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One of the two little brothers of the Dell Studio series, the Dell Studio 14z is poised to stand out among the competitors in its own price range and class. Despite being smaller than its siblings, the Studio 14z is no way inferior when it comes to features.

 

The 14z is powered by the same processors that give life to its bigger counterparts in the Studio series. Despite having lower options, the Intel Core 2 Duo technology has enough beef in it to boost the performance of the Dell Studio 14z and keep it competitive. It has a big memory capacity as well, with the maximum installable memory reaching 5 gigabytes. That’s quite a lot of memory for a small guy. This would help it process heavy programs without the annoying lags and delays associated with memory-hungry applications hogging all the memory available.

 

You only have one option to choose from, and that is the NVidia GeForce 9400M. This is a chipset, which means it does not have a dedicated video memory and instead feeds on the laptop’s native memory to power its operation. This can greatly affect the performance of your laptop when it comes to graphics. However, if you have a big enough RAM, this will not be a problem. Having a dedicated video memory is still better though, and ensures better performance for the 14z.

 

Turning our attention to hard disk space, we can find that the Dell Studio 14z is able to hold a large amount of hard disk memory to accommodate those that deal with a lot of files everyday. You can install up to 500-gigabytes worth of hard disk space to the Studio 14z so it can accommodate more music, video and other files.

 

As its model name suggests, the Dell Studio 14z is given a 14-inch display high-definition display which is capable of two resolutions: 720p and 900p. While lower slightly than the true HD resolution of 1080p, this nevertheless still means there is enough attention to detail which is needed for writing documents, as well as for video and photo editing.

 

To round out its multimedia capacities, Dell has equipped the Dell Studio 14z with an SRS-enhanced stereo speaker system. While a higher definition audio is ideal for the 14z to become the ideal multimedia laptop, this is still good enough for the average computer user.

 

Specifications:

	AVAILABLE OPTIONS (From Dell’s Website)
CPU	Up to Intel®  Core™2 Duo Processors
RAM	Up to 5GB 1067MHz DDR3 SDRAM2.
Screen size	14.0″ High Definition (720p) LED Display with TrueLifeTM14.0″ High Definition+ (900p) LED Display with TrueLifeTM  (optional)
Operating system	Genuine Windows®  7 Home Premium 64-BitRecommended Upgrade: Vostro 1520 with  Genuine Windows®  7 Professional 32-Bit
Graphics	NVIDIA®  GeForce®  9400M chipset

Pros:

Just like most Studio laptops, the 14z has in its advantage the powerful Intel Core 2 Duo processor technology, which is backed by a big memory capacity to boost its performance. This helps it in processing applications that are quite demanding, which can slow down other less powerful processors.

 

Cons:

The biggest drawback to the Studio 14z’s otherwise excellent specifications is the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M chipset. While the NVidia GeForce technology is impressive when it comes to graphics, it is still better if the unit has a dedicated video memory so that it doesn’t leech away at the computer’s memory. This will greatly improve the performance of the machine.

 

Conclusion:

With a good processor powering its move, the Studio 14z is ideal for those that are looking for a computer that can pull them through normal processing requirements. While you can do some video and graphics stuff with the GeForce 9400M chipset, you can find more with a chipset that has its own video memory apart from the laptop’s. This model has a price tag of about $749-$949.

Related posts:

1. Dell Studio 1537 – Review
2. Dell Studio 15 -Review
3. Dell Studio XPS 13 – Review
4. Dell Studio 17 – Review
5. Dell XPS 16 – Review

Tags: 14z, Core 2 Duo, Dell, laptop review, Studio, Windows 7

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Dell, and is tagged with 14z, Core 2 Duo, Dell, laptop review, Studio, Windows 7. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.