Up Close and Personal with the Dell XPS L501x

Looking at the specs and figuring out that the XPS L501x sounds like a good laptop is easy enough, but how does it fare in actual practice? In fact, it does very well, and this is easily one of my favorite laptops from the past several years. The old Studio XPS 16 had an impressive LCD option, just like the L501x, but from a design standpoint there were areas that I didn't particularly care for—chief among these being the use of glossy plastic surfaces all over the chassis. To say that fingerprints on the piano black finish were a problem is an understatement, so the switch to a matte plastic bezel and aluminum surfaces removes our biggest complaint.

The new design looks better, and it feels better as well—though we didn't have any real complaints with the Studio XPS build quality to begin with. The L501x has rounded corners and beveled edges that fit together snugly and look attractive. It's a sturdy laptop—not at the level of business notebooks perhaps, but definitely a step up from the Inspiron and other consumer offerings. Some may prefer the industrial design aesthetic of the Adamo line, but personally the L501x is more my speed. The palm rest is plenty large, with an equally large touchpad in the center. Like most modern laptops, the touchpad is multi-touch and gesture aware; it may not integrate with the OS as well as the MacBook touchpad does with OS X, but that's more of a Windows and application problem.

Besides the keyboard backlighting, there's not much to say other than it works well. The layout is fine, and Dell skips on the numeric keypad to make room for the speakers. Normally, we'd question such a move, but in this case there's some good sound quality to back it up. The key travel is good, all of the important keys are readily accessible with no funky Fn-key combinations required (the function keys default to multimedia, but you can switch that setting in the BIOS). There's also very little flex—only if you mash down on the keys with several pounds of pressure do you see flex, and in regular use the keyboard works well.

To the left and right of the keyboard are cutouts for the JBL speakers, and Dell is rightfully proud of their audio quality. There's a similar cutout pattern on the bottom for the integrated subwoofer. While I'm no audio expert by any means, what I can tell you is that subjectively these speakers blow away any other laptop I've used, and they can get very loud without distortion. To compare speaker quality, I grabbed a couple other laptops and looked at maximum volume without [noticeable] distortion.

The XPS L501x managed an impressive 83dB at three feet, with good bass and no serious quality concerns. The ASUS G73Jw, which also sounds good for a notebook and has 5.1 speakers, reached around 80dB as well, but there was some distortion and static present in our test audio files. We had to dial it down to 75% volume (~70dB) to eliminate the distortion, and while that's still reasonably loud the sound quality simply wasn't as good as the L501x. Bringing up the rear and representing "typical" laptops, we have an Acer 5551G we're working on reviewing, this time with just the two stereo speakers. While better than some Acer laptops we've looked at in the past (the 5740G for example had serious distortion problems), the 5551G put out a maximum of 67dB and was very thin and light on the bass (as expected). The JBL speakers in the L501x are very impressive…for a laptop. They're still small, so temper your expectations: you won't get the soundscape of a set of large studio monitors from a couple of small tweeters in a laptop chassis, no matter how hard you try, but you could at least watch a movie with a couple of friends and not strain to hear the audio.

Another big upgrade relative to the older Studio XPS comes in the graphics department. Okay, the 420M isn't going to set the world on fire with its performance, but it does manage roughly the same level of gaming capabilities as the GT 335M (which is roughly on par with the HD 4670). More importantly, Dell now has Optimus Technology in the dual-core XPS laptops, so now you can have performance when you need it but still get good battery life. Like all 400M equipped laptops, the L501x supports HDMI 1.4, and Dell includes free support for NVIDIA's 3DTV Play. If you have a 3D HDTV and upgrade to a Blu-ray drive, you can use the L501x to watch 3D movies on your television. Again, I'm completely unsold on the whole 3D video concept—I've tried it and simply wasn't that impressed—but at least you're not stuck paying extra for a feature that should just work.

Finally, there's the display to discuss. I'm not sure what the deal is with "B+GR LED" marketing—that would imply separate blue and green/red LEDs, which would be a halfway house between standard yellow LEDs and the RGB LEDs used in the top LCD panels. Anyway, the 1080p panel in the L501x is an AU Optronics B156HW01, and if that's the same as the B156HW03, that would make this a WLED backlight. Subjectively, that's not particularly important, as the image is still great. We'll get to the display measurements later, but the short story is you get a near-100% AdobeRGB 1998 (ARGB1998) gamut, good viewing angles, and a good contrast ratio.

