Dell XPS 15z (2011) review

Once you finish drooling over the gorgeous body, you'll probably want to turn the Dell XPS 15z on. As soon as Windows boots up, you'll notice how incredible the screen is. This launch laptop is a 15-incher, but Dell told us it's planning both smaller and larger models for release soon.

With a full HD 1080p resolution, everything looks sharp as a tack. Even the tiniest fonts are readable, while viewing angles also impress. But flick through your photos and you'll be truly wowed. Images are rendered beautifully, with rich colours and perfect contrast bringing everything from landscape shots through to family scenes to vivid life.

You can carry around a lifetime's worth of photos on the 750GB hard drive, as well as thousands and thousands of songs and plenty of films. There's also a slot-loading DVD drive.

Entertainment is definitely a key selling point of the Dell XPS 15z, between the brilliant display and the powerful built-in speakers. We don't usually big up a laptop's speaker system as, frankly, they're often rubbish, but the other half actually told us to shut up when we blasted some music on them. Thankfully we could barely hear her complaints over our playlist.

As expected, 802.11n Wi-Fi support allows speedy wireless browsing, with dual-band support. You also get an SD Card reader, two USB 3.0 ports and a SATA port that doubles up as a sleep-and-charge USB. If you want to hook up an external display or projector, DisplayPort and HDMI connections are available.

You also get a built-in HD webcam on the Dell XPS 15z that can shoot photos and video up to 1280 x 1024 resolution. We appeared sharp during web chats, although there is slight motion blur.