Inspiron 11 3137 Review, with pictures!
So I was looking for a new netbook. I have previously owned a Asus eeePC and Acer Aspire One in the past. My Acer recently had a accident where it would no longer POST after I attempted to solder another RAM socket on it (don't ask). I saw in the Black Friday forum Office Max was going to have the Dell Inspiron 11 on sale for $299. After looking at the almost non-existent reviews on-line I decided to get one. This past week a coupon came in the mail in the Dell flier for $80 the Inspiron 11 with Dell's pre-Black Friday Sales. I ordered one on Monday night seeing as how I could avoid the craziness next Friday. It had free shipping and came to $320 something after tax. I ordered it Monday and got it this Friday.
For what I would consider a 'Netbook' style the build quality is excellent. Plastic everywhere of course but it has a sturdy, rugged feel to it. It is Mac-book Air sized (which I considered but didn't want to shell out the $$ for) but a little bit thicker. The touchscreen is nice and responsive and has no bezels (which is one of the things that turned me away from the Air. It met all the criteria I was looking for: USB3, HDMI, 11.6" LCD and long battery life.
The touchapad is crap, as I find most touchpads nowadays. The speakers sound really well for their size. Another positive is a regular Dell DC jack, meaning it will take any 65W+ Dell adapter made in the last 10+ years. There are 2 USB ports on the left side along with the DC jack, HDMI and headphone port. The right has another USB, SD card, Ethernet port and Kensington lock.
The lower left front has the battery charge indicator and (Yes!) a hard drive activity light, I sorely missed this on my old Acer. The keyboard is a chic-let style, no better or worse that I have seen on other laptops. I don't find myself accidentally brushing the touchpad with my palms when typing causing the cursor to move everywhere, something again, the Acer sucked at.
Inside the machine, the wireless card, RAM and HD are all removable and replaceable. It comes with a Dell branded Wireless 'N' and Bluetooth module. Wireless seems to work fine and I haven't tried the Bluetooth. It ships with only 2GB of RAM which I think is terrible at this time. 4GB should be the minimum. Dell says that is the max, but people on Dell forums have successfully reported installing 8GB into it just fine. I have a Crucial module on order from Amazon. There is only one RAM slot, so single channel but it does use DDR3-1600, so 12.8GB/s bandwidth. The RAM must be 1.35V or DDR3L.
I swapped out the 500GB Western Digital Blue drive for my trusty Intel X-25M G2. Not the newest and greatest SSD, but better than the mechanical drive. The laptop will only take 7mm drives, so I had to remove the spacer on my Intel drive. The screws that hold the spacer on are too long so I had to fine shorter ones. It is a 6gbps SATA port.
Battery life is most excellent due to the ULT Haswell chip. I managed at least 8 hours yesterday while playing games, web browsing, etc. As I type this, the Windows battery meter says: 94% and 12 Hours and 55 Min remaining. Speaking of the Haswell, CPU-Z shows this chip as a Core i5-4350U (mis-reported), so very much like the MacBook Air chip. This the Celeron version so it's a 1.4GHz dual core with 2MB L3 cache. It is missing the Hyperthreading, Boost and 3MB cache like the Air chip. When I had it apart, the CPU and PCH are all on the same chip so it is exactly like the Air in that regard. It is a 15W chip (including PCH).
It's hard to find any real info about the Graphics but it appears that it is a Haswell GT1, so 10EUs. The clock speed can apparently boost from 200MHz to 1000MHz, per the Intel Ark page. I haven't really played any games on it yet.
http://ark.intel.com/products/75608/
I have some HandBrake benchmarks, used in this forum post: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2327881
HandBrake 0.9.9.5530 - 64bit Version
OS: Microsoft Windows NT 6.2.9200.0
CPU: Intel(R) Celeron(R) 2955U @ 1.40GHz
Ram: 1764 MB, Screen: 1366x768
When on battery (800MHz):
x264 [info]: using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast SSSE3 SSE4.2 LZCNT
x264 [info]: profile Main, level 3.0
[00:35:22] reader: done. 1 scr changes
[00:35:25] work: average encoding speed for job is 23.095699 fps
When plugged in (1.4GHz):
x264 [info]: using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast SSSE3 SSE4.2 LZCNT
x264 [info]: profile Main, level 3.0
[00:22:51] reader: done. 1 scr changes
[00:22:54] work: average encoding speed for job is 31.301588 fps
And also some screenshots of Cinebench 15 benchmark. If anyone is interested in something else I can try and run that too.