So with all the good, what's not to like? Not being able to upgrade the CPU and GPU independently is probably the issue that will come up first for most users. What if you want better gaming performance and would like the GT 435M, but you want to keep Optimus? What if you want a quad-core processor for content creation but you don't need a faster GPU? In either case, you're out of luck—at least for now. We'll probably see a new Sandy Bridge version of the L501x that gives you both quad-core and Optimus, hopefully with better performance and battery life, but we're still waiting for the official Sandy Bridge launch. My only other complaint is with the HDD, specifically it's a pain to get to the HDD if you happen to want to do an SSD upgrade on your own. Since Dell is still using Samsung SSDs, if you want maximum random read/write performance you'll probably want a SandForce controller (or wait a bit longer for the third generation Intel parts and other offerings to arrive). Dell charges $550 to upgrade to a 256GB Samsung SSD; you can grab a 240GB SF-1200 for as little as $430, which is a far better proposition. But to do the HDD upgrade, you'll need to remove the palm-rest first, which isn't super difficult but it's far more cumbersome than simply removing the bottom plate. Our final complaint is that as good as the 1080p "B+GR LED" LCD is, that's not the standard panel, and we would be more than a little surprised to see anything remotely comparable from the stock 768p display. If you want a good LCD, make sure you pay for the upgrade!

Are we picking nits here? Yes, we certainly are, and that's because the L501x gets so many things right. The build quality is much better than average, battery life is good, performance is a substantial bump from the old Core 2 Duo Studio XPS—in both graphics and CPU workloads—and the audio really needs to be experienced to hear how good it is (relative to other laptops as well as basic desktop speakers). There really isn't a single show-stopper in sight. Gamers will still pine for a better GPU like the 460M, particularly if they want to drive the 1080p panel at native resolution and medium to high detail settings, but for the price the new XPS line comes with everything I would recommend in a modern laptop. That's the initial experience, but I'm sure you want some benchmarks and concrete data to back things up, so let's get to it.

Dell XPS L501x: Windows' MacBook Pro Alternative Dell XPS L501x Application Performance


View All Comments

  • barnett25 - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link

    I HATE buttonless trackpads. I personally don't like to use chiclet keyboards. I need an optical drive.

    I can appreciate your opinion, but I would not buy your laptop.
  • Mayu - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link

    how does Lenovo Y560 (i7 740QM, 8gb, 5730 1 gb graphics card etc) stand against this laptop ?

  • JarredWalton - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link

    CPU is faster (you can get 740QM with the L501x if you want, though), and the 5730 is definitely faster than 420M. However, the Y560 doesn't have any switchable graphics and that quad-core CPU will kill battery life. If you want to go that route, I imagine the L501x with the GT 435M and i7-740QM will be about the same performance. Then it comes down to the other stuff. The speakers are still way better on this laptop I'm sure, the LCD is definitely better as well (Lenovo only has a 768p panel), and Dell gives USB 3.0 ports. Aesthetically, that's your call. I think the IdeaPads generally look ugly, but reading the comments what I like isn't necessarily the same as what others like. Reply
  • ratlas - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link

    Why does the CPUID Hardware Monitor screen cap show an 15 540 when this review machine is said to have an 15 460? Reply
  • JarredWalton - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link

    Maybe HWMonitor apparently doesn't know about the i5-460M. It's clocked at the same base clock as the 540M, but the 540M has higher Turbo modes. CPU-Z shows the correct CPU, as does Astra32, but I don't know how HWMonitor identifies CPUs. Reply
  • douglaswilliams - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link

    It looks like a child's toy. Unlike the awesome sleek M1330 (and its big brothers). Reply
  • JarredWalton - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link

    Problem is M1330 had a pretty pathetic GPU in there, even back in the day. 420M isn't the be-all, end-all of mobile GPUs, but it's at least enough for medium 768p gaming. If you value thin, ultimately you're going to have to give up GPU power (and probably CPU as well). Not that everyone needs a fast GPU, and Sandy Bridge will make dGPUs even less of a need, but for gaming I still think the best IGP is inadequate. Reply
  • Dug - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link

    To an extent. Even the Envy and Acer 4820tg is only 1.1" thick and has a better video card than the Dell which is .5" thicker. Even the Envy 17" is only 1.3" and has a 5850.

    I hope Sandy Bridge and maybe a 6 series AMD will allow for easier cooling and hopefully thinner designs.
  • Evil_Sheep - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link

    eh as a former M1330 owner i wouldn't describe it as either awesome or sleek, it's actually a bit chintzy but it gets the job done.

    I don't think many will find the XPS 15 lust-worthy but it's hardly ugly: it seems conservatively tasteful and at least it avoids last year's horrid trend of shiny black plastic, the bland Inspiron grey/black plastic, and the latest fad which is light silver/black + island keyboard since seems everyone wants to be a Macbook these days.
  • MacTheSpoon - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - link

    Any chance you could run that volume test on some Macbook Pros, to compare them with the Dell XPS? The speakers on my MBP 2007 are a pet peeve; they're so quiet I have to use Audio Hijack to get the volume up sufficiently. I'm curious how the new unibodies sound. Reply

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