By Dan Ackerman
Thursday, April 16 2009 11:31 AM
URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/reviews/hardware/notebooks/0,3800010348,44677447p,00.htm

Adamo is a departure for Dell, a company built on selling mass quantities of mainstream systems. Instead, it's a high-end, ultrathin 13.4in. notebook that starts at £1,649 (inc. VAT) — there's also a £2,249 (inc. VAT) version — and partly shares a general design sensibility with the MacBook Air and HP's Voodoo Envy 133.

Dell's 'luxury' Adamo notebook starts at £1,649 (ex. VAT) and competes with the likes of Apple's MacBook Air and HP's Voodoo Envy 133.

Dell is pitching the Adamo as a 'luxury brand notebook design for the luxury conscious consumer', which may not seem like the most timely of ideas, considering the current economic climate and the resultant growth in low-cost Netbooks. But it's important to note that the ultra-low voltage Intel Core 2 Duo processor used in the Adamo runs rings around other recent slim notebooks, such as the HP Pavilion dv2 (with AMD's new Athlon Neo CPU).

And while you may be able to get faster components for less, the Adamo's real selling point is its design. There are no visible stickers or screws (even the usual Microsoft and Intel badges have been replaced — the logos are etched into a panel on the underside of the system), and it includes high-end features such as a solid-state hard drive, an etched anodised aluminium chassis and a backlit keyboard.

The end result is an enviable package that will definitely attract plenty of stares at the coffee shop or airport lounge — not just because of its sharp looks but also because, with a £1,649 starting price, you're unlikely to see many of them in the wild.

Built into an aluminium case with unibody construction, similar to the current MacBooks, the 1.64cm-thick Adamo is, according to Dell, the thinnest notebook in the world. It certainly is thin, but going toe-to-toe with the MacBook Air, the true 'thinnest' title is open to interpretation. The tapered Air is thinner at its narrowest point, but slightly thicker at its widest point. In either case these are both very slim systems (see a direct comparison here). Picking up the Adamo, it feels a little heavier than the system looks like it should: At 1.81kg, it's certainly lightweight, but based on the size and thinness, we were expecting something closer to the 1.36kg MacBook Air.

You can get the Adamo in Pearl and Onyx liveries, each with a distinctive pattern etched into part of the lid.

The Adamo is available in both white (Dell calls it 'Pearl') and black ('Onyx') versions. The back of the lid is split between etched metal and a glossy finish — actually a 0.5mm glass inlay — that's better for wireless reception than other materials. The pearl finish has a wavy pattern etched into it, while the black model has a more traditional brushed-metal look.

The Adamo's keyboard has flat, closely spaced and slightly scalloped keys.

Opting for a subtle look on and around the keyboard tray, the Adamo has only a handful of small LED lights, for the power button, the touch-sensitive media controls and the Caps Lock button. The backlit keyboard itself is a big change from the typical Dell notebook keyboard, which has always had tall, tapered keys. This borrows more from the Dell Mini 9, with flat, closely spaced keys — similar in style to what you might find on an Apple MacBook or a Sony Vaio, but slightly scalloped instead of flat.

Typing feels very comfortable, but the individual keys are a bit clacky and the space bar requires a solid hit to register, which doesn't those with light typing styles. The metal touchpad works well; sometimes using non-traditional surfaces on a touchpad can add uncomfortable friction and finger drag, but that's not the case here.

The 13.4in., 16:9 aspect ratio, LED-backlit display offers a native resolution of 1,366 by 768 pixels, and is behind a sheet of edge-to-edge glass. It's a sleek look, but very susceptible to glare and reflections. The screen hinge is set back about 2.5cm from the rear of the system, leaving what looks a little like a small handle when the display is open.

The slim selection of ports and connections is one area where the Adamo falls short. Other than a headphone jack and a user-accessible SIM card slot on the right side, all the other ports and connections are on the rear edge. There are two USB ports, a USB/eSATA port and an Ethernet jack, plus a DisplayPort video output (a DisplayPort-to-DVI dongle is included in the box).

The lack of an SD card slot is particularly annoying (it's one of the things we regularly knock MacBooks for not having), and there's no internal optical drive. Dell offers specially matched external models: a DVD burner is £99 (inc. VAT), and a Blu-ray read-only drive is £189 (inc. VAT).

Although our review unit included a 1.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo U9300 processor, 2GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD hard drive, a more expensive configuration with a 1.4GHz SU9400 and 4GB of RAM is also available (and we generally suggest 4GB of RAM for use with Windows Vista).

The dual-core Intel ultra-low voltage processor makes a huge difference compared with the Atom/Neo/Nano CPUs we've spend most of our time with lately, and the Adamo handles multitasking chores much more like a mainstream system. The tiny, low-power ULV chips that allow the Adamo to hit that 1.64cm thickness are expensive, however, which is why you don't find them in netbooks, and why a basic sub-£650 Core 2 Duo 13in. notebook such as the HP Pavilion dv3510nr, can outperform the Adamo.

Although it's not intended to be a speed demon, we found that the Adamo worked well, with no slowdown or stuttering during regular usage — web surfing, working on office documents and media playback.

One area we'd expect a high-end system like the Adamo to excel at is battery life. It ran for 2 hours and 36 minutes on our video playback battery drain test, using the included 40Wh battery. Our battery drain test is especially gruelling, so you can expect longer life from casual web surfing and office use, but we had hoped for a more robust battery — especially given the efficient CPU, LED-backlit display and SSD hard drive.

Dell includes an enhanced one-year warranty with the system called Adamo Premium Service. Upgrading to a three-year plan will cost an extra £179 (currently, Dell is offering four years' cover for the same price). Dell also has a robust set of online support features, including an online knowledge base and driver downloads.