Cinebench R15 CPU on Battery (800MHz):
Cinebench R15 CPU plugged in (1.4GHz):
Cinebench R15 GPU on Battery:
Cinebench R15 GPU plugged in:
There are some power usage measurements using HWMonitor and running OCCT to stress the CPU, Furmark to stress the GPU and both running at the same time. The fan almost never runs when the computer is web browsing or other light usage. It did really ramp up when both the GPU and CPU were stressed. For the on battery benchmarks, the CPU is running at 800MHz, for the plugged in, at it's full 1.4GHz.
With the SSD installed, boot up times are about 11 seconds. That's from power Button press to usable desktop (no spinning cursor). I've had SSD in machines before but never with Windows 8 and newer chipsets and let me say, it is amazing! Shut down time is about 8-9 seconds. I should also mention that when I put the SSD in, it was a complete pain to get the OS moved over. There are no recovery media included and while the Dell utility that is built in can create them, it fails if you try to restore to anything smaller than a 500GB drive (my SSD is only 80GB). The only thing I found that can clone the drive is Paragon Backup & Recovery 12 Home. You need something that can clone Windows 8 GPT, UEFI, Secure Boot partitions. This is the only thing that I found that worked. Luckily there is a free 30 day trial if you just sign up with an e-mail address. Basically I installed the trial, hooked my SSD up using the USB 3 port and a Seagate GoFlex adapter and 30min later had a bootable drive. I spent hours the day before trying to get it to work.
All in all, I am super impressed with the machine. It is a steal at $299 and still a very good value at $379. Need a basic, small machine with great battery life? Get this Inspiron. Need a bit faster machine? Get this Inspiron and upgrade the RAM and add an SSD.
Note: I work on and repair computers for a living and have for the past 14 or so years. I see everything come and go, I have no brand loyalty because, quite simply, everything breaks. I generally like Dells but they have made some crappy machines lately and in the past. When I purchase something for myself I tend to research, research, research. I took a leap of faith with this computer and have been really surprised. It is the first Dell I have ever owned.
CPU and GPU Power usage when 100% load on battery:
HWMonitor says max 9.5W for the CPU/GPU/PCH package.
Same test when it is plugged in:
Pulling a max of 16.5W!
Just 100% CPU usage on battery (800MHz):
About 5W.
Same 100% CPU test when plugged in (1.4GHz):
Only went up by 2W to 7W total, I am really surprised the CPU cores are so power sipping.
So I was looking for a new netbook. I have previously owned a Asus eeePC and Acer Aspire One in the past. My Acer recently had a accident where it would no longer POST after I attempted to solder another RAM socket on it (don't ask). I saw in the Black Friday forum Office Max was going to have the Dell Inspiron 11 on sale for $299. After looking at the almost non-existent reviews on-line I decided to get one. This past week a coupon came in the mail in the Dell flier for $80 the Inspiron 11 with Dell's pre-Black Friday Sales. I ordered one on Monday night seeing as how I could avoid the craziness next Friday. It had free shipping and came to $320 something after tax. I ordered it Monday and got it this Friday.
For what I would consider a 'Netbook' style the build quality is excellent. Plastic everywhere of course but it has a sturdy, rugged feel to it. It is Mac-book Air sized (which I considered but didn't want to shell out the $$ for) but a little bit thicker. The touchscreen is nice and responsive and has no bezels (which is one of the things that turned me away from the Air. It met all the criteria I was looking for: USB3, HDMI, 11.6" LCD and long battery life.
The touchapad is crap, as I find most touchpads nowadays. The speakers sound really well for their size. Another positive is a regular Dell DC jack, meaning it will take any 65W+ Dell adapter made in the last 10+ years. There are 2 USB ports on the left side along with the DC jack, HDMI and headphone port. The right has another USB, SD card, Ethernet port and Kensington lock.
The lower left front has the battery charge indicator and (Yes!) a hard drive activity light, I sorely missed this on my old Acer. The keyboard is a chic-let style, no better or worse that I have seen on other laptops. I don't find myself accidentally brushing the touchpad with my palms when typing causing the cursor to move everywhere, something again, the Acer sucked at.
Inside the machine, the wireless card, RAM and HD are all removable and replaceable. It comes with a Dell branded Wireless 'N' and Bluetooth module. Wireless seems to work fine and I haven't tried the Bluetooth. It ships with only 2GB of RAM which I think is terrible at this time. 4GB should be the minimum. Dell says that is the max, but people on Dell forums have successfully reported installing 8GB into it just fine. I have a Crucial module on order from Amazon. There is only one RAM slot, so single channel but it does use DDR3-1600, so 12.8GB/s bandwidth. The RAM must be 1.35V or DDR3L.
