Dell Studio Hybrid Desktop
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It's hard for us to recommend the Dell Studio Hybrid
desktop for any practical purpose. As a desktop for
productivity, you can get more bang-for-your-buck
from a typical budget-priced midtower PC. And if your
goal is either space-saving or using this system as
a media PC, we'd instead point you to a similarly
priced laptop, which has an integrated display, will
perform most of the same functions, and is also portable.
Still, we imagine that for some of you, the Studio
Hybrid's unique design holds plenty of appeal. Compared
with other desktops in its small-scale cohort, Dell's
entry is actually one of the best equipped. If aesthetics
are your chief concern, the Studio Hybrid will reward
you with its good looks and respectable computing
power.
The Studio Hybrid bundle starts at AU$1399 (with
the 22-inch E228WFP monitor), but the upgraded processor
pushes our review configuration up to AU$1578.50.
An optional wireless adapter is available for AU$53.90,
and at the time of writing only grey, blue, red, green,
pink and topaz colours are available in Australia
— the bamboo sleeve to come later.
The Studio Hybrid's clever stand gives you multiple
positioning options.
Standing upright with the sleeve on, the Studio Hybrid
measures 222mm tall by 76mm wide by 209mm deep. Take
the unit off its stand, remove the sleeve, and lay
it flat, and its dimensions change to 64mm tall by
190mm wide by 184mm deep. Compared with the Mac Mini
or the forthcoming Asus Eee Box, the Studio Hybrid
is a bit bigger in either configuration, but it's
also clearly smaller than your average midtower PC.
You can take the Studio Hybrid off its stand by simply
pulling the two apart, and the sleeve slides off once
you remove a screw. You can even reconfigure the stand
to support the system horizontally. However, if you
want to change its position, you can do so easily.
While it might be tempting to classify the Studio
Hybrid as part of the recent Netbook/Nettop trend
in small, cheap computers, the Dell's base price and
specifications elevate it out of that category. And
unlike the Shuttle XPC K-4500 or the Eee Box, the
Studio Hybrid has an optical drive, which would seem
to disqualify it from the cloud computing club. Thus,
it's fair to treat the Studio Hybrid as a competitor
to standard desktops in its price range.
If the Dell's on-paper specifications fall short
of the desktop market standard, its performance was
actually a bit surprising, in more ways than one.
Yes, it came in last on our Photoshop test, and second
to last on our multitasking performance. But that's
not a shock. Its third-place finish on our iTunes
test is heartening, considering that you might actually
use this system for music encoding. On the other hand,
we were disappointed by its Cinebench scores, especially
as they only kept pace with those from a Gateway laptop.
Overall, we expect the Dell Studio Hybrid will accomplish
most of what you expect it to in a reasonable amount
of time. Gaming and high definition video editing
are out, and heavy multitasking will likely bog it
down, but it should handle most other consumer-level
computing tasks easily enough.
It's likely no surprise that this system comes up
short on performance compared with other mainstream
PCs. If you're not interested in the Studio Hybrid
for its benchmark scores, we don't blame you. Thanks
to its small size, it's easy to imagine the Studio
Hybrid serving as a basic family computer, and its
good looks might inspire you to display it prominently.
Connect an HDTV to the HDMI port on the back of the
Dell and suddenly it's a living room PC. Dell, even
offers a Blu-ray drive option for an extra AU$251.90,
but we submit that a laptop would be a better choice
for solving the above problems.
If you have the Studio Hybrid in mind as a Blu-ray-equipped
living room PC, you can instead configure HP's Pavilion
dv5z with a Blu-ray drive and almost identical specifications
for less than it would cost to add Blu-ray to our
Studio Hybrid review unit. And of course, laptop alternatives
offer portability that the Studio Hybrid can't.
We're impressed by the Studio Hybrid's small external
power brick.
Even if we're not fans of the Studio Hybrid's overall
value or its benefits to space economy, we readily
concede that it's a cute little PC. We'll even give
it credit as the best equipped of these little computers.
HP's SlimLine is not as attractive, even if it is
better equipped. And if Mac Mini competes on looks,
the Dell gets the nod for its more up-to-date specifications.
It's also apparent that Dell had Apple in mind when
it designed the Dell Dock software. When the Studio
Hybrid boots into Windows, you're presented with a
row of icons along the top edge pointing you to the
Web, to e-mail, and to other various applications.
They even grow larger when you drag your mouse over
them, similar to Apple's OS X icon dock. You can add
your own shortcut icons to the Dell Dock, and it only
take up about 13MB of system memory to have it open,
which is not too greedy. Novice users may appreciate
features such as this, as well as Windows lifers with
Mac envy, but in general, we could just as easily
turn it off or uninstall it.
Like most small systems of its kind, the Studio Hybrid
doesn't present you with easy internal access. You
can remove one external screw and slide the top panel
off to get inside it, but once you're there, you're
faced with a metal housing for the optical drive.
Neither the memory nor the hard drive is immediately
visible. An enterprising user will have no trouble
digging deeper into the system, but novice upgraders
may shy away. At least, unlike the Mac Mini, you can
get inside without voiding the warranty.
And because of its small-scale design, upgrade options
are limited. You can configure up to 4GB of RAM and
a larger hard drive, but graphics cards, internal
TV tuners, and other major internal components are
out. We're not sad about the lack of a TV tuner, and
we can forgive Dell for forgoing a fast mobile 3D
chip given its power-conserving intentions, but if
Dell's going to offer 4GB of RAM, it should also offer
the 64-bit version of Windows Vista to put all of
that memory to use.
Dell also touts the Studio Hybrid's eco-friendly
power consumption. We'd expect it to use less power
by virtue of its laptop parts, like most small PCs,
and the diminutive power supply is a testament to
its modest power needs. We also appreciate Dell's
efforts at using recycled material in the product,
and for the fact that all of the packing material
is recyclable. Its cardboard box is also designed
so that it's easy to break down.
The good:
* Flexible allows custom appearance and positioning
* Best combination of looks and specifications among
supersmall desktops.
The bad:
* Standard budget PCs offer better value and more
upgradeability
* Laptops deliver better space economy with similar
specifications for the dollar
The bottomline:
If you consider all of the options in the price range,
the Dell Studio Hybrid is not very compelling. However,
if you limit yourself to the very specific niche of
small PCs, you'll appreciate its clever design and
relatively powerful hardware.
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