Dell Adamo XPS In-Depth Hands-on: The Sexiest Laptop Ever

Because I’ve been covering notebooks for about a decade now, I actually had to think long and hard about the above headline. But based on the hundreds of notebooks I’ve seen over the years from Apple, HP, Sony, Toshiba, and everyone else I feel pretty confident in saying that the 3.2-pound Adamo XPS (starting at $1,799) is the most striking system I’ve ever laid eyes on. And it’s not just because it’s the thinnest laptop ever, although that’s a big part of this aluminum beauty’s appeal. With it’s 0.4-inch profile, this notebook makes my BlackBerry Curve ($234.99) look bloated (see gallery).

What I like most about the Adamo XPS is how it breaks the mold for laptop design. When laid flat on a table, you may not even recognize this piece of metal as a notebook. Then your eye catches the diamond-cut engraved Dell logo, and a smattering of ports (2 USB, DisplayPort, audio, power). You get the sense that you’re holding a gadget from the future, a sensation that continues as you swipe your finger across a capacitive strip to unlock the system. An LED light and slight clicking sound lets you know you’ve been granted entry. It gets better, but just like you, we had serious questions about the usability of the Adamo XPS–and just how long this status symbol lasts on a charge.

Elevated Design

As you lift the lid, the keyboard unfolds from the display (almost as if it were a spaceship deploying its ramp, inviting you to come aboard) and the bottom part of the lid extends beneath the display, elevating the bottom of the system at about a 30 degree angle. Dell says this helps dissipate heat.

Keyboard and Typing

Given how razor thin the Adamo XPS is, we were floored by just how solid the keyboard is on this laptop. The metal keycaps not only feel sturdy and provide good tactile feedback, they seem to grip your fingers as you type without slowing you down.

When typing on a table, the notebook felt perfectly balanced, but we couldn’t wait to put this thing on our lap to see if it would topple over. Surprisingly, the Adamo XPS didn’t slip off our legs as we pecked away, thanks to two strategically placed rubber bumpers on the bottom part of the lid. However, during our brief time with the laptop it felt like it was sliding down slightly.

The touchpad felt very smooth during our hands-on time with the Adamo XPS, and the two distinct metal touchpad buttons worked well.

Display, Location Awareness

The Adamo XPS sports a 13.4-inch display that’s bright (300 nits) and sharp, and we like that the desktop isn’t cluttered with crap. Because the design elevates the screen, your first instinct is to reach out and touch it,. This would be a nice way to interact with Dell’s Dock software, which features large shortcut icons to quickly access the programs you use most. Unfortunately, Dell couldn’t cram a capacitive panel on this Windows 7 ($79.95) system, but we would love to see one next time around.

What Dell does include is a location-aware gadget that leverages Skyhook’s Wi-Fi triangulation technology to pinpoint your location. Our demo unit wasn’t connected to the Web, but you should be able to quickly locate points of interest in the surrounding area, as well as get local weather updates. (We’ll cover this more in the full review.)

Specs and Battery Life

Unlike the ultra-light Sony VAIO X, the Adamo XPS eschews an Atom processor for a 1.4-GHz Core 2 Duo ULV CPU, which we prefer for running Windows 7 Premium. There’s also 4GB of RAM and a 128GB solid state drive from Samsung under the hood. Sure, you can get a much faster notebook with Graphics chips are responsible for processing all images sent to your computer?s display.
Learn Morediscrete graphics for the same price, like the HP Envy 13 ($1,824.99), but that system isn’t anywhere near as thin.

What does give us pause is the rated battery life of the Adamo XPS. With the standard 20 watt-hour battery, Dell says you should expect 2 hours and 36 mintues of endurance. That’s about half the ultraportable average, and well short of the 8+ hours many other ULV notebooks achieve. The good news is that Dell will offer an optional 40-watt hour battery that should boost the runtime to 5:17. That’s better, but we’d like to see this extra battery included for the starting price.

Other specs of note include 802.11n wireless and Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity, but not integrated mobile broadband. An external dongle is required if you want Ethernet, VGA, DVI, or HDMI output.

Outlook

The original Dell Adamo was slick in its own way, but it was heavy for its thinness and didn’t really push the envelope. The Adamo XPS, on the other hand, is a leap forward in industrial design, and possibly for the first time ever Dell is leading instead of following the pack. We’d like to see how the extra capacity battery performs–and how well it blends in with the rest of the design–but there’s no question that the Adamo XPS is in a class by itself.