I swapped out the 500GB Western Digital Blue drive for my trusty Intel X-25M G2. Not the newest and greatest SSD, but better than the mechanical drive. The laptop will only take 7mm drives, so I had to remove the spacer on my Intel drive. The screws that hold the spacer on are too long so I had to fine shorter ones. It is a 6gbps SATA port.
Battery life is most excellent due to the ULT Haswell chip. I managed at least 8 hours yesterday while playing games, web browsing, etc. As I type this, the Windows battery meter says: 94% and 12 Hours and 55 Min remaining. Speaking of the Haswell, CPU-Z shows this chip as a Core i5-4350U (mis-reported), so very much like the MacBook Air chip. This the Celeron version so it's a 1.4GHz dual core with 2MB L3 cache. It is missing the Hyperthreading, Boost and 3MB cache like the Air chip. When I had it apart, the CPU and PCH are all on the same chip so it is exactly like the Air in that regard. It is a 15W chip (including PCH).
It's hard to find any real info about the Graphics but it appears that it is a Haswell GT1, so 10EUs. The clock speed can apparently boost from 200MHz to 1000MHz, per the Intel Ark page. I haven't really played any games on it yet.
http://ark.intel.com/products/75608/
I have some HandBrake benchmarks, used in this forum post: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2327881
HandBrake 0.9.9.5530 - 64bit Version
OS: Microsoft Windows NT 6.2.9200.0
CPU: Intel(R) Celeron(R) 2955U @ 1.40GHz
Ram: 1764 MB, Screen: 1366x768
When on battery (800MHz):
x264 [info]: using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast SSSE3 SSE4.2 LZCNT
x264 [info]: profile Main, level 3.0
[00:35:22] reader: done. 1 scr changes
[00:35:25] work: average encoding speed for job is 23.095699 fps
When plugged in (1.4GHz):
x264 [info]: using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast SSSE3 SSE4.2 LZCNT
x264 [info]: profile Main, level 3.0
[00:22:51] reader: done. 1 scr changes
[00:22:54] work: average encoding speed for job is 31.301588 fps
And also some screenshots of Cinebench 15 benchmark. If anyone is interested in something else I can try and run that too.
Cinebench R15 CPU on Battery (800MHz):
Cinebench R15 CPU plugged in (1.4GHz):
Cinebench R15 GPU on Battery:
Cinebench R15 GPU plugged in:
There are some power usage measurements using HWMonitor and running OCCT to stress the CPU, Furmark to stress the GPU and both running at the same time. The fan almost never runs when the computer is web browsing or other light usage. It did really ramp up when both the GPU and CPU were stressed. For the on battery benchmarks, the CPU is running at 800MHz, for the plugged in, at it's full 1.4GHz.
With the SSD installed, boot up times are about 11 seconds. That's from power Button press to usable desktop (no spinning cursor). I've had SSD in machines before but never with Windows 8 and newer chipsets and let me say, it is amazing! Shut down time is about 8-9 seconds. I should also mention that when I put the SSD in, it was a complete pain to get the OS moved over. There are no recovery media included and while the Dell utility that is built in can create them, it fails if you try to restore to anything smaller than a 500GB drive (my SSD is only 80GB). The only thing I found that can clone the drive is Paragon Backup & Recovery 12 Home. You need something that can clone Windows 8 GPT, UEFI, Secure Boot partitions. This is the only thing that I found that worked. Luckily there is a free 30 day trial if you just sign up with an e-mail address. Basically I installed the trial, hooked my SSD up using the USB 3 port and a Seagate GoFlex adapter and 30min later had a bootable drive. I spent hours the day before trying to get it to work.
All in all, I am super impressed with the machine. It is a steal at $299 and still a very good value at $379. Need a basic, small machine with great battery life? Get this Inspiron. Need a bit faster machine? Get this Inspiron and upgrade the RAM and add an SSD.
Note: I work on and repair computers for a living and have for the past 14 or so years. I see everything come and go, I have no brand loyalty because, quite simply, everything breaks. I generally like Dells but they have made some crappy machines lately and in the past. When I purchase something for myself I tend to research, research, research. I took a leap of faith with this computer and have been really surprised. It is the first Dell I have ever owned.
CPU and GPU Power usage when 100% load on battery:
HWMonitor says max 9.5W for the CPU/GPU/PCH package.
Same test when it is plugged in:
Pulling a max of 16.5W!
Just 100% CPU usage on battery (800MHz):
About 5W.
Same 100% CPU test when plugged in (1.4GHz):
Only went up by 2W to 7W total, I am really surprised the CPU cores are so power sipping.
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