Inspiron 6400: Lots of power for little money
Written: Mar 30 '06
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Pros: Amazing 1680x1050 display, extremely long battery life, powerful Core Duo CPU, inexpensive
Cons: Somewhat large and thick, price varies a lot depending on Dell specials.
The Bottom Line: The Inspiron 6400 is the best bang for the buck out there. There just isn't a more powerful laptop available at such a good price.
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| rfman's Full Review: Dell Inspiron 6400 (I6400LO) PC Notebook |
It’s amazing how notebook computers have come a long way in past years. A few years back, it would have been unthinkable to use a notebook computer for serious photography-related tasks with software packages such as Adobe Photoshop. Yet that’s exactly what I use my new Dell Inspiron 6400 for, and it does an admirable job.
Being an avid amateur photographer, I wanted to be certain that my next laptop would be powerful enough to handle on-location photo editing, so I set out a few main criteria that I absolutely required: widescreen display with 1400x900 resolution or better, 100 GB hard drive and a DVD burner. And it also had to fit in my Lowepro Computrekker AW camera gear backpack.
Quite frankly, it didn’t take much research to find out that Dell had the clear winner, at a price that nobody could match. While the base Inspiron 6400 is fairly basic, Dell, as always, offers a multitude of upgrades to suit the needs of most users. I ordered a 6400 with the following configuration:
-1.66 GHz Intel Core Duo processor
-1 GB RAM (1 DIMM)
-15.4” WSXGA display (1680x1050)
-100 GB 7200 RPM hard disk drive
-8x Dual-layer DVD burner
-Intel GMA950 graphics
-Intel 802.11 a/b/g wireless networking
-High-capacity 9-cell battery
That’s a very powerful notebook computer by any standard. The amazing part is that I purchased this computer for 1380$CAD with a free leather case and 128MB USB flash drive (about 1175$US at current exchange rates). There isn’t a single other computer manufacturer that sells such a powerful computer at this low a price. I’m not even sure if there’s another computer manufacturer that sells notebooks with 15.4” WSXGA displays.
It took about 10 days to get the computer from the time I placed the order, which is not too bad considering they custom-configured it in Texas and then had to ship it across the continent to Ontario. 10 days does seem like forever when you’re waiting for your new computer though, and Dell would give me different estimated shipping dates depending on who I talked to.
This was my first Dell computer, and I was surprised to see how sparse the packaging was. The computer was placed in a styrofoam clamshell container which was placed in a large cardboard shipping box, along with a documentation and cables box and the leather case. It seems like the foam container the computer itself was in was used to carry it along the assembly and testing process, and is also used for shipping. In the end, while not very elegant, the packaging delivered my notebook intact after a journey of about 2500 miles, so it’s safe to say it does the job well.
The computer is about the same size as most consumer-level 15.4” widescreen notebooks on the market, which is to say it’s not a thin and light laptop. Still, it’s less than 7 pounds with the high-capacity battery, and I can use it comfortably on my lap. It fits snugly in my camera gear backpack, so the size is fine with me. The silver/black/white color scheme looks very nice, but only time will tell how the finish will stand up to wear and tear. The build quality is on par with competing laptops from HP, Compaq, Gateway and the like. The housing is all plastic, but it doesn’t give off the impression of being cheap or flimsy.
After plugging in the AC adapter, I started it up and filled out the Windows registration and preferences information, only to be greeted by a desktop loaded with a bunch of unwanted software like AOL trial offers and trial versions of McAfee software and such. I’m not a big fan of unwanted pre-installed software (affectionately called crapware!), and uninstalling all those things unavoidably screws up something in the system it seems, so I completely wiped off the hard drive and did a clean Windows installation with only the drivers the machine needed. Downloading drivers from the Dell site is a breeze by the way; I just had to enter the Express Service code on the bottom of the computer and was taken to a page with download links for the drivers for my custom machine configuration.
I can safely say that this is the fastest laptop computer I have ever had the pleasure to use. It is significantly faster than the brand new IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad T43 with a 2GHz Pentium M processor that I have at work. A quick PCMark benchmark places the 6400’s performance about 20% above the T43. That’s quite impressive, considering that the T43 is a much more expensive computer. You can read my review of the T43 here.
What benchmarks alone cannot convey is how responsive the computer is with the Core Duo processor. For those of you not in the know, the Core Duo in essentially two processors mounted on a single chip package, effectively making the 6400 a dual CPU notebook. This means that while one CPU handles all the background tasks that Windows imposes, like virus scanning, networking operations and such, the other CPU is free to run the applications you actually want to use. Of course, there are also applications, like Adobe Photoshop, that are designed to take advantage of both CPUs, which results in absolutely stellar performance that blows the Pentium M chip out of the water. For example, the Inspiron 6400 with 1.66 GHz Core Duo processor encodes video faster than my AMD Athlon 64 3200 desktop computer.
