Review Dell Precision M6800 Notebook

[philip]

I have the m6700 and use it everyday with 3x 27 HD monitors from the docking station. This unit is a workhorse and i travel with it between work and home.I have never had such a good pc/laptop before. Now i am considering the m6800 but dont know if there is any point to upgrade now that i see the review. My advice if you do buy one, make sure it has full size ssd in the main hard drive bay.

[Bruce]

The comment that the Dell M6800 is available to individuals in 'pre-configured' only, is incorrect. One has to navigate around the normal 'individual' interface. I know because I have purchased, and am presently using a Dell M6800 that was not a 'standard' configuration. I have also purchased previous Dells that were supposedly only available to Businesses. It does have a fingerprint reader, contactless and contact based smart card, touch screen, runs the i7-4910MQ 4 core processor and an Nvidia K4100M graphics card w 4GB of texture memory and has the red metal case. I am also running a 'hybrid' drive (SSD/disk combination). The only thing with going around the pre-set designs is that the wait time is longer (because it is not a 'stock' item) and there are no financing options.

If I wanted to, I could have gotten a full 1TB SSD, 32GB RAM, and a even faster CPU and a K5100M graphics card. I do miss the 1394 interface that was on previous Dells though. My film scanner uses a 1394 interface. I have already UEFI dual booted the machine (Win8.1, Fed20) and am looking at ordering an SSD for more 'tinkering'. It is possible to get an SSD from non-Dell sources and use backup/restore or in my case, I used a Fed20 - Security Live disk to manage the partitions.

Maybe the presets are only available to those outside the US, but I suspect it is possible to navigate around them.

[Cheegii]

 >:( This laptop is piece of scraps. secondary vga amd always disappear on device manager. you can not do anything without resetting bios (unplug every power and bios battery). Can not fit in standard laptop case, because of sharp rectangle shape. Performance is fine but secondary vga is problem.

[RLDubbya]

I've been using my Dell M6800 nearly daily for about 18 months; it has been a great performer - no problems at all. I purchased from Dell configured with an Intel i7-4940MX 3.10 Ghz / 4.0Ghz turbo CPU; 32Gb DDR3-1600 RAM; NVidia Quadro K4100M; 2 500Gb SSD Drives.

I use it at my desk with a docking station, and drive 2 Dell 27" 4k monitors at full 4k resolution, 60Hz.

I'm not a real geek, so I don't run any benchmarks, etc., but this laptop works fine for my uses: Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere Pro, Audition, Media Encoder, the MS Office Suite, multiple browser sessions, Visual Studio (sometimes multiple versions running simultaneously for different projects); SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, dbForge mySQL Studio, IIS, Topaz Labs, WinPCap, WireShark, etc., etc.

I had one problem with the setup: it turns out that the Dell P2715Q monitors require a certain BIOS rev level in order for the NVidia card to run both of them full resolution at 60Hz. Dell engineers worked with me, and finally isolated the issue, and sent me two new monitors with the correct BIOS rev, and it's been fine since then.

The built-in display (upgraded to the full HD matte screen) is fine for normal work, excluding extensive photo and video editing. For coding, general office applications, browsing, it is fine. Battery life is good as well, I get 3-4 hours.

There were many options available when I ordered; essentially, I could pick nearly every component and configuration option I wanted. I replace an M6500 with this, and am happy with this upgrade.