Dell Inspiron M101z

This good-looking 11.6-inch ultraportable delivers a comfy keyboard, snappy performance, and strong sound quality for the money.And the award for most improved ultraportable goes to...Seriously, Dell has done a really nice job revamping the 11-inch member of its Inspiron family, banishing the lackluster touchpad with integrated buttons and slightly cramped keyboard in favor of a design that's much easier to use. And the Inspiron M101z (starting at $449; $579 as configured) is easier on the eyes, too, featuring bold color options and a sleek forward hinge design. When you add in powerful speakers and a dual-core AMD processor with ATI graphics, this 3.4-pound machine runs circles around your typical netbook. But is it the best value in its class?



Design

The Inspiron M101z looks like a shrunken version of the 14-inch Inspiron 14R, which is a good thing. It has the same hinge design and a relatively svelte profile that tapers from 1 inch in the front to 1.4 inches in the back. Our review model sports a cool Peacock Blue lid with a paisley-like pattern (Dell calls it Jax). You can also get this pattern in Tomato Red, standard Clear Black, or a Promise Pink version with a DigiPais pattern.

On the inside, the M101z has a black glossy bezel surrounding the 11.6-inch display. The lower part of the notebook combines a gunmetal gray plastic deck with a black chiclet-style keyboard. Weighing 3.4 pounds, this ultraportable fit easily our backpack as we carried it around New York City. However, this isn't the lightest laptop in its class. The Acer Aspire One 721 weighs 2.8 pounds, and the Lenovo ThinkPad X100e weighs 3.2 pounds.

Keyboard and Touchpad

While the Inspiron 11z was somewhat of an ergonomic disaster, the M101z is one of the more comfortable 11-inch notebooks we've used. It starts with a chiclet-style keyboard with nicely separated keys that provide springy feedback. The layout is miles better than the 11z's cramped keyboard. The arrow keys are smaller than we're accustomed to, but were still easy to find by feel.

As per usual for Dell, the top row inverts the function keys so that you can directly access things such as brightness and volume controls. You can also quickly toggle the Wi-Fi radio, control music playback, check battery life, and output the display when you want to output the picture to a TV or projector.

Dell wisely ditched the touchpad with integrated buttons found on the 11z in favor of two discrete mouse buttons on the M101z. While they're a bit small and mushy, we found it much easier to make selections without making errors. The smooth touchpad (3.3 x 1.5 inches) made it easy to navigate the desktop. Pinch-to-zoom gestures worked fine, but due to the touchpad's short height you'll have better luck if you use one finger from each hand.