The Inspiron 11z is a new netbook from Dell, hoping to change the way we think of the ultra-portable segment. Instead of using the long-favored Intel Atom processor, Dell decided to use the new ultra-low voltage Celeron 723 and the GS45 chipset. On paper the processor has more grunt, and when paired with X4500 integrated graphics, it has a huge advantage over Atom machines. In this review we take an in-depth look at the new 11z, to see if it is the netbook we have all been waiting for.
Our Dell Inspiron 11z Specifications:
- Windows Vista Home Premium (SP1, 32-bit)
- Intel Celeron 723 (1.2GHz, 800MHz FSB, 1MB Cache)
- Intel GS45 + ISH9M chipset
- 11.6″ WXGA LED-backlit display at 1366×768
- Intel X4500 Integrated Graphics
- Dell 1397 ABG Wireless
- 2GB DDR2-800 SDRAM (1 Slot)
- 250GB 5400RPM Hard Drive
- 65W (19.5V x 3.34A) 100-240V AC Adapter
- 3-cell 28Wh 11.1v 2420mAh Lithium
Ion battery - Dimensions (WxDxH): 11.5″ x 8.43″ x 0.92-1.02″
- Weight: 3.05lbs
- 1-year limited warranty
- Price when purchased: $399 (Currently $449)
Build and Design
The Dell Inspiron 11z has a very simple design, with a plain black glossy screen cover, matte black chassis, and a silver painted palmrest. When closed the shell is nearly flat, with few items sticking out the bottom cover, making it easy to slide into a slipcase or backpack. Inside the 11z has no superfluous features, just the touchpad, keyboard, power button, and power indicator. There are no media buttons outside of function keys on the keyboard, and there aren’t even activity lights or touchpad buttons. Dell really tried to take out unneeded or cluttering features to make this netbook as clean and easy to use as possible.
Build quality is average, with a few minor annoyances we noticed out of the box. With most computers you don’t see chassis flaws right out of the box. What you do notice are cosmetic flaws, which even if they are minor are still depressing to see on a brand new machine. Our 11z came with a battery preinstalled that looked like it had been tumbled around in a box with other batteries up until the assembly stage. It was scuffed and marred all over, which was easily noticed since it has a fine matte finish. The rubber bumpers on the screen were also incorrectly installed. They are square pieces of rubber designed to fit in square holes, but installed crooked like diamonds. In the entire scheme of things these are minor problems that don’t affect the durability of the notebook, but needless to say don’t instill confidence in the end-user.
The chassis felt durable with strong internal support under most structures. The palmrest and keyboard showed very few signs of flex under strong pressure, which is a must for a good typing experience. Outside of the marred battery, the screen cover and chassis resisted scratching and other wear. The screen hinges felt durable, and kept the screen securely shut even when held in a vertical position.
Internally the design of the 11z is very friendly for users wanting to upgrade or replace components. At first you might notice there is no bottom access to components, with a solid panel covering the bottom. Instead Dell put all user-accessible components underneath the keyboard, which can be removed by three screws. With the keyboard off you have access to an open WWAN slot, the system memory, hard drive, and heatsink assembly. The WWAN slot was functional, recognizing the Verizon card borrowed from my D630; but it lacked antennas to allow the card to send and receive data.
Screen and Speakers
The 11.6″ screen on the 11z was an excellent change from the common 1024×600 netbook screen. With a resolution of 1366×768 you have as much screen space as full-size notebooks, meaning that menus and other items that need more vertical space are no longer a problem. The panel looks great, with good color reproduction and very even lighting thanks to the LED-backlighting. Contrast was average, and varied depending on the vertical viewing angle. The viewing sweet spot didn’t allow for an entirely black screen to be viewed, instead you either had some shift at the top or some at the bottom. Brighter colors didn’t have this problem, and looked fantastic in everything from viewing images to just browsing the web.
Vertical viewing angles were average, with a 15-20 degree viewing sweet spot before colors started to significantly distort. Horizontal viewing angles stayed true even at very steep angles. Viewing brightness was fine for use in bright office conditions, but outdoor viewing was limited unless you found a shared area.
The speakers sounded slightly better than average when compared to other netbooks. Instead of no bass and midrange, you could hear a hint of lower tones that might be completely passed over on smaller netbooks. Peak volume was fine for watching a movie or listening to music. For a larger room or to enjoy movies to their fullest potential, HDMI out is the best option. It can pass both video and digital audio to your home theater system, which even the worst stereo will sound better than most notebooks.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The keyboard on the 11z is basically full-size and very comfortable to type on. The layout is easy to follow, taking no time at all to transition to and start typing at full speed. The key design is flat, similar to Chiclet style keyboards, but without an inner bezel dividing the keys. Individual key action is smooth, giving off a soft click when pressed. One odd feature Dell has been transitioning to on newer models is the reversed function key layout. If you want to adjust brightness, you press the correct button and the brightness changes. To hit F5 to refresh a page, you now need to hit FN+F5. Thankfully this feature can be disabled for more advanced users.
The touchpad on the 11z is the first one that I absolutely can’t stand to use. Some notebooks have laggy touchpads which might be annoying, but they are still usable. This is not the case with the all-in-one touchpad on the 11z. Dell decided to copy Apple by going with integral buttons under the touchpad surface, but didn’t design the hardware or driver support correctly. On a MacBook if you have a finger resting on the touchpad surface to trigger the button while selecting text or moving around objects, it can tell the difference. It knows that finger shouldn’t be recognized as a variable in the multi-touch movements or standard movements; the Elan touchpad can’t.
