The Dell Precision M4500 is the latest 15-inch mobile workstation featuring powerful Intel processors up to the Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition and Nvidia Quadro FX 1800M discrete graphics for video editing, animation, and CAD manipulation.  The Precision M4500 boasts an optional 64GB SSD MiniCard for fast start up and your choice of up to a 256GB SSD or a 500GB HDD for file storage. Is this the most powerful workhorse on the market? Take a look and see if it’s time for an upgrade at your office.

As the latest laptop review unit of the Dell Precision M4500 features, here are the following specifications:

The Dell Precision line of mobile workstation notebooks has long been a staple of corporate IT where users need the fastest multi-core processors and the most powerful discrete graphics for 3D animation, video editing, and CAD applications. Whether you’re a Hollywood animator working on next year’s blockbuster, or an engineer developing the next generation of communications satellites, you need extreme computing power with workstation-class certifications so you know it will work with the software you use every day.

The Dell Precision M4500 packs all that hardware into a durable shell with an old-fashioned industrial design. The magnesium alloy chassis is boxy and bulky yet very strong. The screen lid features a brushed aluminum appearance, while the interior has a simple black design. The massive palm rests show very little flex even under severe pressure and provide a comfortable platform for typing on the full-size, backlit keyboard.

One of the must-have features for business notebooks is extremely easy access to internal components. IT managers have to be able to open up a notebook to customize systems as needed for specific applications or make repairs. Dell designed the Precision M4500 with a single massive bottom panel that provides quick access to the RAM, hard drive, SSD MiniCard, and wireless cards inside the notebook. You’ll have to remove five screws in order to open the bottom of the notebook (that’s one more screw than similar HP mobile workstations) and that’s all that you need to do in order to start messing with the internal components.

Dell offers the Precision M4500 with several different 15-inch screen options with 1366×768, 1600×900, and 1920×1080 resolutions. Our review unit came equipped with the 15.6″ FHD LED Back-Lit Display (1920×1080 resolution, matte screen). This 1080p high-definition display is perfectly usable both indoors and outdoors and features excellent color with rich contrast. The LED-backlit panel offers excellent brightness and we typically left the brightness set to between 50% and 70% when using the notebook indoors. The M4500 features an ambient light sensor to automatically adjust the screen brightness based on the available light, but we disabled this feature during our lab tests so that the screen brightness would remain constant.

Horizontal viewing angles are very good and you only start to notice some obvious color shift after you get more than 75 degrees off center. Vertical viewing angles are average as the screen begins to wash out from above and colors begin to invert from below after about 45 degrees in either direction.

The M4500 features an impressive number of ports and external features crammed into a 15-inch notebook. You get both a PC Card and an Express Card slot for expansion and external peripherals, three dedicated USB 2.0 ports, one combo USB/eSATA port for connecting external hard drives, DisplayPort, FireWire, and even an additional Smartcard slot.

Dell offers the Precision M4500 with your choice of 6-cell or 9-cell Lithium-Ion batteries. The 6-cell battery is a 60Wh pack that sits flush with the back of the notebook. There are actually two different types of 9-cell batteries available for the M4500, a standard 90Wh version and a lower-capacity 81Wh version that features a special 3-year warranty against failure or dramatic loss of capacity. The lower capacity 9-cell battery also charges slightly slower than the 90Wh version in order to maintain battery life over a longer period of time. During our timed tests, with the laptop set to “balanced” mode, wireless active, and 70% screen brightness, the M4500 lasted for 5 hours and 37 minutes using the 9-cell, 90Wh battery. This is pretty impressive for a 15-inch (1920 x 1080 resolution) mobile workstation with a quad-core processor, and 1GB of discrete graphics.

After spending several weeks putting the Dell Precision M4500 through its paces, it’s clear that this is one of the most powerful mobile workstations we’ve tested. If you’re looking for a 15-inch workstation-class machine for your office then the M4500 is a very good candidate next to the Lenovo ThinkPad W510 and the HP EliteBook 8540w or 8440w notebooks.

Despite the impressive performance and awesome range of configuration options, the build quality of the Dell Precision M4500 is a little less than impressive in the areas of the keyboard and screen lid. The rest of this mobile workstation is quite solid, so these two weak points might be a relatively minor issue.

Bottom line, if you need a 15-inch mobile workstation with every configuration option imaginable, then the Dell Precision M4500 probably belongs on the top of a very short list.