Dell Adamo Full Review: Macho Outside, Sissy Inside

The Dell Adamo is theMacBook Airdesigned by Batman . I ’m not just say that because I ’m hold the dark onyx version of the machine — the first of the product unit , quick for serious testing .

The Adamo is both a compliment and an insult to Dell applied science . It ’s possibly the most beautiful computer Dell has ever manufacture , but I ’m not certain that Dell has caught up to contender in either aesthetics or power . There have been draw of qualitative Adamo refresh out there , but we got the first of the units that will actually send to customer , so it ’s fourth dimension for actual benchmark . As it happens , performance is really what ’s at stakes here .

Design

On one hand , the Adamo is a laptop computer built from as many parts atomic number 13 as testosterone . It ’s decorated with three dissimilar finishes of black metal , include a posh matte cereal that do up a bulk of the case , but then Dell tops all that blackness off with two more ghost of black credit card ( keyboard and computer mouse buttons ) and tempered chalk ( in front and behind the screen ) to add a mo of semblance to the mixture .

The resulting cacophony of iniquity tower at my mettle strings , activating long inactive man - DNA . Add a Batman logo , and I could see the Dark Knight determine parts of this machine by hand , cave condensing dripping on the keyboard .

But batarangs miss finish . The Adamo has a utilitarian geometry — it ’s a block with four rounded boundary , which is fine , but that occlusion feature a bottom venire with a disconcerting gap in metal … leading to nightmare of the lithium polymer battery leak all over my lap . ( Note : Dell uses two of these gaps for serving / resort tool access . )

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And the 13.4 - column inch , 720p ( 1366×768 ) screen door is so hard to close unresolved that it feel like you ’re flex a car doorway the wrong direction . Its picture is quite pretty though — you’ll notice sharpness is better on this covert than on the MacBook Air ’s .

The trackpad feel smaller than it should on a machine with this footprint , and its multitouch gesture shortcuts , like collar zooming , were often activating when I did n’t want them to . ( If you recover the gesture useless , as I did , you’re able to just disable them . )

The backlit keyboard is okay — the concave keys are a scrap soft for my taste but perfectly passable . And the touching ascertain above the keyboard , while pleasant on the eyes , are n’t really integral enough or pretty enough to justify their existence . Would n’t it be neat if Dell used this space for a superfluously beautiful battery gage or something ? Why not ? I really do n’t need more button to skip through my medicine .

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And while the Adamo is athletically trim ( a mad .66 inches ) , at 4 pounds , it ’s half a British pound sterling heavy than the Voodoo Envy , and a full hammer heavier than theLenovo X301and the MacBook Air , not to advert most netbooks . ( Apparently it ’s no happenstance that the Adamo drew stirring from luxury products like Bentleys . )

So is the Adamo thin ? Yes . Light ? No .

It ’s not smooth either . Even with our 128 GB SSD conformation , the Adamo is rarely a silent machine . The fan , incidentally hidden behind some of the most stylish vent-hole I ’ve ever seen , run almost nonstop during introductory performance .

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Still , there are a few points of clever design . stick by all of the embrasure in the back of the scheme is a bit old school , but it also leave for a slender side visibility . The two USB ports , ethernet squat and DisplayPort are n’t much to utter of , but the inclusion of an eSATA / USB port means that your enlargement drives can be just as fast as internals — beneficial news , since there ’s no videodisk drive . All this junk in the trunk is literally topped off by speakers . ( Yup , they ’re behind the monitoring machine . )

The only part we were unable to test was the optional integrate HSDPA 3G. you may see , however , that it ’s passing easy to pop an AT&T SIM into the side of the computer — a solution that ’s far more refined than using a USB joystick , and makes use of a larger integrated feeler .

Performance

Our mental test system of rules was a beefed - up , $ 2600 Adamo , featuring a 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo central processor ( 3 MiB L2 memory cache ) , 4 GB RAM ( 800MHz ) , 128 GB SSD and integrated 3G. $ 2000 only corrupt you a 1.2GHz C.P.U. and 2 GB of RAM , but you still get the 128 GB SSD .

On paper , the MacBook Air is immobile ( faster processor , faster front side bus , and double the L2 cache ) . We run GeekBench to test the possibility . ( It proved straight . )

But these differences are really somewhat small execution nitpicks . The biggest error Dell made with this system , by far , was the inclusion body of Intel ’s GMA X4500HD GPU . Nvidia ’s GeForce 9400 M ( which you see in MacBooks etc ) would have made a good conniption . Nvidia claims their integrated GPUs dominate Intel ’s . Here ’s a equivalence of the two GPUs that fairly much proves that Nvidia is correct :

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And here we see those principle applied in 3DMark testing . ( Note , the 301 and Adamo have the Intel GPU , the MacBook Air has the Nvidia GPU ):

I do n’t get laid that the X4500HD GPU is a complete dealbreaker for the Adamo … in reality scratch that , it is a dealbreaker . Because if you ’re count to work on graphics intensive programs or do unaccented gambling , this simply can not be the system for you . Also , keep in mind that Nvidia ’s upcoming Ion platform is pretty much an just Intel Atom processor with a 9400M. In other words , $ 400 netbooks will shortly be outmatch this $ 2,000 + motorcar in 3D tasks if Dell does n’t pluck their political program .

However , if you ’re only look to netmail , apply programs like Excel and browse the entanglement , the Adamo ’s reenforcement for up to 4 GB of RAM may be a heavy welfare than the 9400M. ( Since the MacBook Air supports a max of 2 GB of RAM , it ’s a point to keep in mind if you ’re comparability shopping . )

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Battery Life

Dell will tell you that the Adamo has a “ 5 + hr battery life , ” reach through a non - removable Li polymer assault and battery . I tested the system with might saving ( low execution ) , medium screen brightness , wi - fi on and Bluetooth off . And I was able-bodied to play back a high - def WMV for just over half Dell ’s title .

entire Run Time : 2 hours , 40 minutes

I find that , in real world utilisation , it ’s very uncouth for laptops to accomplish only half their stamp battery rating . The Adamo is clearly no exception . At least the laptop can make it through a full - duration picture show .

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The Dark Knight Returns

The Adamo is a bit of a strange wildcat . It ’s not as feathery as the Lenovo X301 or the MacBook Air , and even with that supernumerary pound of heft , it ’s ( overall ) not as herculean as the MacBook Air — a computer that ’s incidentally cheaper than the Adamo in its al-Qaeda configuration .

The Adamo has a few wondrous feature : Integrated 3 gm , eSATA , and a butt joint that just wo n’t quit . And its atomic number 13 torso , peculiarly in black-market , simply looks sharp .

Just do n’t dare buy this computer until Dell come to their senses and pull in that $ 2000 + is absurd for a 4 - pound laptop with no graphics sinew . Show some chasteness and wait for the sequel . If it ’s anything like the Batman franchise , there will be many . [ Adamo ]