Dell Inspiron i14R-2265MRB review: Dell Inspiron i14R-2265MRB

Like Inspirons before, plastic is the predominant construction material on the Inspiron R. The outer lid and inner palm-rest area have a distinctly metallic brushed-metal veneer, but it's just that, as they're made of plastic, too. While this glossy material doesn't attract fingerprints as much as we expected, the lid's plastic flexes slightly more than we'd prefer. The silvery-gray color is attractive, though.

The chassis of the Inspiron R series has a "hinge-forward" design introduced on the recent Mini 10 Netbooks. What this means is the top lid connects to the base about an inch in from the rear. The reason for this design might be the lack of battery bulge or a slight shifting of the screen to be closer to the keyboard, but the R's base is decidedly thick at the back end and the rear shelf is still a kind of a bulge--it just doesn't jut from the base.

Dell's nearly edge-to-edge keyboard is a flat design with a bit of raised texture to the keys. It's comfortable to use, and the top media keys are thankfully function-reversed, as on Apple's and HP's laptops. The touch pad below is larger, more matte-surfaced, and generally more comfortable than recent Dell laptops we've used. The discrete buttons below are nothing special, but are well-sized and work nicely. As a total keyboard/touch-pad experience, the Dell i14R-2265MRB is better than average.

The LED-backlit 14.1-inch glossy screen has a native resolution of 1,366 x 768 pixels, which matches most laptop displays around 13 and 14 inches. Video and Web pages look crisp and text and colors were sharp, but images got a little washed-out-looking at extended viewing angles. We were also impressed by the volume and sound quality on the stereo speakers, located under the palm rests on the bottom base. While this Dell advertises "SRS premium sound," the end result for most users amounts to a slightly better audio playback quality, nothing more.

One of Dell's custom software touches is a conspicuous dock centered on the top edge of the screen. It acts as a launcher to pictures, Webcam, Web browser, e-mail, and movie/music playback modes, acting a little like Apple's own applications dock, but a lot less flexible and more prone to linking to preinstalled promo trial bloatware.

Above the screen, a 1.3-megapixel webcam offers video conferencing and picture-taking capabilities, with a decent frame rate and OK image quality. Videos demonstrated that the microphone had good long-range sensitivity, but the video and picture resolution had some graininess in our normal office lighting.

HDMI, eSATA, and an internal Bluetooth antenna offer some options missing from other laptops, not to mention the inclusion of WiMax for mobile broadband in some markets worldwide. One USB and the VGA port along with the power plug are located on the backside, which could be convenient for those that might use this i14R primarily as a desktop replacement, but the rear port placement is awkward for travel and more casual use.

While Dell's Inspiron series is highly configurable across a wide price range on Dell's Web site, this fixed-configuration i14R-2265MRB model ends up being on the slightly higher end of Dell's options. Both 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive are included, which are above-average specs for a mainstream laptop. If you're interested in features or prices that don't match what you see here, you might want to try configuring one of your own instead.