New Dell XPS L521X (Ivy Bridge)

Maybe I'm just picky, but I don't like that the whole Vizio line only has 2 USB ports.

 

Then you'll want the 15 xps cause the 14 only has 2 USB ports

 

Well I'm aware of that, but aren't a lot of things that US citizens pay for covered by a lot of European governments?

If not, that's sad and confusing. Personally, our country has a lot of issues, but I prefer our government over a lot of the european ones. no offense to europeans themselves of course.

Personally, I'm looking at the Vizio CN15-A1. It hits a really nice price point at 1050$. I don't get a quad core, but I never really need one, and 1200$ is out of my range sadly I probably would have gotten the 15R SE but AMD graphics = bad, and the Vostro screens are just so bad

@Dell: Moar Nvidia!

 

The MSATA is not for holding files, it is only for speeding up file and boot performance. Besides in the UK you can get a Crucial 512GB SSD for £285, which is the route I will be going.

 

Any news about the specific 512gb SSD mounted?

And JBL?

 

Wow these prices are asinine for the Aussies. I certainly hope we get way more customization and lower prices in the US, or it will make my decision to not buy an XPS very easy.

That's actually true for the most part. Funny story, when I lived in Switzerland it was cheaper to buy an Audi A4 from the US, have it sea shipped to Switzerland and imported than to buy locally or go 10 mins across the border and buy in Germany.

Damn 12%? That's nuts. I was mad when they raised our state tax temporarily to 7.25% from 6.5 to pay for a baseball stadium. I do feel like everything is dirt cheap in the US after having lived in Europe (especially STEAK!)

 

It will be Samsung 830 series.

 

If I wanted one of the new XPS laptops, yeah, it'd be the 15.

 

Sorry if this is a weird question, but does anyone know if the XPS 15 can be configured with no discrete graphics card (i.e. only with integrated graphics)? The only graphics-intensive thing I'd do with the laptop is watch 1080p movies, and I could benefit from the lighter weight.

Also, how does having 2 graphics cards work--is the discrete card completely turned off (not producing any heat or drawing any power) unless the system determines that it's needed? Or is the discrete card always running or at least in standby (i.e. drawing a small amount of power) all the time?

 

The Zenbook Primes are different

AnandTech - ASUS Zenbook Prime (UX21A) Review: The First of the 2nd Gen Ultrabooks
(note the exceptionally low delta E, though that's the ux21 which has a lower gamut than the ux32 so perhaps the ux32 has a different delE as well)

Review Asus Zenbook UX32VD Ultrabook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

 

I was in the market to buy a 15.6" laptop recently, and was disappointed to find that the L502x didn't have the 1080p screen option anymore. I intended on waiting for the L521x to come out, but decided to go with a dv6t-7000 Quad just yesterday (due to a $400 off coupon).

Now that the details/pricing of the L521x have been released, I'm glad I went with the dv6t-7000 Quad instead of waiting for the seemingly overpriced L521x. The dv6t-7000 Quad offers so much more for the money = i7-3610, GT 650M GDDR5, 1080p screen, 8GB RAM, Blu-ray player, 750GB 7200RPM Hybrid HDD, backlit keyboard -- all for around $1100 USD shipped.

For anyone who's thinking of jumping ship, I don't think there's the $400 off coupon anymore (expired yesterday), but there is still a $250 + $50 off coupon.

 

Uh..I was never very interested in the SSDs...how it is, It's worth the price?

 

I'm aware of that, but you don't know for certain that you'll be able to mount your own SSD in there until you see the tear-down manual, and why pay for something I don't want to begin with?

 

Those Vizio notebooks look nice... their top of the line is only $1200!!! Includes a 1 TB + 32GB SSD, i7, 8 GB RAM... their top-end price is the same as the XPS' rumored low-end price!!! As it is now... The XPS is priced way too high!

I'm pretty sure you could install the OS and programs to the mSATA if you wanted to; then you could use the HDD for files.

 

The card is soldered to the board, so you can't choose without only whether it is the 630M or 640M. Optimus works seemlessly so that when the GPU is required for a game it automatically loads. This is why batterys last so much longer nowadays, along with lower power CPU requirements.

 

It's not like there's a world economic crisis, right?

Well, interesting you should say that. I have two. One doesn't have any bias and is a nice, Samsung screen that should have had better contrast at the price I paid for it.

The other one is a cheap one that cost half as much as the other and indeed has this blueish hue to the screen (not awful but I noticed it). But, the sharpness of the colors and contrast is AMAZING! It's almost as good as on my FHD XPS 15.
When you use the laptop continuously, you don't really notice the blueish hue anymore. It's an AUO screen.

 

Samsun 830 is quoted as one of the best SSD on market at the moment.

 

Which graphic card is mounted on ?

 

Ideally that's what the mSATA is for. Although I'm not sure how well W7 or W8 plus your personal media and docs would fit in their entirety on a measly 32GB. It's never the full amount quoted anyway; you end up with only 28-30GB if you're lucky. But yes, I would squeeze the OS on the SSD.

 

Interesting that the 14 has the 630M and not the 620. Makes it more appealing to me.

Also in regards to Vizio, while the laptops look nice, it is their first time in the market. Makes me kind of nervous to buy them, but that's just me.

 

Does the XPS 15 have a webcam and built-in mic? If so, is it 720p? 1080p?

 

That may be the case, but we don't know if the bios allows you to boot from it or whether windows sees it as a an external drive for storage.

