Dell Vostro V130 Pro Reviews

We love the Dell Vostro V130's compact chassis, and with a strong battery life this would have been one of the best ultraportables of recent times. Sadly, its three hour mobility is a poor result, while performance is also limited.

Dell has delivered a good looking, reasonably powerful laptop at a competitive price and kept it slim and light, but still robust. While it's certainly aimed at small office and home office workers, it also makes an attractive buy for anyone who's looking for a laptop for school or college. The combination of Core i5 and a fast hard drive means there's plenty of performance, though we'd mark it down a little for not having an optical drive - and we were very disappointed with its battery life. The Vostro V130 is a work horse PC, not a multimedia powerhouse, and its media performance does suffer as a result. But if you prefer to snack at YouTube, rather than watching HD movies in surround sound, it'll do the job. That's the Vostro V130 in a nutshell: good enough. Luckily for Dell, most of the time "good enough" is all you need.

The Dell Vostro V130 is slim, light, tough and powerful enough to make it a really useful business tool. However, the battery life and display performance are sure to disappoint.

The Dell Vostro V130 looks fantastic, its metal chassis and clean lines are very appealing. But the sealed-in battery and its poor performance are significant drawbacks. There's no built in optical drive, and if you want higher specifications you may find you end up paying over the odds.

Handsome and thin, the V130 is well suited for multimedia presentations, but poor battery life and mediocre performance drag down its overall score.

An excellent design and great build quality, but the disappointing battery life and average display let it down.

Dell has attempted to make a good subnotebook even better with the Vostro V130. The effort falls short in an important place, however: the battery life. The notebook, lasting 2 hours 31 minutes in the WiFi test, cannot keep up with the subnotebook competition (typically 4-6 hours). Aside from that, the V130 is an almost perfect subnotebook.

Dell made the right choices when creating this new model, and has turned something that was already good, into something that is even better. Compared to its predecessor, the Vostro V13, this unit also features a rigid, high quality housing, a matt display and mobility thanks to the HSDPA-Modul. In addition there are other notable attributes such as the excellent ergonomics (heat and noise levels).

Sleek, surprisingly powerful and with a good range of options - but battery life is poor.

Dell's thin and extremely portable Vostro V130 is an attractive small-business 13-incher, but an unacceptably poor battery life sinks its appeal.

Although the Core i5 processor and HDMI are notable additions, the Dell Vostro V130 is tough to recommend as an ultraportable with only 3 hours of battery life.

Even with some drawbacks (the screen, warmth and battery life), the Dell Vostro V130 is still a 13.3in business laptop to be reckoned with. Its slim profile, light weight and reasonably good performance make it a great tool to use while on the road. However, we wish the Dell Vostro V130 would allow easier access its internal components, and that it didn't get so warm, and that the screen was better.

With any ultraportable, there's a delicate balance between power and portability. A notebook needs to perform certain tasks well, but if it uses up its battery too quickly, its usefulness for business travelers is mitigated. While we like that the $928 Dell Vostro V130 has a very slim profile and decent muscle, its sub-3-hour endurance is too short to ignore.

The Vostro 130’s sharp, super-thin design is an attention-grabber. But for small-business buyers looking for a laptop for a long trip or the long haul, this unit's battery is a deal killer.