Dell Inspiron 545/8707 review

The Inspiron 545/8707 has a neat, stylish case with flip-down panels that hide the drive bays.

The front ports, which include a multi-format media card reader, are also tucked away behind a panel. We weren’t overly impressed with the build quality, though. Press the power button too hard, for example, and it gets stuck.

Dell has opted for an Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200, which at 2.33GHz is a slightly slower version of the 2.66GHz quad-core processor in Arbico’s PC. In our 2D benchmarks, the Inspiron 545/8707 fared reasonably well, coming second overall. However, the limited power of Intel’s integrated graphics mean it’s not suited to gaming or other 3D-intensive tasks, and both Call of Duty 4 and Crysis failed to run. This is disappointing at this price, and we’d expect a dedicated graphics card.

A total of 4GB of RAM is installed, but as Dell has installed the 32-bit version of Vista Home Premium, only 3.5GB can be used.

Dell supplies a relatively small 19in LG W1943SB monitor. Thanks to an evenly lit display and well-saturated colours, it stood up well against the competition, but its small screen means the native resolution is just 1,366×768. It’s an analogue-only model, so it has just a VGA input, which matches the PC’s sole VGA output.

There’s plenty of room inside the case and the fans are extremely quiet. However, the vertically mounted hard disk doesn’t make the best use of the space available, leaving just two spare drive bays (a 3?in and a 5?in bay). That said, most users are unlikely to want to upgrade from the 500GB disk and DVD writer that come as standard.

The Dell-branded keyboard is well built, but the keys sit a little too deep. Depending on your typing style, you may find that your thumbs knock the edge of the keyboard when using the bottom row.

It’s good to see a fast processor in such a quiet PC, but the reliance on integrated graphics is disappointing at this price. Mesh’s Matrix II TT is a much better buy.