Dell Vostro V131 review

At least the low-powered components help prevent the battery from draining quickly while on the move – in our light-use test, the V131 managed to last over eight hours away from the mains. This means you should be able to get close to a full working day from the six-cell battery. This is a major improvement over the old model, which struggled to reach four hours on a full charge.
Dell has also made other improvements to the new Vostro – all its ports have moved from the rear, where they were difficult to reach, to the sides of the laptop. Now, the single USB and two USB3 ports, HDMI and VIGA inputs, memory card reader and headset audio jack are easier to reach.

We liked the V131’s Chiclet-style keys, which are spaced widely apart and have plenty of bounce. There’s no numeric keypad, but the punctuation keys were all in the places we would expect. The laptop’s touchpad feels compact, even when controlling the small 13in display, as we couldn’t span the desktop in a single movement. A quick trip to the driver settings menu solved the problem, but we would have preferred a little more room to manoeuvre. At least the touchpad buttons felt firm and responsive, registering our clicks consistently.

In the configuration we saw, the Vostro V131 felt slightly underpowered for intensive tasks, but was still ideally suited to web browsing, word processing and other work-related tasks. With this specification, it’s also good value for an ultra-portable laptop, and if you don’t need the 3G modem and specify Windows 7 Home Premium rather than Professional, you can knock the price down to a bargain £514 including VAT. If an ultrabook is out of your price range but you want a laptop for travel, the Vostro V131 is a great buy.