aluminium.

The laptop, which is similar to the recently-announced Dell XPS 15, will sit alongside the bulkier but cheaper Dell Precision M4700 and the Dell Precision M4800.

Aimed squarely at digital content creators and engineers looking to run ISV-certified applications, the new laptop packs some impressive specs of up to an Intel Core i7-4702HQ processor (four cores, eight threads, based on Haswell and Turbo Boosting to 3.2GHz), a battery life of more than 10 hours, up to 16GB of RAM, an mSATA port plus a 2.5-inch HDD.

Mobile Powerhouse

The two headliner features though are the Quadro K1100M GPU with 2GB of GDDR5 memory and the 15.6 QHD+ display. The GPU is currently Nvidia's top chip for 15.6-inch laptops with a TDP of 55W and 576 CUDA cores while the monitor crams nearly 5.8 million pixels (3,200 x 1,800), 11 percent more than the Apple's equivalent 15.6-inch model.

A nice add-on is the touch screen capabilities that's combined with Corning Gorilla NBT's glass overlay. That feature has already been embraced by the likes of Autodesk with others likely to follow suit.

Connectivity-wise, there's a USB to RJ-45 dongle plus four USB ports (three of which are USB 3.0 and all charging ones). Dell is also planning for a USB 3.0 docking station that will add even more ports and potentially allow users to connect two Dell UltraSharp 32-inch Ultra HD monitors by the end of the year.

Coincidentally, the official unveiling occurred a day after that of Apple's new MacBook Pro and shares almost the same dimensions. The Precision M3800 will be available for purchase from November 14 globally from £1,149 ($1,799, about AU$1,930). More details about Dell's latest workstation can be found here.

Desire Athow
Managing Editor, TechRadar Pro

Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled in website builders and web hosting when DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.

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