Dell Inspiron 15 7000 review

Dell Inspiron 15 7000 display

The 15.6 Full HD screen is gorgeous, producing some stunning-looking images. It’s also a ten-point touchscreen, which we found to be quick and responsive. Our colour calibrator showed it was displaying 89.1 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut, and our black level reading of 0.22cd/m2 was equally superb. This is great for a general purpose laptop, and our solid reds, greens and blues all looked bright and vibrant thanks to its even colour coverage. Whites didn’t show any signs of grey either and blacks almost matched the laptop’s dark glossy bezel.

The laptop’s contrast levels were also excellent. We measured a contrast ratio of 1,151:1, which is one of the highest contrast ratios we’ve seen outside of an Ultrabook laptop, and our high contrast test images were packed full of detail in both the light and dark areas of each photo. Pictures looked great from every angle as well thanks to the screen’s wide viewing angles. This meant we could see the screen clearly no matter how far back we tilted the screen, making it very comfortable to look at for long periods of time.

Dell Inspiron 15 7000 keyboard and touchpad

The one thing we didn’t like about the Inspiron 15 7000 was the all-in-one touchpad. For the most part, it was fine for dragging our cursor round the desktop, but its clickable lower half felt very spongy when we were opening files and folders. This made it quite frustrating to use on a daily basis, so we’d recommend using a mouse where possible. Otherwise, multi-touch gestures were very easy to perform and swiping from the side to perform Windows 8 shortcuts worked perfectly.

Fortunately, the keyboard was much more pleasant to use. At first we were a little concerned with the amount of flex present in the keyboard tray, but it didn’t make any difference to our typing speed whatsoever, and the keys themselves gave a good level of tactile feedback. Some keys were a little smaller than we’re used to on other laptops, such as the Enter and left Shift key, but we rarely found ourselves hitting incorrect keys even when typing at speed, so this shouldn’t pose much of a problem.

Dell Inspiron 15 7000 conclusion

The Dell Inspiron 15 7000 is a superb desktop replacement, and its premium design looks smart and highly desirable. Our main concern, though, is the price. At £800, it’s a fraction more expensive than the more powerful and award-winning Acer Aspire V3-772G, and its graphics chip doesn’t perform as well as we’d expect. This won’t be a problem if you’re not fussed about playing games, but if you’re looking for a fast desktop replacement, the Acer is the better buy.