If you hold one finger on the touchpad over the left or right button and try to move around the screen a few things might happen. Either the cursor will pop into a corner, usually the start menu corner without warning, or sometimes the top right. Another problem is unwanted zooming, which now controls the size of icons on the desktop, viewing size of documents, and even the size of webpages. We experienced everything except the zooming of documents roughly 10 minutes after turning the 11z on for the first time. The last problem which isn’t as important, but still annoying, is the speed of the X and Y axis input. Moving your finger side to side makes the cursor move more than if you travel the same distance up and down. A simple test is drawing a circle on the screen with your finger, where the 11z makes wide ovals instead.
Ports and Features
Port selection is average for most netbooks, with the exception of HDMI in place of an older VGA port. Dell included three USB ports, audio jacks, an SDHC-card slot, and LAN connector. Users might also notice that Dell went with a full-size power connection on the 11z, the same shared with every other Dell notebook. The power adapter is another change over most netbooks, as Dell included a 65w thin power brick with this model. On one hand it is nice to get a high quality power adapter that will probably hold up better over time than most netbooks’ adapters, but on the flip side it is pretty big.
Performance and Benchmarks
We had very high hopes coming into this review that the Inspiron 11z would finally be the netbook that wouldn’t be as limited in processing power. While the Atom is fine for some tasks, multimedia is not its strong suit. Flash video tends to bog it down, and HD streaming video is impossible to watch. Right out of the box we navigated to YouTube to see how well the 11z would perform. Sadly it still gets a very high processor load watching SD flash video, and lags severely watching HD flash video. Hulu showed the same problems, as well as a few we haven’t seen before. While loading a Hulu video, if you scroll up and down quickly on the touchpad and release, the computer continues to scroll up and down for 5-10 seconds.
Turning to benchmarks to find out how the Celeron 723 compared to the N270 and N280 Atom, we found that it was actually running slower than expected. wPrime, which just tests the processor, was actually giving results slower than both Atom processors. Running PCMark05, the Celeron and X4500 graphics combo was able to come out about 100 points above the fastest Atom machine, but still not a huge improvement. The main area the 11z was able to flex its muscles was in 3D performance, scoring well above another netbooks in 3DMark06.
In our HD video tests the 11z was able to play all of our video trailers. The 480p and 720p videos played with no problems at all, and after some minor tweaking the 1080p trailer would play smoothly. Playing 1080p video puts it above other netbooks we have tested, but in the real world most users won’t be watching 1080p video on a netbook that is barely above 720p in its native resolution.
Heat and Noise
Temperatures stayed within reasonable levels when the 11z wasn’t being stressed out. As soon as you started performing more processor intensive activities, the chassis did form a few hot spots, which were centralized around the exhaust outlet.
Noise levels from the heatsink were minimal, and only noticed if you put your ear up to the exhaust outlet. The only annoying noise the 11z produced was a high pitch whine when it was fully turned on or in its sleep mode.
Battery Life
The included battery with the 11z is fairly small, with a rated capacity of 28Wh. This is almost half the size of most netbook batteries today, as many manufacturers go with 6-cell models for extended battery life. In our test with the screen brightness set to 70%, Windows Vista set to the balanced power profile, and wireless active the 11z stayed on for 3 hours and 32 minutes. Users looking to get all-day performance won’t find it from this configuration, but may have better luck with an extended battery when Dell makes it an option.
Conclusion
The Dell Inspiron 11z was one of those notebooks that looks like it could be the perfect machine on paper, but once you get it in person you find out it has some fatal flaw. The build quality was great in terms of the overall construction of the netbook, but lacked in its cosmetic condition out of the box. The processing power of the Celeron performed below our expectations, being slower than the Atom processor. The strength of the 11z came mostly from its much better GS45 chipset, including the X4500 integrated graphics which excelled compared to the GMA950.
With all of the stuff listed above the 11z would be a slightly better than average netbook, offered at a reasonable price, with an excellent 11.6″ WXGA screen. Unfortunately, once you include the flawed touchpad, it turns into a netbook that is very hard to recommend to anyone without a massive overhaul of the hardware and driver support. I can honestly say that before we received our Inspiron 11z, multiple editors in our office were considering purchasing it for a travel notebook. Now we are waiting for the next machine, or updated 11z which has the same or better features with a functional touchpad.
Pros:
- X4500 integrated graphics with HDMI out
- Perfect screen size and resolution for a netbook
- Comfortable keyboard
Cons:
- Worst … Touchpad … Ever
- Small stock battery
- Weak performance from the Celeron 723
- CPU whine when off and in sleep mode
For the majority of the reviewing process we had to resort to using an external mouse exclusively. While the average user could easily do this, it takes away from the portability of a netbook and really shouldn’t be required.
Ports and Features
Port selection is average for most netbooks, with the exception of HDMI in place of an older VGA port. Dell included three USB ports, audio jacks, an SDHC-card slot, and LAN connector. Users might also notice that Dell went with a full-size power connection on the 11z, the same shared with every other Dell notebook. The power adapter is another change over most netbooks, as Dell included a 65w thin power brick with this model. On one hand it is nice to get a high quality power adapter that will probably hold up better over time than most netbooks’ adapters, but on the flip side it is pretty big.
Front: Power/Sleep indicator
Rear: Battery
Left: LAN, HDMI, one USB
Right: SDHC-slot, Audio jacks, two USB, AC Power, Kensington Lock slot
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