Dell Precision M3800 Review and Full Specs

The Dell Precision M3800 Laptop’s specifications are well for a high-end featured laptop, with its 4K display, powerful peripherals, force Touch track pad, a newer processor, and smart connectivity, handling most work tasks without any complaint. Dell also sells a concept of building your own model that comes with a large number of memory and storage configurations and a larger battery life. This model is thin for a mobile workstation. At 0.71 by 14.75 by 10 inches, it has identical measurements when compared to its previous models. Its weight is 4.15 pounds, which is much lighter than 17-inch Dell Precision M2800 (the previous version) and also lighter and smaller than Lenovo Think Pad W540 model. This system is made of premium materials, including carbon-fibered bottom panel.

Dell Precision M3800 Attractive and Super Slim

Dell Precision M3800 front view

Display Quality

It has a 1080p screen, 8GB memory and a 500 GB hard disk (HDD). The standard specification comes with a one-year warranty that can be extended up to five years duration. Its 15.6” inch Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide (IGZO) display is protected by a Glass NBT, and its 10-point touch screen is responsible for that. Its display’s Ultra-HD (3,840-2,160) resolution lets us watch much more than we can watch with a 1080p resolution full HD display.

It also offers more on-screen features than 2,880-1,800 resolution display on Apple Mac Book Pro 15-Inch Retina Display, or 3K (2,880-1,620) screen on Lenovo W540 laptop. One can watch a 1080p HD video on this display, and will still see his emails and IM windows running simultaneously. Its roomy screen is also a boon if one wants to see things like architecture plans, scientific measurements, humongous spreadsheets, and multiple 1080p HD videos. Its quality is excellent, with smooth solid colors.

Keyboard, touch pad and Web cam

Its back-lite keyboard is comfortable to use, though there is no numeric keypad on it. This wide touch pad is centered on the space bar and is as responsible as a touch screen. A “USB to Ethernet” adapter is included for wire connections to our computer network, which is not feasible, but a concession Dell has to make to keep a thin profile of this system. Thunder bolt 2 ports will work as a mini Display Port, but its most merit is that we can share hard drive data and components with Macs and Windows workstations in our organization through these Thunder bolt 2 ports. For wireless connectivity, it has 802.11 ac and Bluetooth 4.0. Its internal access is not so good. This Dell Precision M3800 laptop uses non-standard heads to close the bottom lid, properly making it impossible for us to enhance memory, swap out storage capacity, or even change its battery. It comes with a one-year warranty, which is a blow for business-purpose systems.

Dell Precision M3800 super slim design

Performance

There are also multiple Operating System options. It introduces with Windows 7 Professional. This system lacks built-in color combination tools like present in Lenovo W540 and Toshiba Satellite P 50T-BST2N01 laptops, which may be mandatory if we need color matching for print media or broadcast video work. Its connectivity option is excellent. It has a security port, an SD card reader, a USB 2.0 port, and a USB 3.0 port on the right side of this notebook. Both ports are in the same color, so one has to look closely at their labels to find which port is USB 3.0. On its left side, this model has a headset jack, an HDMI port, a Thunder bolt-2 port, and a USB 3.0 port.

All these three USB ports have “sleep and charge” capability. Thus, it has enough power to qualify as a mobile workstation, though others in its class are marginally faster. It introduces with Windows 8.1 Pro pre-installed, with a USB stick in spite of a recovery partition on 256 GB solid- state drive (SSD). One can downgrade to Windows 7 Professional on same Microsoft license if his business has not standardized on Windows 8.1. Its 16 GB system memory is plenty for large data sets and large graphics files. It comes with a quad Intel Core i7- 4712 HQ processor and ISV certified graphics. So it sufficiently performs on day-to-day work.

Its battery life is a mixed bag in testing. This laptop lasts 4 hours and 53 minutes on a battery rundown test. That is an hour less than Lenovo W540 and previous versions of M3800. The class leader remains Apple Mac Book pro which lasts about 9 hours. However, 5 hours is still better than this laptop (4:26) and Toshiba P50T-BST2N01 (2:45). Many data-protection options are available along with accidental damage protection, anti-stolen options, and recovery tools.

Other Information

It takes only 1 minute and 19 seconds to complete a Hand-brake video encoding test and 3:30 to complete an Adobe-Photoshop CS6 test. Both results are very close to other high-end laptops, for examples Apple Mac Book Pro (1:17 on Hand-brake video test and 3:25 on Adobe-Photoshop CS6 test) and Lenovo W540 (1:20 on Hand-brake video test and 3:18 on Adobe-Photoshop CS6 test).

Its 3D gaming scores are sufficient for any professional workstation. It returns frame rates of 22 frames per second (FPS) on Heaven and 29 FPS on Valley, both at Medium-quality settings, that is comparably closer than integrated Iris Pro graphics in Apple Mac Book Pro 15-inch Retina (22 FPS on Heaven and 23 FPS on Valley), though Lenovo W540 (30 FPS on Heaven and 42 FPS on Valley) was measurably faster on these tests.

Overall, this Dell Precision M3800 laptop improves its previous series in terms of connectivity, price, and display quality. Its battery life is not as long as its previous models. If we need an extra quality of a 4K screen, and we are willing to keep AC adapter handy then this new M3800 laptop is a good pick.

Dell Precision M3800 Specs –

Review of this laptop-

In my opinion, with its 4K full-HD screen, thin & light chassis, and many more scientific features this Dell Precision M3800 Laptop is a good mobile workstation for engineering and scientific works. So it shall be purchased accordingly.