Battery Life, Expandability, and Pricing
Battery Life
In our PC Perspective Wi-Fi Web Browsing test, the Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming faired well. With a screen brightness of 180 lux across all of the notebooks, the Dell notebook managed to last for 7 hours and 42 minutes. The large, 72Wh battery helps keep the quad-core CPU and dedicated NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti from taking a large chunk out of the battery life.
Expandability
One of Dell's biggest points of pride with last year's Inspiron 15 Gaming was the fact that it was highly expandable when compared to other notebooks. Dell has maintained this feature with their newest revision.
Removing a single screw on the bottom of the machine allows you to pop off the bottom panel and reveals a well laid out array of hardware. You have an accessible M.2 port, empty 2.5" drive bay, and RAM slots, just about all you could ask for on a notebook. Keep in mind that depending on your given configuration of the Inspiron 15, it may not ship with the SATA ribbon cable for the additional drive bay (ours did not), but you can find this part elsewhere on the internet for around $15.
I love that Dell has taken the upgradability path seriously and obviously made it a priority. You can even see that all of the screws in the internal chassis are labeled with the screw size. I really love this attention to detail and the ability to fix any components that may have gone awry on this machine.
I honestly find it difficult to find faults with this latest iteration of the Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming. The build concern issues that I had with the previous model have been addressed, and I think the industrial design changes help round out this great notebook.
For users who are interested in the ability to game with their notebook, even if it's just occasionally, I think the $850 price tag is difficult to beat for a machine of this caliber.
If the price tag is $700
If the price tag is $700 would be marvelous & match with the model Insprion 7000.
Damn that’s a pretty good
Damn that’s a pretty good deal since an exactly spec’d Lenovo Y520 is $1020. I’d most likely take the Lenovo over Dell, from past experience, but its tempting.
“all of the screws in the
“all of the screws in the internal chassis are labeled with the screw size and how many of those screws you’ll find in the machine”
Actually, the second number is the length of the screw, not how many.
For example, M2.5×5 means M2.5 thread screw that’s 5mm long.
Edit: very decent-looking laptop too, and they have a 4K version to boot, even though that one is only available in black. How boring…
I’m not quite sure how that
I'm not quite sure how that one escaped me.. I've definitely bought metric bolts before and totally recognize the screw length now that you mention it 🙂
Never edit when excited – it
Never edit when excited – it results in silly mistakes 😛
No comments on the screen at
No comments on the screen at all? I’m assuming it comes with one. 😉 I’ve had the previous model over a year and, while performance is great for the price (don’t really use it for gaming), the screen is quite dim. Love the ease of upgrades as well.
looks like a crappy TN
looks like a crappy TN panel.. second photo shows pretty bad colour shifting
You mean the i5-7300HQ not
You mean the i5-7300HQ not i7-7300HQ, right?
I wonder how soon
I wonder how soon Zen+Vega+HBM APU will make those type of gaming laptop obsolete
Never
Never
The specs of this review and
The specs of this review and price are not accurate. The only $850 model offered by Dell does not have an SSD or 1050 Ti. It comes with a 1TB Hybrid and a 1050 regular