Dell Studio XPS notebooks launch early

Dell today held an early, low-key launch for its promised Studio XPS notebooks. The 13-inch Studio XPS 13 and 16-inch Studio XPS 16 are both treated as Dell's new upscale competition against the MacBook and come with a new black-and-silver trim as well as new, edge-to-edge display and a revamped keyboard unlike the company's other models.

The new systems are also some of Dell's fastest smaller than 17 inches. The entry, $1,199 13-inch model is one of the few portables outside systems from Apple and Toshiba to be built on NVIDIA's GeForce 9400M platform and provides much faster integrated graphics than Intel's offerings; it also starts off significantly faster than Apple's 13-inch equivalent with a minimum 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB of memory, a 320GB 7,200RPM hard drive and 802.11n Wi-Fi. The entry model can also be upgraded to a dedicated GeForce 9500M chip along with as much as a 2.53GHz processor and a 128GB solid-state drive.

The 16-inch model also starts at $1,199 is one of Dell's few 16:9 aspect ratio models and can use either a 720p (1366x768) or 1080p (1920x1080) wide display suited to movies. It also carries a faster Mobility Radeon HD 3670 chipset in standard trim and has a wider range of options than the smaller system, including up to 8GB of RAM, a 2.8Ghz Core 2 Duo and a Blu-ray combo drive.

Dell isn't currently providing ship date estimates for the systems but often starts shipping within about two weeks of systems appearing online. [via NotebookReview]

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Other story tags: Intel, Dell, NVIDIA, blu-ray, AMD, Core 2, GeForce, ATI, Radeon, XPS