 

that's a good news, thanks

 

Uhh, that's not the point of a 32GB msata, it's for caching purposes, Intel SRT(Smart Response Technology). You aren't supposed to try to install the OS on the SSD. If you want to use the msata as a real SSD the US version will have a 128/256/512GB msata drive.

 

Yes it does and 720P.

 

It's 1.3MPX and two mics.

 

It's a GT 640 LE.

No, no, no. I meant only the OS and programs on the mSATA. Documents, pictures, videos, music, etc. would all be on the hard drive.

 

That's exactly what I'm counting on, because that 32GB mSATA is a slap in the face. 256 is precisely what the doctor ordered.

 

For me mSATA only makes sens if I can do RAID 0 with 240GB SSD and 240GB msata. That will give me 480GB of storage with twice the speed of single SSD.

 

Except you'd never realize that increased speed, ever. Raiding SSD's for non-production environments is a waste of time, a 256GB SSD + 1TB HDD is a much better solution

 

i think that 32gb msata should have been soldered on and standard in all XPS 15
then offer the 128gb msata ssd for windows and programs with the HDD and as price goes up the msata drive increases to 256gb

 

The GT640M LE. It is about 20% weaker than the GT640M in the pricier XPS' but much much better than the weaker GT630M.

Actually, the SSD does boot the OS. I forget which one, but one of the hands on reviews that I read had a video of the OS booting. Took about 18 seconds if I recall.

Also: Vizio ships their notebooks with zero bloatware and zero stickers, and Microsoft's "signature" thing. IT's supposed to improve efficiency on the laptop, and you get microsoft technical support for 90 days. I don't know how much of a difference it would make, but no bloatware and sticker's for me is a big big plus. I don't know how much of a difference microsoft signature is, but it would be nice if other companies offered it.

IT also has a 1080P IPS display. And I expect Vizio did a good job with it, they are the #1 American HDTV seller after all.

I'm willing to take the plunge because every single hands on that I read had nothing but praise for them. The only negative I can see is the lack of USB ports/connectivity options, but I'm completely fine with HDMI and a USB hub - that's all the connectivity I need.

 

I disagree, have a look at benchmarks of two Intel 520 in RAID 0, system start up etc.




SSD in RAID review

 

I hear MS Signature is the bee's knees. Although who doesn't just reinstall Windows when they get a new computer?

 

Problem is that you loose decent TRIM support and you make it even more likely you'll loose all your data. I'm not one to be too paranoid about SSD reliability but I'm not going to play with fire by slapping two of them in a RAID 0.

 

i just checked dells singapore's website and they only listed the xps 14. i hope it will be available in singapore soon!!!!

 

I spoke with a Vizio rep today who said that there are 2 ram slots and that it is actually upgradable, and the mSATA is not user accessible although the HDD is.

 

Intel RST 11.5 will support TRIM on RAID and is in beta.

 

Hey to be honest, to my eyes, the raid made with 2 SSD seems much more pornware than useful feature Don't blame me .

 

I'm sure if you took it apart enough you could get to it

 

Does anyone know where i can find reviews/impressions of said vizios?

 

So I shouldn't tell you I once raid 0'd 6 32GB Samsung SLC drives together?

 

As far as I know they haven't been released just yet.

 

Google Hands on Vizio Notebook. You should get quite a few hits. Here are some, you might be able to find more. There are no comprehensive reviews because they haven't been entirely released yet.

Hands-on: Vizio’s Beautiful, Bloatware-Free Ultrabooks Start at $898

Vizio's new Notebook and Thin + Light unibody ultrabooks available today for $898 (hands-on) | The Verge

Hands-on With the Vizio Laptops : Vizio Launches Bloatware-free Laptops & All-in-One PCs This is a fairly informative article on the entire lineup and the design process.

Also, if you go to the Vizio notebook page, it talks about the 32GB ssd being used as a cache to speed up OS/frequently used files. So you will definitely feel faster.

You can find more from googling, that's just three good ones.

If any Dell guys see this, the only reason I think Vizio has you beat is: your starting price point is a little too high, and their idea of getting rid of the bloatware/stickers on a premium laptop is absolutely fantastic. The XPS top model will no doubt clean the Vizio, but it's a bit too expensive for my taste. (unless all the price rumors are false)

 

Bill, I am extremely disappointed. I was planning to buy the XPS 15 in Australia, especially one with an SSD (even 256 would be good).

The 512GB SSD one costs a whooping 2700AUD.

Now, compare that to the MBP with retina display in Australia. The one with 256GB SSD sells for only 2500AUD. Except for the SSD, you can probably say ALL other specs on the MBP is better or on par than the dell XPS 15 (thinner, significantly lighter, better display....)

I mean seriously? what's the marketing department doing?

I called the Dell Australia and explained several times politely but the only answer I got was this is a new product, the 512GB is significantly more expensive than 256GB....we won't negotiate any discounts because we didn't receive any other customers' complaints...

Seriously?

Bill, I wonder if you could help us in Australia


And guys, I was wondering, if you were in my shoes, would you not go for MBP instead? (apart from rigging the SSD yourself)

 

T MINUS ------- time. Haha heehe

 

What you said!!!!!!!

 

Wow left for the morning and came back to read 20+ pages of comments

At least we know it's coming about tomorrow. So disappointed about the prices though. Dell should offer a introductory discount to move some sales

 

Erm? Prices will be fine in the US, it's everywhere else they suck.

 

They just started arriving in stores on the west coast today...most stores won't have them until later this week. Hopefully we'll see some YouTube reviews in the next day or two but so far I haven't found any.