Dell has made some changes to its laptop line-up by extending its Inspiron series and combining the Studio and XPS range into a single “Studio-XPS” series. The Dell Inspiron M501R promises to be a bang for the buck performance laptop with an AMD based quad-core processor along with dedicated 1GB of Radeon HD 550v series graphics processor. Impressive specs for sure, but, how does it deliver as a laptop? Let’s find out.

Look and Feel: Too shiny, and then some
Straight out of the box, and the shiny nature of the Inspiron’s body is what will catch your attention/ annoy you, depending on your mood. The lid, which can be customized in many colours, has a shine to it, which beats me, since the finish is not actually glossy. Open the lid and you are greeted by the silver finish around the keyboard and the touchpad. The silver looks classy, but this problem with this particular finish shows up over a long period of time...sweaty palms, when placed on this surface, will tend to ensure that the shine starts fading at certain places, giving it a horrible look.

The 15.6 inch screen is not as reflective as expected, but having said that, it is not perfectly non reflective either. The screen quality is typical of a 15.6-inch value laptop, but pushing the brightness to maximum did not result in a washed out screen, indicating a good balance between the brightness and contrast levels. Thanks to the big screen, the Dell Inspiron M501R does get a keyboard with a dedicated number pad. Speaking of which, the keyboard is very comfortable to use. The feel of the keys is quite nice, even though the keys are totally flat. This is neither the Chiclet style keyboard (which the Apple Macbook and HP Pavilion dm3 use), nor the floating style keypad (which the Gateway ID59C deploys). The travel distance of the keys is very good, and the keys are adequately spaced out as well. The touchpad is quite good as well, with pretty precise tracking. The separate left and right click buttons are not integrated into the touchpad, which is a good thing. Integrated buttons are not the most comfortable to use, while they may look good aesthetically.

Read on to know about the features, performance, out take and the price of the Dell Inspiron M501R...