Dell XPS L501x: An Excellent Mainstream Notebook
by Jarred Walton on November 10, 2010 12:01 AM ESTDell XPS L501x Battery Life: Good but the 9-Cell Would Be Better
The default battery in the L501x is a 6-cell 56Wh unit, which is more than the paltry 48Wh 6-cell batteries in many laptops but not quite at the 63Wh level seen in others. The combination of Optimus Technology and a reasonable battery means we should see good battery life, but nothing record setting. That's pretty much what we get, with a few oddities.
The L501x comes out ahead of many of the 48Wh laptops in the idle, despite having a larger 15.6" LCD, so the slightly higher capacity battery balances things out. Internet battery life is a different story, dropping the L501x down below the N82Jv but still slightly ahead of the ID49C. As bad as that result may look in the chart, it's also still 16% higher than the Toshiba A660D with a 16.7% larger battery, so in that particular test the AMD P920 + HD 4250 matches the i5-460M + GT 420M on a relative basis. In contrast to the Internet result, the x264 playback puts the XPS back ahead of many of the 48Wh batteries.
We had hoped for something a bit more impressive here, but the results aren't bad. It could be that the higher LCD resolution affects some tests negatively (i.e. in the Internet test, you would see more of the test web pages and thus Flash ads further down the page might increase CPU usage). [Update: I retested Internet battery life at 1366x768 and the result didn't change; for some reason the L501x does far worse in that test relative to the other laptops.] HWmonitor also shows the battery at 4% wear despite over 10 cycles, so you might get slightly improved results with a different battery. Ultimately, though, the simple solution to battery life concerns is to spend an extra $40 and get the 9-cell 92Wh battery if you want to run all (or at least most of the) day untethered. There's a compromise in weight with the 9-cell battery, though, and it juts out about an inch below the laptop. I prefer the form factor of the 6-cell battery, but it's always nice to have a choice.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
95 Comments
View All Comments
FearoftheNight - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Bought my macbook pro back when pc notebooks were dull and lame and vista had just come out. Glad to see viable and very reasonably priced alternatives to Apple now that my laptop is getting old! :)fabarati - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Actually, Assuming you mean really early 2007, Asus still had som bitchin' business laptops, like the W3, the V6 and the W7.blackrook - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Now I've got a twinge of buyers remorse from my Envy 14 purchase. I'd love to see a comparison between the Radiance screen with this one, as well as the HD5650 vs. the 420m.FearoftheNight - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Didn't they discontinue the Radiance?blackrook - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Yes. Rumor has it they're going to be back in stock sometime in December. Whether they'll be the same screen (since the company that manufactured them went out of business) remains to be seen.The Radiance screen went from essentially a $100 upgrade to $200 to $300 until it was taken off altogether. I wonder whether the price for this screen will go up too. $130 is a steal.
PlasmaBomb - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Dell are looking £170 (inc. taxes) for the R+BG 1080p screen in the UK :(Taking off taxes and converting to dollars thats ~$231.50
Rip Off..
khimera2000 - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
isint all electronics overpriced in the UK to begin with???BarkHumbug - Thursday, November 11, 2010 - link
"isint all electronics overpriced in the EU to begin with???"There, fixed it.
erple2 - Friday, November 12, 2010 - link
$231.50 for the single most important thing on your laptop? I don't think that's even remotely close to a ripoff. Particularly given how stunningly superior the screen is to every other 720p screen that most laptop companies pass off to consumers.Rasterman - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link
Read the last paragraph in the review.