Dell Inspiron Duo Hybrid Tablet / Netbook Review

by Ray Willington — Tuesday, February 08, 2011, 12:00 PM EDT

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SiSoftware Sandra & Multimedia Benchmarks

Testing with SiSoft SANDRA 2010

Synthetic Benchmarks

We continued our testing with SiSoftware's SANDRA 2010, the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant. We ran four of the built-in subsystem tests (CPU Arithmetic, Multimedia Memory Bandwidth, Physical Disks). All of the scores reported below were taken with the processor running at its default speed along with 2GB of DDR3 RAM running in dual-channel mode.

CPU Arithmetic Test; Click To Enlarge

CPU Multimedia Test; Click To Enlarge

Memory Bandwidth Test; Click To Enlarge

Physical Disc Test; Click To Enlarge

Our gauntlet of SiSoftware SANDRA tests show decent performance for its class, but nothing world-beating. The Atom N550 just isn't as powerful as we would like given the day and age and the increased competition. Last year, these results would feel more in line with expectations. But these days, we're aiming for a bit more, even in the netbook sector.

To test multimedia capabilities, we attempt to play back a 720p WMVHD clip, a 720p H.264 clip and a 1080p clip. We've also included a screenshot of the 1080p clip from the Mini 311 (which uses the first gen NVIDIA Ion GPU) to give you a better idea of CPU utilization from a different type of system.

Click To Enlarge; 720 H.264 - Dell Inspiron Duo

Click To Enlarge; 720p WMVHD - Dell Inspiron Duo

Click To Enlarge; 1080p - Dell Inspiron Duo

Click To Enlarge; 1080p on HP Mini 311 w/ Ion

Despite having weaker numbers in overall benchmarks and gaming, the Duo does manage to play back both 720p and 1080p content smoothly. We wouldn't recommend multi-tasking while playing video, but if you're dedicating the machine to playing back content, you should be fine. Our machine got a bit warm when cranking 1080p clips, but there weren't any notable stutters, despite seeing the resource meter come dangerously close to peaking on occasion.