Dell Vostro V131 Notebook Review

The Vostro series by Dell has been going strong, for quite a while now, enticing both seasoned business professionals as well as newcomers. Dell have recently launched their Vostro V131 model, which looks eerily similar to the Vostro V3350, we reviewed earlier. But, does this business minded cousin of the Inspiron series mean all work and no play? Let’s find out. 

Design and Build Quality

Like its other sibling, the V3350, the V131 comes in a lucerne red finish on the exterior, which is quite prone to fingerprints, because of its shiny coating. The interior has a more demure matte black coating. The only bit of steel that’s visible is on the hinges and the rest of the laptop looks and feels quite compact and light. 

Slim and stylish

The V131 has all the major connectivity options covered. The ports on the left include the card reader, an HDMI slot and the USB port, along with a pretty effective heatsink. The right consists of two USB 3.0 slots, a VGA port, the Ethernet port and a 3.5 mm jack. The power slot is located at the back. The stereo speakers are located at the front of the bottom panel, along with the notification LEDs. However, the absence of a DVD slot may be a problem for some. 

In terms of the build, we weren’t exactly impressed. The first problem was the hinges. Though the hinges themselves are pretty sturdy and ensure that the LCD doesn’t wobble, the area between the hinges is extremely fragile. Just a slight press from the outside and we could see impressions forming on the other side of the screen, which was a big disappointment. The LCD itself left a lot to be desired, in terms of better reinforcing, because even a slight touch would cause smearing of pixels on the screen. There’s a slight elevation from the back, with the battery pack, which facilitates long hours of typing. There’s a lot of armrest under the keyboard as well.

The connectivity ports on the sides

The design of the V131 may be appealing, but we weren’t overly impressed with the build quality of this Vostro laptop. 

Features

The V131 is powered by the Intel Core i3 – 2330M processor running at a clock speed of 2.2 GHz. The other specs include 2GB of RAM, a 500GB HDD and the integrated Intel Graphics HD 3000 graphic card. It has also got the usual stuff like Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi, an integrated webcam and a fingerprint reader. Everything is held together by the Windows 7 Professional operating system. 

Dell generally don’t fill up their laptops with bloatware and this one is no different. The only software that comes with this notebook is the data backup and recovery software.