Except of the display lid and the palm rests, the reviewed Dell Inspiron 13z uses matte, slightly roughened surfaces. Already at first glance it looks robust. While the palm rests and the touch pad have a silver, easy to clean, finish, fingerprints quickly and visibly collect on the obsidian black, textured, high-gloss lid.  Because of the texture at least small scratches and dust are not that eye-catching. Overall the appearance reminds on years gone by, when notebooks were usually black and silver. In case you'd prefer a more striking notebook, you could also select a "Cherry-red" finish for 49.- Euro extra.

Although keyboard, palm rests, and touchpad have quite different surfaces, these feel all nice to the touch and are very functional. These also profit from the robust plastics already mentioned above and allow hardly any twisting. The areas of the speakers above the keyboard, the palm rests, and the bottom are very stable too, and cannot be crimped. Also the stability of the keyboard is good, yet not ideal, because it gives already upon medium pressure. The hinges are able to absorb slight vibrations. However, they cannot cope well with a heavier tremble, as e.g. during a train ride, and the display starts to seesaw. In such a situation you can observe that also the hinges, which are apparently too small, sag.

The stability of the lid meets its protective function. So, restrictions are not to be expected in practice. Altough the frame is not absolutely flexural rigid, we could not provoke distortions at the powered screen. If the notebook is closed, small foam nubs keep display and keyboard in an appropriate distance and prevent marks on the screen.

The very big and firmly connected 80 Wh battery increases the height of the chassis by about 16mm and is locked by two latches. With this battery the Inspiron 13z is 330mm(W) x 48mm (H) x 225mm(D) big and weighs 2010 g. If you go for a 4-cell or 6-cell battery, the size will decrease and so will the battery life. Because of its rubber feet the notebook stands also without battery stable on a desk.

The usual standard interfaces for connecting peripherals are available. With three times USB 2.0, ethernet, analog VGA-out, audio in/out (combined), card reader (7-in-1), and Kensington securiy slot it is ready for most fields of application. A further pro is the HDMI port, which allows a digital connection of flat screen TVs and displays (in case the screen has a display port or DVI port an adapter is needed). In addition HDMI also allows to transmit audio data (HDMI to HDMI), which reduces the number of cables.  This Inspiron laptop has an optical drive built-in, which is not commonplace in slim subnotebooks. This simplifies installation of software and backup of data.

The 13.3 inch WLED screen of the Dell Inspiron 13z from AUO features a native resolution of 1366x768 pixels and a glossy true-life surface. This is by no means not extraordinary for a consumer notebook by Dell. The resolution results in a 16:9 HD format, which is advantageous for multimedia applications, like movies and games.

In the middle of the screen we measured the maximum brightness of 204 cd/m². This brightness falls to the edges and reaches the minimum of 172.1 cd/m² in the right bottom corner. This gives a rather even illumination of 84%. So, uni-colored backgrounds appear uniform and not at all cloudy to the naked eye.

Because of the heavily reflecting surface you'll often need to adjust the ambient light, the sitting posture, and the opening angle of the display in order to minimize the interference. Displaying dark pictures in a bright room  or permanently changing environments (e.g. train ride) worsen the situation. Furthermore, the user should abstain from wearing bright clothes. The very bright background light qualifies the affects of the reflections. Although the sensibility varies between different users, the screen can not be considered absolutely eye-friendly or ergonomic. The reflections at least a disturbing.

Therewith the Inspiron 13z is quite well equipped and offers sufficient reserve capacities for most home applications. This is proved by the result of 3104 points in the PC Mark Vantage. Of course office applications like word processors, spreadsheets, databases, and browser are no problem at all. It was even possible to very smoothly edit pictures in Photoshop Elements, while more than 20 2272x1704 pictures were open at the same time. Thereby the system never ran at capacity. Because of the dual core CPU it is possible to run more programs at a time without big restrictions. Browsing the Web, listening to music, editing texts etc. can be executed in parallel.

Without graphic accelerator the system can play our full-HD test videos in H.264 format smoothly at a system load of 65%. If you use a player with GPU-accelerator like, e.g., the current version of Nero Show Time, Cyberlink Power DVD, or Media Player Classic, the CPU load partly drops to below 20% (Media Player Classic). Of course movies with lower resolution in H.264 format, e.g., the ones we bought from iTunes Store, also run smoothly and trouble-free with iTunes.

System Noise

Despite relatively powerful components inside a small case, the system noise is overall agreeably low. Not only is the noise characteristic more or less steady, but also the measurements prove a low noise level. Idling we recorded 31.4 dB(A). So, the Dell Inspiron is only audible in very quiet environments. Depending on the energy profile the noise level can raise up to 34 dB(A) at low load, and the sonorous noise is hardly obtrusive.

During use of the DVD drive the noise level reaches 36.3 dB(A). So, the DVD drive's noise can especially be heard during quiet scenes of a movie. As an alternative you could play the movie files from hard disk.
39 dB(A) under full load are no fun any more and will likely annoy the user after a short period of time. Fortunately this scenario will be seldom in practice.

Temperature

Obviously, the system noise is low at the expense of higher case temperatures. When working at high CPU and GPU load you might feel inconvenient, because of maximum temperatures of 46.2 degrees Celsius at the touchpad area and of 46.6 to 50.6 degrees celsius at its counterpart at the bottom side.
Without load and with maximum energy saving the maximum temperature of 34.3 degrees Celsius is clearly lower and unremarkable. Therefore, browsing the Internet with the notebook on your lap should not be a problem.

The Inspiron 13z has great potential, because its pros allow a wide field of application. It qualifies for mobile use especially with its long battery life, its low weight, and its good case quality.

Unfortunately the main user interface, the display, is a disadvantage here. Its heavily reflecting surface is very restricting indoors as well as outdoors. While it is possible to minimize this effect inside buildings by some arrangements, outdoor operation is hardly possible, because the background lighting is not strong enough to illuminate the reflections. The luscious colors and the good illumination are only cold comfort.

In the other hand we appreciated the good system performance, which does not only cope well with basic tasks, but also include a limited gaming capability, and clearly faster performance in special tasks like video decoding by Nvidia's CUDA engine. Those who love movies will also value the smooth replay of full HD videos and the HDMI interface.