Best Vacation Notebooks: Dell INSPIRON 14z vs HP ENVY Sleekbook 4t Discussion

[Charles P. Jefferies]

Are you looking for a notebook that serves both travel and entertainment purposes equally well? The Dell Inspiron 14z and the HP ENVY Sleekbook 4t are both thin-and-light 14-inch consumer models starting at just $699 and weighing around four pounds. See which one makes the better vacation-friendly laptop.

Read the full content of this Article: Best Vacation Notebooks: Dell INSPIRON 14z vs HP ENVY Sleekbook 4t

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[Mitlov]

For a "vacation notebook," a DVD drive is a big advantage. Allows you to watch DVD movies on an airplane (good luck streaming movies on an airplane, and a lot of new releases hit DVD before they hit e-retailers). That and the Dell's superior battery life seem a lot more important for vacation laptops than an ideal typing experience...it's a vacation, stop emailing already!

EDIT: Though some food for thought: HP dv4t, Ivy Bridge i5, 630M, optical drive, 32 GB SSD cache + HDD, 6-cell battery...you can watch movies on the plane AND engage in light gaming, all for $744, $50 cheaper than the "sleekbook." And it's only about a half-pound heavier than the Dell, and less than a pound heavier than the more expensive, worse-equipped "sleekbook."

[HI DesertNM]

No match when the Dell has an optical drive and a bigger battery for around the same form factor/weight. Personally, its so congested when flying that I prefer my HP DM1 11" while traveling or a tablet. 14" or bigger is not travel friendly IMO. I have a 11", 14", 15" and a 18.4" HDX and the little dm1 is my favorite to travel with. Only cost me 400 bucks and it still can play 1080P movies.

[abaddon4180]

I frankly think all sleekbooks and ultrabooks are terrible and should be avoided. Like mitlov said, if I was going to buy a 14'' in this price range it would definitely be the dv4t

[REMF]

show me an Envy 4 sporting the AMD A10 APU and i'll get interested, until then..............

[Charles P. Jefferies]

For a "vacation notebook," a DVD drive is a big advantage. Allows you to watch DVD movies on an airplane (good luck streaming movies on an airplane, and a lot of new releases hit DVD before they hit e-retailers). That and the Dell's superior battery life seem a lot more important for vacation laptops than an ideal typing experience...it's a vacation, stop emailing already!

EDIT: Though some food for thought: HP dv4t, Ivy Bridge i5, 630M, optical drive, 32 GB SSD cache + HDD, 6-cell battery...you can watch movies on the plane AND engage in light gaming, all for $744, $50 cheaper than the "sleekbook." And it's only about a half-pound heavier than the Dell, and less than a pound heavier than the more expensive, worse-equipped "sleekbook."

Agreed about the optical drive. I travel through airports every week for my job and the Internet either sucks or is nonexistent in all of them. Pretty pathetic. DVD drive is definitely nice to have.

Thanks for the note about the dv4t; I'll see if I can include that in a future roundup article.

[Skyshade]

I have to second that for air travel 14" is too big -- even 13" is a tight fit for economy class seats.

[John Ratsey]

Agreed about the optical drive. I travel through airports every week for my job and the Internet either sucks or is nonexistent in all of them. Pretty pathetic. DVD drive is definitely nice to have.

I got bored with the extra baggage that the DVDs represent. One can rip quite a few DVDs onto a 64GB flash drive then copy over the one to be watched onto the notebook. A USB burner and some blank discs go into the suitcase in case I need to burn some discs.

John

[c_man]

For a vacation portable thing I prefer the Asus Padfone concept. There are more and more games to have under Android platform to keep you busy. It has a huge amount of battery runtime with "tablet" and "dock". It's rather light. You can take it around town if you wish to visit it and make use of GPS and POIs (I do that all the time with my PDA, simply amazing to discover stuff in new places for a few hours).

ODDs are almost outdated. Even music comes in a digital form if needed. Movies not so much so you need a decent desktop or laptop to rip them, but I think this is mainly for kids (I hope no one will be offended by this). I hardly enjoy a movie in airports for example. Some good music, yeah.