Dell Precision M3800 review

Workstation laptops aren’t meant to be sexy or attractive, but the new Dell Precision M3800 turns convention on its head. It packs a quad-core CPU, Nvidia Quadro graphics and solid-state storage into a slim, stylish chassis that makes it look more like a super-sized Ultrabook than a semi-portable powerhouse such as Dell’s own Precision M4800.

See also: The best laptops of 2014

Lean and mean

Where the M4800’s aluminium-panelled chassis measures 40mm thick and weighs in at a substantial 3.2kg, the M3800 is comparatively waif-like, measuring 21mm thick and only barely nudging over the 2kg mark. It’s no MacBook Air, but for a laptop boasting this much grunt, it’s a svelte as they come.

There’s good reason for this: the Precision M3800 is actually a very slightly tweaked version of Dell’s latest XPS 15. Put the two side by side and it’s easy to see the resemblance. Just like that laptop, the M3800 is clad in matte-finish metal and carbon-fibre materials; it has the same wedge-like shape; and build quality is equally solid and rigid.

Despite the pared-down chassis, the core specification hasn’t suffered. All versions of the Precision M3800 come kitted out with a quad-core 2.2GHz Core i7-4702HQ CPU, and prices start at £1,507 inc VAT. For this, you also get a Full HD touchscreen, 8GB of RAM, a hybrid 500GB HDD and Windows 8.1 Pro. Our review unit had a 256GB Lite-On LMT-256M6M SSD instead of the hybrid drive, 16GB of RAM and packed in more than twice the pixels with a 3,200 x 1,800 display, bumping the price to £1,799.

Whichever of the models you choose, though, you’ll always get an Nvidia Quadro K1100M GPU. Thanks to its ISV-certified drivers, the Quadro GPU is far better suited to the rigours of running professional software applications than its GeForce cousins, which are found in Dell’s XPS laptops. The Quadro is ready and raring to boost performance in OpenCL-accelerated packages.

Power isn’t at a premium here. The M3800 smashed through our benchmarks with an Overall score of 0.93. This is a little behind its stablemate, the Precision M4800, which scored 1.01; that comes as little surprise, however. The M4800 was equipped with a significantly quicker 2.8GHz Core i7-4900MQ CPU and a more powerful Nvidia Quadro K2100M GPU. The Precision M3800’s Quadro K1100M GPU is no slouch, but it struggled to match the raw compute power of the M4800’s GPU, and took 2mins 15secs to render our Sony Vegas Pro 12 project, 19 seconds longer than the Precision M4800.

As ever, though, the high-end components take their toll on battery life. With the display dialled down to a dim 75cd/m[sup]2[/sup] and Wi-Fi turned off, the Precision M3800 lasted only 5hrs 48mins in our light-usage battery test. That’s not bad by workstation standards, but it doesn’t bode well for heavy usage away from the mains. And as the Dell’s battery is sealed inside its slender chassis there’s no option to carry a back-up in case of emergencies.

High-DPI display

The M3800’s 15.6in, 3,200 x 1,800 touchscreen is superb. The glossy finish is reflective, particularly outside or under intense lighting, but the LED backlighting is strong enough to keep images from washing out in almost any conditions. We recorded a maximum brightness of 402cd/m[sup]2[/sup], and while contrast isn’t the highest we’ve seen – our measurements put it at 717:1 – it’s no worse than the other high-DPI displays we’ve seen so far. More importantly, the panel covers the entire sRGB gamut and a little more besides. Colour accuracy is good, too, with an average Delta E of 3.4 and a maximum deviation of 6.2. We’d still recommend investing in a colorimeter for colour-critical applications, but it’s by no means essential – the Dell’s display puts in a good performance straight out of the box.

As ever, our only qualms concern the screen’s staggeringly high resolution; something we’ve moaned about previously in our reviews of laptops equipped with high-DPI displays. While Windows’ scaling settings render many applications at a sensible size, many others end up with text, icons and menus so tiny as to be borderline unusable – before taking the plunge, it’s worth doing some research into whether or not the applications you use properly support high-DPI displays.

Connectivity

Look around the Dell’s slender edges, and there’s a reasonable amount of connectivity on show. There’s a full-sized SD card reader, one USB 2 port, three USB 3 ports, HDMI and a mini-DisplayPort output. The presence of Bluetooth 4 and 802.11ac Wi-Fi is reassuring, too. The only major disappointments are the lack of an Ethernet socket and, in particular, Thunderbolt, which would have been a perfect addition to a slim laptop with limited internal expandability.

The M3800’s slim chassis has other downsides. Upgradability suffers most acutely, and while it is possible to unscrew the ten Torx screws on the underside and access some parts – the mSATA SSD, empty 2.5in HDD bay and two RAM slots – it isn’t as easy to swap out parts as it is with Dell’s larger Precision mobile workstations, and the battery is more fiddly to replace. Cooling is also something of an issue. Although we didn’t notice any throttling or slowdowns while benchmarking, we couldn’t help but hear the fan noise. Start pushing the Dell’s CPU or GPU, and its low-profile fans spin up with an intrusive whirr.

Some users will also miss the keyboard and touchpoint from chunkier Precision models – we definitely did. There’s little wrong with the M3800’s backlit Scrabble-tile keyboard. It’s a pleasure to type on. However, it doesn’t have the desktop-like key travel of the other Precisions we’ve tested, and there’s no numeric keypad. The loss of the touchpoint is another minor niggle, but it’s the M3800’s buttonless touchpad that’s least endearing. We had to spend some time getting the sensitivity just right, and for a professional machine the integrated buttons don’t work reliably enough. Discrete, physical buttons would have been a much better bet.

Verdict

Dell has done well to pack usable amounts of workstation power into such an attractive lightweight package and, while we’re still not sure about the benefits of high-DPI displays, the quality on offer is superb. Our biggest worry, however, concerns future-proofing: the slim chassis compromises on easy upgradability, and the lack of Thunderbolt limits external expansion. If you can live with those compromises, you’re unlikely to be disappointed; the Precision M3800 is as stylish and speedy as Windows mobile workstations come. However, there’s definitely room for improvement.

Details
Warranty
Warranty	1yr on-site
Physical specifications
Dimensions	372 x 254 x 21mm (WDH)
Weight	2.020kg
Travelling weight	2.5kg
Processor and memory
Processor	Intel Core i7-4702HQ
RAM capacity	16.00GB
Memory type	DDR3
SODIMM sockets free	0
SODIMM sockets total	2
Screen and video
Screen size	15.6in
Resolution screen horizontal	3,200
Resolution screen vertical	1,800
Resolution	3200 x 1800
HDMI outputs	1
DisplayPort outputs	1
Drives
Capacity	256GB
Spindle speed	N/A
Internal disk interface	mSATA
Hard disk	Lite-On LMT-256M6M
Optical drive	None
Replacement battery price inc VAT	£0
Networking
Wired adapter speed	N/A
802.11a support	yes
802.11b support	yes
802.11g support	yes
802.11 draft-n support	yes
Integrated 3G adapter	no
Bluetooth support	yes
Other Features
USB ports (downstream)	1
3.5mm audio jacks	1
SD card reader	yes
Memory Stick reader	yes
MMC (multimedia card) reader	yes
Pointing device type	Touchpad/touchscreen
Integrated microphone?	yes
Integrated webcam?	yes
Camera megapixel rating	1.2mp
TPM	yes
Fingerprint reader	no
Smartcard reader	no
Battery and performance tests
Battery life, light use	5hr 42min
Overall Real World Benchmark score	0.93
Responsiveness score	0.82
Media score	1.02
Multitasking score	0.96
Operating system and software
Operating system	Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit
OS family	Windows 8