Dell Inspiron E1405
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Review Date: 20th July' 2006

A new addition to the Inspiron line of entertainment notebooks, the Inspiron E1405 was created with a focus on offering entertainment on the go and thus the E1405 is the most portable of the Inspiron line of notebooks. It should be noted that the Inspiron 640M offered on Dell's Business site is the same as this Inspiron E1405 offered on Dell's Home site.

With portability at the center of its design, the E1405 comes with an appropriately sized 14.1" wide screen display featuring Dell's Truelife technology (Dell's brand name for its glossy line of screens). Truelife offers richer colors, higher contrast and a brighter image. Although some might complain about the high reflective nature of glossy screens in general, this however is a matter of personal choice. There have been some complaints specific to this notebook's screen, it seems there's quite a bit of light leakage when viewing dark images (say a movie) but it's mostly unnoticeable in normal use.

Another concerning complaint about this notebook's screen is its viewing angles, while horizontally its fine it seems vertical movement does change the brightness somewhat noticeably from darker to lighter depending on which direction you move your head.

With a thickness of 1.5 inches and weighing in at 5.9 pounds the E1405 is no ultra-portable, but as an entertainment notebook featuring such a smaller size and lighter weight is a refreshing change from the usual bulkier and heavier entertainment notebooks. The E1405 can indeed be logged around for semi-regular travel especially with a battery life of a little over 3 hours. Dell is known for its great value factor and the E1405 is no exception offering a big bang for your buck. You won't easily find a similarly configured entertainment notebook at its price range.

With an Intel Core Duo processor (at 1.66 Ghz), 512MB of DDR2 RAM and a SATA hard drive, the E1405 performs quite admirably. Although, due to its integrated graphics chip (Intel GMA 950), 3D performance won't be the E1405's selling point but then again its not. Despite that you'll be happy to know the Inspiron E1405 carries the Vista capable logo ensuring compatibility with Microsoft's upcoming major Windows release.

The E1405 runs mostly quietly and cool. With the fan only kicking in at 41C and it stays on only long enough to bring the temperature down to 40C or lower. Even with the fan turned on, it's very hard to notice its noise unless you're in an entirely quite environment.

Overall, the E1405 is a welcomed addition to the Inspiron line of entertainment notebooks; offering great value and decent portability at a very competitive price range with many options to choose from.