Jul 25, 2017 - The Dell Inspiron 15 3000's solid construction and good battery life are. At least the pad generally worked well with Windows 10's multifinger gestures. The system's 40-watt-hour battery ran for 7 hours and 15 minutes on.
The Dell Inspiron 15 3000 Series (3558) (starts at $229.99; $329 as tested) is a desktop-replacement laptop that will get the job done with no fuss—or frills—for a very reasonable price. Of course it is not a speed demon at this price, but it's a better performer than much of the competition, and it offers a whole terabyte of storage along with all the ports you'd expect. The touch screen is also sharp for an inexpensive system, and the laptop is more portable than the chunkier. Thanks to these generational improvements and overall solid design, the Inspiron 15 3000 Series (3558) is our new Editors' Choice for budget desktop-replacement laptops.
Measuring 0.9 by 14.7 by 10.2 inches (HWD) and weighing 4.96 pounds, the Inspiron 15 (3558) is not chunky or unwieldy. It's no slim, super-light ultraportable, but if you're shopping in this category, that's not your chief concern. The Inspiron 17 5000 Series Non-Touch is a bulkier 17-inch laptop that measures 1.1 by 16.2 by 10.6 inches and weighs 6.6 pounds—a much more daunting prospect to take with you anywhere. The 14-inch falls on the opposite end, measuring 0.7 by 13.36 by 9.25 inches and weighing 3.46 pounds, perhaps a more attractive option if you really plan to move your desktop-replacement laptop around often. As a whole, build quality is fairly strong, particularly the responsive touchpad and keyboard, and the body itself is good. There is, however, a lot of flex on bottom of the lid when it's open.
The display is supported by two hinges set on each end of the laptop, so pushing down at all in the middle easily bends the screen inward. You shouldn't be applying pressure there often, really, but I managed it a few times while carrying the laptop around.
The flimsiness is worth noting. The 15.6-inch touch display itself features a 1,366-by-768 resolution, which is all you can expect at this price. Full HD is generally reserved for laptops that cost a few hundred dollars more, but for 720p resolution, the Inspiron 15 (3558)'s display is actually pretty nice, and touch support is a plus.
The screen is sharp and wider viewing angles are okay, though it is quite reflective. The Inspiron 17 5000 Series resolution is higher at 1,600 by 900, so though it's also short of 1080p, the picture quality is a little sharper and there's more room to work with, but the 15 inches here should suffice for most users. A 1TB 5,200rpm hard drive provides plenty of storage—that's twice as much as on the Inspiron 17.
Port offerings are solid. On the left edge are an Ethernet port, an HDMI port, a USB 3.0 port, and an SD card slot. On the right, there's a DVD drive, two USB 2.0 ports, and a headset jack. Viewfinder anime free download. The laptop integrates Bluetooth 4.0 and dual-band 802.11ac wireless. Dell supports the Inspiron 15 with a limited one-year warranty.
Performance Equipped with a 2.1GHz Intel Core i3-5015U processor, 6GB of memory, and integrated Intel HD Graphics 4400, performance was what you'd expect in a budget system: not super fast, but without noticeable hang-ups or freezes. The laptop scored 2,472 points on the PCMark 8 Work Conventional test, which measure productivity. This is better than the Inspiron 17 5000 Series (2,097) and the Aspire One Cloudbook 14 (1,561).
It also performed better than the competition on multimedia tests, shaving whole minutes off of the Photoshop and Handbrake tests in comparison. As I experienced during anecdotal testing, these results mean it can handle day-to-day tasks without causing you frustration. As you can guess by the price, the Inspiron 15 isn't too well suited to gaming, though it did fare better than many other budget laptops. