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Were big fans of Dells Inspiron laptops as previous models have struck just the right balance between value, price and performance. The Inspiron 15 7000 is the latest iteration of Dells entry-level laptop, but its aluminium chassis and beautiful edge-to-edge glass display give this new 15in laptop a distinctly premium look that echoes Dells flagship XPS series.
Its by far one of the prettiest general purpose laptops weve seen at this price, and its a brilliant stop-gap between Dells cheaper Inspiron 15 models and the more expensive XPS 15. At 2.6kg, its much lighter than other desktop replacements, although you’re still not going to want to carry it far, despite its slim 22mm chassis.
Dell Inspiron 15 7000 specs
The Inspiron 15 7000 uses the same 1.8GHz Intel Core i7-4500U processor that many Ultrabooks use. Paired with 8GB of RAM, it managed respectable score of 50 in our multimedia benchmarks, which is just a few points behind Dells XPS 12 hybrid and the Asus Zenbook Prime Touch UX31A. This is more than enough speed for everyday tasks, and it should have no problem tackling demanding programs that require multi-threading.
Our review sample also came with a 2GB Nvidia GeForce GT 750M graphics chip. This managed a smooth 46.6fps in our Dirt Showdown test on High quality at a 1,280×720 resolution. This is still very impressive for a non-gaming laptop, but it would have been nice to see the full 60fps weve seen on other laptops with the same chip. It’s likely that the thin chassis doesn’t allow for as much cooling as the graphics chip requires to run faster.
We were even able to get a playable frame rate at the laptops native 1,920×1,080 resolution in Dirt Showdown. We only managed 35.6fps on High quality at this resolution, but lowering the settings to Medium produced 54.7fps. The graphics chip isnt quite powerful enough to run power-hungry games like Crysis 3 at 1,080p, though, as we werent able to get a playable frame rate on any quality setting.
The laptop comes well-equipped with ports, including four USB3 ports, an HDMI video output, a multi-format card reader, a Gigabit Ethernet port and a combined headphone and microphone jack. We were a little disappointed that Dell hadnt included a Blu-Ray or DVD optical drive on its rather bare left hand side, as this would have made the Inspiron 15 7000 the perfect multimedia entertainment laptop, but when we removed the bottom panel to take a closer look, we found there simply wasnt any room due to the Inspiron 15 7000s huge battery.
This is a shame, but we didnt really mind when it lasted almost 9 hours in our light use battery test with the screen set to half brightness. We were perhaps expecting it to last a little longer considering the sheer size of the battery, but this is still good for a 15in laptop, as other similarly priced desktop replacements weve seen have only lasted around five hours by comparison.
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 didnt show any signs of grey either and blacks almost matched the laptops dark glossy bezel.
The laptops contrast levels were also excellent. We measured a contrast ratio of 1,151:1, which is one of the highest contrast ratios weve 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 screens 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 didnt 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 wed 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 didnt 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 were 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 shouldnt 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, its a fraction more expensive than the more powerful and award-winning Acer Aspire V3-772G, and its graphics chip doesnt perform as well as we’d expect. This wont be a problem if youre not fussed about playing games, but if youre looking for a fast desktop replacement, the Acer is the better buy.
