Dell may not emanate the instant cool that comes with each new Apple launch, but it's doing its best to change that. [IMG 79150/] Months of drip-fed information, a few brief hands-on previews and a luxurious official website whipped up expectation, but fortunately we can confidently say the Adamo has been worth every second of the wait.
It comes in silver or black, with suitably lush monikers – the Adamo Pearl and Onyx – and its dimensions are to die for: it's impossibly slim at just 18mm and weighs 1.8kg, so it should become a permanent companion on your travels – although we’d recommend a padded slipcase, at the very least, to ensure the exquisite exterior isn’t scratched or damaged.
The chassis, as well as providing a striking first impression, is peppered with impressive details: dozens of tiny pinpricks sit toward the rear of the machine, ostensibly to provide ventilation, but one of them lights up when the laptop is on and pulses on and off when it’s in sleep mode.
Turn the Adamo over and you’ll see that its service number is written in miniscule font along a discreet edge – because having stickers and removable panels scattered across the underside just wouldn’t do. Instead, the bottom only features a raised metallic plaque with the Adamo logo and the Vista and Intel liveries that would usually – on a normal, common laptop – sit below the keyboard.
To keep the sides neat, all the ports and sockets are sequestered on the rear of the machine. You get two USB ports, a combined eSATA/USB port, Gigabit Ethernet and even a DisplayPort output squeezed in. There’s no D-SUB output, so require DisplayPort-to-D-SUB and HDMI.
Ease back the lid and it’s clear Dell has really gone to town. The 13.3in edge-to-edge WLED display has a native resolution of 1,366 x 768, and offers bright colours and sharp detail, although it’s not perfect. We found the backlight bled through a little and the panel itself was rather glossy and reflective but, all in all, it's pleasant to use for work or play.
The keyboard eschews the Scrabble-tile design of the MacBook Air and Sony VAIO Z-series, in favour of wide, slightly concave keys. They’re comfortable, too, with a solid base and nice typing action, although the slightness of the laptop does mean key travel is a little shorter than perfect. As you'd expect, Dell’s layout is entirely practical, with a double-height Enter and wide left and right Shift keys.
The trackpad has nothing innovative to rival the Air's multi-touch flexibility, but it's responsive and smooth while the mouse buttons are light and easy to click.
The gloriously thin design leaves little room for extravagance on the inside, and we were unsurprised to find the Adamo is powered by a low-voltage Intel processor. The 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo U9300 and an accompanying 3GB of DDR3 RAM produced a score of 0.68 in our real-world benchmarks, which is almost identical to that of the Air, with its 1.86GHz SU9400 processor. Neither is astonishingly quick, but for a laptop like this that's plenty of power for office work and other everyday tasks.
As with the Air, this Adamo sports a 128GB SSD. It's not as capacious as we've come to expect in today's laptops, but for the performance and added durability it's a luxurious trade-off we're happy with. If you need more, you could take a step up from this "Admire" specification and opt for the "Desire", which doubles that to 256GB, ups the RAM to 4GB and includes a slightly faster processor.
It also ups the price to £1,899 including VAT, which doesn't really jump out as an attractive deal. The two are identical other than those core specs, so you're stuck with integrated graphics that pretty much rule the Adamo out of post work hours gaming sessions. The £1,155 ex VAT base package is more appealing, and puts it on a par with the dearer of the two available MacBook Airs.
It's a very close call on most counts. There's less than a millimetre between them for thickness, but the Dell weighs around 400g more – not that this dampened the gushing appreciation it received in the IT PRO office.
Where the Dell can't quite match its rival is away from the mains. The Adamo managed two hours less than the Air in our light-use test, running out of steam just past five hours – a figure that also falls behind the excellent Sony VAIO VGN-Z31VN/X. Both the Adamo and the Air have fully enclosed batteries – so there’s no chance to buy a new one or fit a larger-capacity unit.
If you’re after a stunning machine that’s been designed from the ground up to make a statement, few will outdo the Adamo, a blissful marriage of superb ergonomics and striking design. It may not be as instantly cool as its Apple equivalent, but Dell has proven it's capable of coming up with a laptop that’s every bit as stylish and desirable.
While the Dell Adamo may not pack the punch of the Sony Z31, given its vastly lower price it's a much more realistic purchase for most. It's light, slim and as gorgeous as a slab of black aluminium has any right to
Author: Mike Jennings
Dell Adamo laptop review
