Dell Latitude X1 is Just Right

Not too big, not too small

By Charlie White

If you?re looking for a small, thin and light notebook that still has plenty of power for PowerPoint presentations, Photoshop editing, voice recognition, and even video editing, the Dell Latitude X1 ($1895 with $100 Dell small business rebate) might make your short list. We packed up the X1 and took it along on two grueling road trips, performing every function a road warrior might need on a typical field adventure. We carried it through airports, drained both of its batteries numerous times, and used it in every conceivable situation. Step right this way and see how it performed.

The Dell Latitude X1 is the ideal size for road warriors -- not too small but still thin and light.

The Latitude X1 looks like a compact version of Dell?s highly capable Precision M70 Mobile Workstation. In short, it?s downright attractive. In fact, on numerous occasions airplane seatmates praised its slim, sleek style. Besides its diminutive form factor, one of its most appealing features is its light weight?it weighs just 2 lb. 13 ounces, and that?s with its high-capacity battery installed. It?s even lighter, around 2½ pounds, with its normal-capacity battery on board. Not only is it one of the lightest full-featured notebooks we?ve tested, at slightly less than an inch thick, it?s the thinnest as well.

To get an idea of the X1's small size, here's the 2.5 lb. X1 (left) next to its big brother, the 8 lb. Dell Precision M70 Mobile Workstation, an average-sized notebook.

Everything about this notebook is small, but the good news is none of its components are too small. For example, its 12.1 inch WXGA (Wide XGA, 1280x768 pixels) screen is just big enough to work with documents, or even Photoshop, but it?s not too big to be cumbersome in a tourist-class airplane seat. The screen has a wide aspect ratio, so it?s not too tall, and even when the person in front of me reclined fully I could still work on the computer and clearly see the screen. The only drawback of its exceedingly sharp screen is its diminished vertical viewing angle. It?s necessary to look at the screen straight on, not from an angle that?s too high or too low or else it starts looking dim rather quickly. Its horizontal viewing angle is excellent, however, appearing to be bright and clear even when viewed nearly edge-on. 

Looking at its specs, you?ll notice its processor runs at just 1.1 GHz. Don?t let that measly number worry you?it?s plenty fast. Partly because of its new Intel 915 GMS chipset, the X1?s Intel Pentium M Processor 733 is more sprightly than I thought it would be. It uses the new PCI Express serial I/O and graphics bus, and it has a faster 400 MHz front-side bus, along with 400 MHz DDR2 memory. What all that techno-speak means is, since the X1 is stoked with this new technology it can easily handle almost anything you throw at it. For instance, it could easily crunch through any of the Photoshop Web graphics that I often must create on the road. It was also capable of handling my Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice-recognition tasks, which are notoriously processor-intensive. It was able to effectively recognize speech, albeit slower than the performance we get from our dual Xeon processors at our Midwest Test Facility. Another task the X1 does with aplomb is PowerPoint presentations, where its WXGA output can display great-looking slides on a projector. But don?t get too carried away with it, presenters?this computer has plenty of oomph to display PowerPoint stills but can?t quite handle fancy 3D effects.

Another advantage of the X1 is its long battery life. We were able to clock a solid two hours with its standard 3-cell battery and just more than four hours with its optional 6-cell higher capacity battery ($129). Take a look at the illustration below and you?ll see that its four-hour battery juts out from the back a bit, but it?s not so big that it gets in the way. Helping this long battery life is Intel?s Centrino technology, which combines the low-power-consuming Pentium M processor and its highly efficient chip set with effortless wireless networking, making connecting and computing on the road much more efficient.

Here's the X1 with each battery attached. The 6-cell battery (top) lasts twice as long, just over four hours in our testing, but it weighs about five ounces more and is slightly larger.

A favorite feature of mine is the X1?s SD card slot, conveniently located in the front of the computer. In my frequent travels, I constantly use a Canon digital camera that employs SD cards, so it was a delight to simply slide the card into the perfectly-located slot and have it instantly pop up a folder on the screen where I had immediate access to the photos contained within. There?s also a similar slot on the right side for CompactFlash cards.