Pros & Cons
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- Portable workstation with ISV certification.
- Powerful processor and graphics card.
- Removable battery.
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- Square pixels visible (screen-door effect) on display.
- No backlit keyboard.
- No touch capability.
- Small-capacity solid-state drive (SSD).
- Servicing requires a screwdriver.
- USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports are the same color.
Dell Precision M2800 Specs
| Graphics Memory | 2048 |
| Graphics Processor | AMD FirePro M4170 |
| Native Display Resolution | 1920 by 1080 |
| Operating System | Microsoft Windows 7 Professional |
| Optical Drive | Dual-Layer DVD+/-RW |
| Processor | Intel Core i7-4810MQ |
| Processor Speed | 2.6 |
| RAM (as Tested) | 8 |
| Screen Size | 15.6 |
| Tested Battery Life (Hours:Minutes) | 4:26 |
| Weight | 6.22 |
| Wireless Networking | 802.11ac (2.4+5.0 GHz Dual-band) |
The Dell Precision M2800 ($1,629, as tested) is a mobile workstation best suited to middle managers and supervisors. It comes with a powerful quad-core Intel Core i7 processor and AMD FirePro workstation-class graphics for ISV-certified apps like AutoCAD and power-user programs like Adobe's Creative Suite. The M2800 is a good laptop for people who need to check the work that others do, but other mobile workstations are a better choice for the people who actually need to perform the heavy-lifting on projects. Though it's a bit pricier, the HP ZBook 14 remains our recommendation because of its portability, serviceability, and a touch screen.
Design and Features
At 6.22 pounds and 1.3 by 15 by 11 inches (HWD), the M2800 will need a huge backpack for portability beyond the office. Styling is mostly old-school. The lid, which has an aluminum finish, has a sliding latch to keep it closed, something we haven't seen on a mainstream laptop in years. The system comes with a traditional, non-backlit keyboard and dual pointing devices (pointing stick and touchpad). A backlit keyboard is a $34.30 option for configure-to-order (CTO) systems. The physical mouse buttons make the system more familiar to veteran users, and the numeric keypad is a plus for number-crunching.
View All There's a DVD drive, an Ethernet port, an Express Card slot, an HDMI port, an SD card reader, a smart card slot, one USB 2.0 port, and three USB 3.0 ports. Since all the USB ports are the same black color (as opposed to having the USB 3.0 ports colored blue as they are in many other systems), you'll have remember that the one on the back is the USB 2.0 port. They are marked with industry-standard icons, but those are tiny and hard to pick out. The system comes with 802.11ac Wi-Fi to supplement the gigabit Ethernet port.
The 128GB solid-state drive (SSD) has a small capacity, which is a tradeoff to get better speed than a traditional hard-drive-based system. This isn't much of a problem for a supervisor or field agent who simply needs to open files, like architecture plans. If you're a content creator, however, 128GB won't be enough if you use multi-gigabyte libraries for your programs. A 256GB SSD option is an extra $140. The M2800 can be upgraded by an end user or your IT department, but you'll need to use a screwdriver to get into the chassis. The HP ZBook 14 is much easier to get into, with a tool-less lid that pops off for servicing.
