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HARDWARE REVIEW

Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming Laptop Review

by Luke Walsh, March 16th, 2017

When you think of Dell gaming laptops, your mind probably automatically turns to Alienware, their flagship PC which is known for its performance and sleek design. However, now there is a new kid on the block and Dell’s latest Inspiron looks to take gaming on the go, and not break to bank. Starting at £899 the notebook offers decent graphics, 8-16GB ram, an SSD and a FHD screen.

Laptop gaming has continued to grow in popularity as devices become less bulky, more affordable and more powerful. There are now portable 13 inch devices up to gaming laptops which can feature massive 18 inch screens. Now with the next generation of Nvidia graphics cards, companies are able to fit even more power into the same frame while supporting 3D or 4K gaming.

The thing about Dell’s latest i5 & i7 model that makes it so tempting is the cost. Instead of deciding to pump as much high tech components into the Inspiron, they have gone with the more methodical approach. Plugging in only what is needed to make it a machine that plays the latest games with no excess. You’ll still find your usual gaming nuances of red flairs, grills and curves to make you feel at home with your 14 million colours of RGB headset but more toned back.

The model that we looked at featured an i7-7700HQ processor, 16GB of ram, Nvidia 1050 Ti graphics with a 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD. Our laptop was the mid-range version which was priced at £1099 and there is an option to upgrade the SSD to 512GB for 200 more pounds of your money or drop down to the i5 for £899. Depending on your location, prices and configurations differ slightly, so those in America will want to check what is available and the rest of the world. You can if you also want as an extra, instead of coming in matte black, go full red and have the chassis coloured in a very bright and deep red colour.

For other laptops in that same graphical range, you can pick up an MSI GE62 7RE with only 8GB of ram, a 128GB SSD and 1TB hard drive for £1,109.90. So Dell have done a pretty decent job at giving you a little bit more for your money where it really counts.

There is only one way you bring down costs for a product and that is by cutting out other areas of the device. One noticeable “cut” is the quality of the screen as all the variations only feature a standard 1920×1080 15.6″ screen. The screen was a pretty big let down, the colours always felt washed out and the brightness at max was just not that bright. Even on the highest setting, my Surface Pro 3 was able to display a much clearer and brighter picture. On top of the dim picture, if you view the laptop from anything but straight on the image fades more making the viewing angle not the best.

Trackpads on laptops are something I don’t usually get along with anyway, there really has yet to be a trackpad which works as well as a mouse. Dell’s Inspiron laptop has similar problems, it feels quite cheap with the plastic with a “clicky” feel to it, even when you are not actually clicking. When you compare these to the more solid touchpads of other laptops, this is definitely an area where they tried to cut costs. If you are PC gaming anyway it won’t matter too much as I’d expect you’d plugin in a mouse, but just be prepared if you want to use it “out of the box”.

Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Benchmark Tests

Screen and touchpad aside, a gaming laptop’s focus should be games. This is where the Inspiron 15 7000 gaming laptop shines through and the 1050 Ti is well placed. The tests come out pretty well compared to the higher-end laptops on the market. The i7 in our model probably made a decent different, so do expect a couple frames different when dropping down to the i5 model.

In the test we looked at using 3DMark’s Firestrike test and Geekbench 3 for the benchmark and stress testing along with Dishonored 2 and Battlefield 1.

During the Firestrike test, the overall performance was very good. The Inspiration was able to handle itself and came out with a respectable score of 5368, If you compare this to our recently reviewed Razer Blade which benchmarked at 9156, for the price comparison this makes the Dell a very good price for the performance you are getting in return. During the FireStrike stress test, the final score was 95.8% which is not too bad but could be better.

Using Geekbench 4 the OpenCL score was 75,312 which is comparable to the AMD Radeon R9 270 which has a score of 75,653. The 1050Ti is not as powerful as the GTX 980M or the GeForce GTX 1070 with a score of 79,692 but it’s not that far off.

Playing Dishonored 2 on high settings, the frame rate stayed steady at around 38fps, while switching it to medium managed about 46-48 FPS. When exploring the world of Karnaca, it looked beautiful with no experiences of any lag during exploration or combat. When jumping into Battlefield 1, the framerates were a higher with the Ultra settings producing around 57fps and 74fps on medium. This was perfectly fine for any situation in the game, be it on horseback or capturing a point, you won’t have to worry about any framerate issues that could get you killed.

In both games though, there were still the issues of the screen’s brightness, both games’ colours did not seem that vivid and become more apparent when you viewed it at a slight angle. This was not as much of an issue in Dishonored 2, but when playing an online game such as BF1, it can be distracting when trying to figure out if a dot on your screen it an enemy or bit of foliage.

When using the Inspiron in day to day tasks, you won’t find any issues. Using programs such as Photoshop or Illustrator are great on the SSD backed up by the power of the 1050Ti, if you also like to have 100 tabs open on Chrome the machine will handle it with no problems. Using Sony Vegas Pro for video rendering by YouTubers who are looking for a new laptop this will be quite tempting. With the i7 processor, rendering a short video of 30 seconds only took over a minute, making it a decent alternative to a big desktop rig on a budget.

Seeing how long the battery could last while gaming on a of 100% brightness lasted about 1.5 when playing Dishonored 2. You could probably get this to about 2 hours if you dropped the brightness a little but you will make the screen much darker than you’d probably like. This means, you can game on the go but not for very long, you will need to bring along the charger and expect to be plugged into the electrics for extended sessions. It’s not a major problem but for a laptop which is designed to be portable, you’d want a little more life out of the battery when on the move. If you’re not gaming and can switch to battery saving mode, you can squeeze about 5 hours out of the Inspiron 15 7000.

Over the Dell Inspiron 15 7000 is probably the best laptop for pure performance gaming you will get for £899 but it does come with its downsides, mainly the screen. Even on the brightness settings it just was not that great and can make gaming a little harder more so if you require pinpoint visuals. Other tasks perform well, if you are looking for video editing capabilities, do a lot of graphical work or games design it could become a faithful companion. If you are willing to spend £300-400 more on a laptop though, there are ones out there which offer a better screen but if you can’t afford over £1000, the Inspiron is a good choice.

8
The Dell Inspiron 15 7000 gaming laptop does exactly what it needs to, power the current generation of games with no frame rate issues with no fuss. It does just this on a budget but does mean that it comes with flaws, the screen being the biggest one with its dimly lit screen and narrow viewing angle. If you can't spend more than £1000 though, this is a decent budget gaming laptop.

Filed under: Dell Dell Inspiron 15 7000 gaming laptop hardware Review

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