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One Reg Hardware was stunned this weekend when he went to check how much an extra battery for the Dell Studio 15 laptop he was planning to buy would set him back.

Little did reader Gerard Phelan realise that acquiring the six-cell, 56Whr power pack would necessitate taking out a mortgage.

We'd recommend the more capacious, nine-cell battery, which is only 120 quid.

Dell's Studio 15 configuration page is here: the pricey battery such as dell 2941E battery, dell 9943E battery, dell Inspiron 7100 battery, dell Inspiron 7500 battery, dell Inspiron 7000 battery, dell Inspiron E1705 battery, dell XPS M1710 battery, dell XPS M1210 battery, dell Inspiron E1405 battery, dell J399N battery, if it's still there, is on the accessories page.

The camera is OK, but not particularly impressive. It has a few nifty features including autofocus, multishot (four or nine pics), 4x digital zoom and flash, but there's no smile detection, no macro or panorama modes. Colours aren't always as true as we'd like, definition is quick to suffer in bright situations and edges could look a little sharper.

However, the camera starts up quickly and is a decent little snapper, even if it falls behind other 5Mp models from the likes of Samsung or Sony Ericsson. There's also a 0.3Mp camera on the front for video calling, but it's somewhat redundant at the moment, since you'll need Android 2.2 to be able to use it.

Viewing video showed that the big screen isn't without problems. Some of the videos we tried that looked perfectly fine on smaller screens came up wanting on the big 5in – select with care. It will show H.263/H.264, .3GP, MPEG4 and WMV files, but there's no option to stretch them to fit the screen.

For music it can handle MP3, WMA, eAAC+ and WAV and the player offers a UI that's been slightly tweaked from the functional Android original, though not by much. Music sounds okay through the supplied earphones, which feature noise-isolating grommets. Getting media onto the Streak is simple enough, but there's no dedicated syncing software, just drag and drop, and there's 2GB internal memory that's actually on a micro SD card, so if you're handy with a screwdriver... Alternatively, you can add up to 32GB using the easier, user-accessible, micro SD card slot.

There are currently over 40,000 apps on Android Marketplace, way behind Apple's 200,000, but most of the important stuff's there, though not all of it will be compatible with the Streak. A case in point is that, as it stands, you can't access BBC iPlayer using the Streak. With no official app available, and beebPlayer now removed – as its creator felt it had been superseded by Android 2.2 with its Flash 10 capability – for now, a prime client for the Streak's extensive screen is out of bounds.

Battery life is an issue with all smartphones of course, but especially for those with big screens. Admittedly, I did give it a bit of a hammering over the course of a day, it didn't quite make it all the way to tea time. While there are various ways to save on battery life – such as dimming the screen and discontinuing automatic email updates and suchlike – you can still expect to have to charge it each and every day.

The Dell Streak is not, repeat not, a rival to Apple's iPad, despite what some have inferred. What it is, is a very clever outsize Android smart phone with a terrific multi-touch screen. No, it's not big enough to do any serious work on, but it's certainly big enough to read an online newspaper with ease or even ebooks at a pinch. It's fast, well loaded with features, and while we'd have preferred Android 2.2 rather than 1.6, an upgrade should be available later in the year. Not everyone will go for the size, poised awkwardly between phone and tablet, but it will still fit in the pocket, and offers a definite upgrade on the usual viewing and reading experience.