The WSXGA display is absolutely gorgeous, and was worth every dollar spent to upgrade from the base WXGA display. It’s very bright and sharp, and the resolution is perfect. Dell has offered 15.4” 1920x1200 displays in the past, but icon text was incredibly small and difficult to read. The 1680x1050 display I ordered is much better in that way, but still has enough pixels to be a good photo editing machine. The WXGA (1280x800) base display is well suited for common everyday tasks such as e-mail and word processing, but I wouldn’t recommend it for graphics work.
The integrated GMA950 graphics processor won’t break any records for 3D gaming. It’s about 30% slower than the Radeon X300 on the Thinkpad T43, and that’s not a very fast chip to start with. I’d definitely recommend paying the extra to get the Radeon X1400 graphics processor if you intend to play 3D games. For my photography needs, I only need 2D features, so the Intel GMA950 was plenty for me. I can still play games like World of Warcraft, but I have to stick to playing at 1024x768 with visual effects at a low setting.
The 6400 really impresses when it comes to battery life. With the high-capacity battery I purchased, I’m getting over 5 hours of battery life when working in Office and Firefox, with Wi-Fi turned on, with the display only a few steps below maximum brightness. That’s phenomenal battery life, and I’m sure many air travelers will rejoice at this. At that rate, the standard battery should last about 3.5 hours, which is still respectable, but with the high-capacity battery increasing the price by less than 50$, it’s worth the upgrade in my mind. My 6400 also has a 7200 RPM hard drive, which consumes slightly more power than a regular 5400 RPM unit, so there may be more battery life gains possible with the use of a slower hard drive. Intel has really done a phenomenal job with the Core Duo when it comes to managing battery life.
Ergonomically speaking, the machine is comfortable to use with a large touchpad with scrolling areas at the right and bottom which are very useful. The keyboard has a nice tactile response and is comfortable to use for extended periods of time. The only feature I wish the computer had is some sort of a keyboard lighting feature. A backlit keyboard like Apple uses would be awesome, but just a light mounted on the display panel shining on the keyboard like the ThinkPads use would have been nice.
The other features work as intended, there’s not much else to report. The 802.11 a/b/g wireless works well and has great reception to connect to distant access points. The 8x DVD burner completed my discs without errors, that’s as much as I can ask for. There is a built-in media card reader, which supports many formats like SD, MMC and xD. Unfortunately, it does not support Compact Flash, so I still need to use my USB CF card reader to transfer files from my Digital SLR camera, but the xD slot is useful for transferring pictures taken with my Olympus compact camera.
Outstanding features
-Impressive battery life; 5 hours used to be impossible to attain on a single battery, yet the 6400 consistently operates over that threshold with the high-capacity battery.
-Powerful next-generation Core Duo CPU; this processor is faster than the Pentium M without increasing power usage. The days of single-core are counted, and the Core Duo is the future of mobile computing.
-Beautiful 1680x1050 WSXGA display. This is the perfect resolution for a 15.4” widescreen display. Icons and text are still legible, and there is enough resolution to comfortably work on graphics projects. Its brightness has been adequate in all lighting conditions
Not-so-good points
-Form factor: this laptop is not small by any means. There are smaller 15.4” laptops on the market, and Apple has shown with the MacBook Pro just how small a computer with a 15.4” display can be.
-Sub-par ram included at the factory. I made the same exact complaint about the IBM T43. The motherboard data bus on the 6400 runs at 667 MHz, yet Dell installs 533 MHz DDR2 RAM. Why are they reducing system performance with slow RAM just to save a few dollars… makes no sense to me.
Value
I’ll just say it outright to start; the Inspiron 6400 is the best deal going in the 15” widescreen laptop segment. There isn’t another notebook on the market that can approach its price/performance combination. The base configuration 6400 packs in a very powerful dual core CPU and great battery life for about 800$US. For just over 1100$US, you can order a fully loaded computer like mine that will rival many desktops performance-wise. No other laptop t the market packs in so much at such a low price.
Who should buy this
Are you looking for an affordable laptop with a powerful processor and great battery life? Then you should take a look at the Inspiron 6400. The base configuration will satisfy home users that want to work on office-related tasks, and the optional display and hard drive upgrades will satisfy power users like myself that want to do heavy tasks on the run.
Who should avoid this
If you’re looking for a thin and light notebook, the Inspiron 6400 is probably not for you. I would not buy this if I spent my days flying across the country, but it’s fine for taking on the occasional trip a few times a year. Road warriors might want to take a look at the Dell Latitude D620, which should be out any day now. It features the same processor as the 6400, but in a smaller from factor that is more suitable to frequent travel.
Conclusion
Dell really has a winner on their hands with the Inspiron 6400. Its combination of a powerful CPU, choice of display and hard drives and awesome battery life will impress most users. And the low, low price will please the budget-maker for sure. Why are people still buying Compaqs and Gateways when they could get a 6400 for less?
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1175
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
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Epinions.com ID:
rfman
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Member: Luc Delorme
Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Reviews written: 103
Trusted by: 15 members
About Me:
Electrical Engineer, amateur photographer, car buff, technophile, video game player and collector.
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