Dell Vostro 3300
- Category: Notebook Computers
June 22, 2010
Editor's Rating
- Small, portable size
- Good quality 13.3" screen
- Comfortable keyboard
- 802.11n networking
- Integrated Intel graphics
- Poor battery life with 4-cell battery
- Mediocre onboard speaker
The new small business-oriented laptop from Dell, the Vostro 3300, offers a decent good feature set, including good performance and a compact, lightweight design. It's a good choice for users who are frequently on-the-go or want to have a laptop that's easy to bring to and from the office without too much fuss.
The Dell Vostro 3300's design is very business-like with a matte finish that doesn't easily show dirt or fingerprints and comes only one color, silver. The system weighs just over four pounds (with the large 8-cell battery) and has a 13.3-inch LED backlit display, also with a non-glossy, matte finish. We really like this because glossy screens tend to reflect indoor lighting as well as outdoor sunlight, while matte screens cut that down dramatically. The display quality is quite nice and colors are represented very accurately despite the matte screen. The brightness is more than adequate and looks great thanks to the LED technology. The keyboard is very comfortable to use and the keys depress with ease, but not too much ease, and feel rather natural as well.
The Vostro 3300 from Dell comes with a dual-core Intel Core i3 2.26GHz CPU with 2GB of RAM, a 250GB 7200RPM SATA hard drive, a removable 8x DVD-RW disc drive, and integrated 802.11b/g/n networking. The port selection includes three USB 2.0 ports (one is a USB/eSATA combo), a 5-in-1 memory card reader, and a Gigabit Ethernet port. There is also an integrated 2.0 megapixel video camera for Web chatting. The 3300 comes pre-loaded with Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium.
With regards to graphics, this model has the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD, which is somewhat limited at best. Don't expect to play any hardcore 3D games on this machine, but it does just fine with standard tasks and non-3D games. Performance with the Vostro 3300 was very good, probably above average in our opinion when compared to similar notebooks. There were no slow downs when opening multiple programs, watching DVD movies and playing casual, lightweight games.
We should mention that rather mediocre audio quality from the on-board speaker. Yes there is only one speaker located on the side of the laptop, which makes the sound balance seem rather off and we recommend connecting it to external speakers or headphones if you're going to listen to much music or watch movies on it.
For those wanting wireless 3G cellular data access in a laptop, this is one to look at because Dell does offer a wireless 3G card as an option.
Battery life with the 4-cell battery we've heard is rather poor, but using the 8-cell battery gives you much more. However, if you do opt for the 8-cell, it does stick out from the bottom of the notebook 0.75-inches.
