Review: Dell Adamo 13 notebook
Dell makes its first attempt at a designer ultraportable. (June 13th, 2009)
The Good
- Extremely thin, well-crafted design.
- Much more expansion than MacBook Air.
- Attractive LCD.
- Solid-state drive as standard.
- Dell Dock a useful software add-on.
The Bad
- Just too expensive for the performance.
- Short battery life; battery pack isn't replaceable.
- Multi-touch implementation more maddening than helpful.
- A full pound heavier than competitors.
- Fan is often too loud.
wrapping up
The Adamo 13 is a difficult system to review as there's much to like about it: it's thin, well-built, has a beautiful display and is comfortable to type on; all are qualities important to an ultraportable. Its expansion is far better than the Mac it's competing against, and it even manages to overcome some interface limitations of Vista through the Dell Dock app.
But there's no escaping that the system is hurt badly through the price-to-performance ratio created by that $2,000 entry point. While its performance is certainly better than that of an Atom netbook, it's far from the level of the MacBook Air, which cost $200 less when the Adamo first shipped and now costs $500 less. Dell's decision to make an SSD standard explains much of the cost difference, but it's telling that Apple is ironically not just the performance leader in the ultra-thin notebook field but one of the best bargains as well.
Moreover, in the intervening months Intel has released its Consumer Ultra Low Voltage (CULV) range of processors. They may still often be slower than the Adamo, but they still allow Adamo-sized systems that could cost less than half as much and are more likely to satisfy that desire for a slim yet full-size notebook with decent performance and, significantly, longer battery life.
One gets the impression that the Adamo is also a misinterpretation of Apple's goals. The MacBook Air may have been driven by Apple's current obsession with ever-thinner designs, but it has survived so far because it's fast and fairly affordable for its class. The design of the Adamo and the marketing campaign behind it strongly suggest that Dell saw the Air mostly as a fashion object and designed accordingly. The Adamo is a notebook built for the kind of customer Madison Avenue hopes exists: the always-fashionable, well-off urbanite that lives the life Calvin Klein and Christian Dior ads often portray. In our experience, most buyers are more practical.
We suspect that Dell isn't remaining static. As the "Adamo 13" name suggests, it's just the start of a larger line, and very early slips by Dell have hinted at an Adamo 9 that sounds promising. It's also probable that Intel's renewed interested in pushing the prices of ultra-low voltage CPUs downwards -- along with Apple's price cuts -- will result in a less expensive current Adamo. Until then, however, the system is mostly worth buying if absolute thinness, expansion and the need to run Windows trump price and speed.