Dell's new high-end multimedia laptop offers a lot of features as well as a big and bright 17in. widescreen display for not a lot of financial outlay. The Inspiron 9200 also sports an eye-catching design that's more Apple than Dell, and is relatively portable. However, business users should note that the system is cut out for gaming, watching movies, editing photos and tackling other multimedia duties, rather than for office use. The system's build quality is reasonable, but it still suffers from a flexible plastic chassis that's an issue with most Dell laptops. It does have one of the longest-lasting batteries we've seen in a desktop replacement laptops, however, so it's still excellent value for money overall.

Pros: Eye-catching design; good value; 17in. widescreen display
Cons: Ageing graphics card; middling build quality


Dell has finally released a multimedia laptop with a 17in. screen. Long-time coming, the Inspiron 9200 combines a large screen and a double-layer DVD recorder, both of which are firsts for Dell's desktop replacement range. Another welcome surprise is that the Inspiron 9200 sports a very stylish Apple PowerBook G4-like design.

Encased in an arctic silver-and-white enclosure (other clip-on lid designs available), the Inspiron 9200 is considerably more attractive than Dell's existing laptops and most other desktop replacement laptops. Measuring 394x288x41.5mm and weighing 3.5kg, the laptop is also relatively portable considering it uses a massive 17in. widescreen display. Having said that, the build quality is a little ropey, especially just underneath the screen where the case flexes when pressed.

Other features of our test system included a 1.60GHz Intel Pentium M processor (upgradable to 2.0GHz), 1GB of 333MHz DDR-SDRAM (supports up to 2GB), and an ageing ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics card with 128MB of DDR-SDRAM. It's a real shame Dell hasn't opted for a PCI Express-based solution, or even ATI's much faster Mobility 9800 GPU. There's no integrated TV tuner either, and it can't play audio or video without booting up, unlike some other multimedia systems. Our system came pre-installed with Microsoft's Windows XP Professional operating system as standard, although you can opt for the less powerful Windows XP Home Edition if preferred.

You do get a multi-format Double-Layer DVD recorder (DVD±RW opposed to just DVD+RW) and a 5400rpm 60GB hard disk drive (optional 100GB model), the latter of which will be appreciated by gamers and those who work with large video and photo files. Similar to some IBM models, the Inspiron 9200 is available with a choice of two LCD screens: WXGA+ (1440x900 pixels) or WUXGA (1920x1200 pixels) reviewed here. According to Dell, the WUXGA LCD offers 26 per cent more viewing area than Dell's traditional 15.4in. laptop displays. Regardless of this claim, the screen is big, bright and crisp and performed well when used to playback DVD-Movies, games and other multimedia applications.

When it comes to watching DVD-Movies or audio CD playback, life is made a little easier by a set of physical play controls set into the front and centre of the Inspiron 9200's chassis. These buttons allow you to alter volume levels and skip tracks. With the lid closed and the screen off, the Inspiron 9200's battery life is also increased so you can enjoy listening to music stored on the hard disk for even longer. To further enhance the multimedia experience, Dell includes its Media Experience 2.1 deluxe software, which provides a large screen interface for editing photos, archiving video clips, and organising music. The Inspiron 9200 is also equipped with integrated subwoofer and stereo speakers which sound great compared to the poor speakers used by most other laptops.

As you'd expect from a system designed to take muscle your desktop PC out of the way, the Inspiron 9200 offers a good range of connectivity options. You get four USB 2.0 ports (two at the back and two on the left-hand side), a single FireWire port, analogue video- and digital video-out (DVD-D) ports, a Type II PC Card slot, headphone and microphone ports (located on the right-hand side of the system rather than at the front), 10/100Base-TX NIC (Gigabit Ethernet not supported), V.92 modem, and a SecureDigital (SD) slot.

Unfortunately, there is no parallel port for hooking up legacy devices, such as a printer, no infrared port and no component video-out jack. Wireless networking is catered for by a built-in 802.11a/b/g chipset, and you also get built-in Bluetooth. The latter can be toggled on and off using the keyboard, but there's no dedicated button to activate Wi-Fi so you have to wade through software menus.

The matching silver touchpad and mouse buttons are practical, although the buttons provide a loud clicking noise when pressed. The 87-key keyboard also offers plenty of room and the keys offer a reassuring, if noisy, response. You also get separate Home, End, PgUp, PgDn and cursor keys, which eliminate time-consuming key combinations, but the numeric keyboard is inlaid. As the case is so large there is plenty of space to rest your wrists when typing and the speakers are located far enough towards the top of the keyboard so that they don't get muffled as you type.

The Inspiron 9200 is no slouch when it comes to performance, although it failed to run VeriTest's Business Winstone 2004 and Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 benchmarking applications. We did manage to attain a 3DMark03 Pro score of 3419 though, which is excellent considering there are faster DirectX 9.0-based GPUs available. The real star of the show, however, was an excellent 6-cell battery life of 3h 50m using VeriTest's Business Winstone 2004 BatteryMark (heavier 9-cell battery also available). This level of battery life is unprecedented from this type of laptop and is usually only found in thin-and-light ultra-portable laptops.


About our tests:
BIOS uses VeriTest's Business Winstone 2004 and Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 benchmarking applications to test the overall performance of desktops and laptops. Both suites are application-based benchmarks that measures a PC's overall performance when running market-leading, Windows-based applications on Windows platforms. They are a single large test that run programs through a series of scripted activities and return a single score. The activities focus on what we call 'hot spots,' or periods of activity that make your PC really work - the times where you're likely to see an hourglass or a progress bar. VeriTest's Business Winstone 2004 BatteryMark mimics real computer use by inserting pauses between keystrokes and between tasks to drain and measure a laptop's battery life, providing you with a good idea of how long a laptop's battery will hold up under actual use. Futuremark's 3DMark03 Pro runs game tests to provide an accurate overview of a system's gaming performance. In all benchmarks, the higher the score, the faster the computer.

BIOS, Dec 23, 04 | Print | Send | Comments (0) | Posted In Laptop