We had no issues, however, with the Dell Studio 14 laptop's audio-visual experience -- second best to the Lenovo Ideapad Y550, in our opinion. Both 720p and 1080p HD video files played just fine and the combination of cinematic visuals (on the screen) and better-than-average sound (from the onboard speakers) was very good for a 14-inch mainstream laptop. The glossy screen was good to look at both indoors and outdoors, and the Dell Studio 14's keyboard and touchpad combo is nice and simple -- slightly better than the MSI CX420. As far as battery life is concerned, we clocked a time of 1 hour 28 minutes on the Studio 14's six-cell battery during our benchmark test. This is just a shade below the Lenovo Ideapad Y550's and MSI CX420's time. Expect to get over 3 hours of browsing the Web over Wi-Fi on a conservative power plan on the Dell Studio 14, which is pretty much standard from a mainstream laptop.

The sells for Rs. 45,300. For that price, you get a pretty decent 14-inch mainstream laptop with a nice screen, very good keyboard-touchpad combo, and one of the best feature sets of our . Compared to the and , the Dell Studio 14 offers better processor, RAM, and greater hard drive space -- but has an inferior graphics card, in comparison. We would still recommend the Dell Studio 14 over the MSI CX420 if you're looking for a 14-inch all purpose laptop for home. However, if you want a laptop with larger screen and better graphics performance, go for the Lenovo Ideapad Y550.

Tip: If you don't care much about the fancy screen lid, the .

PCW RATING: 87/100 (VERY GOOD)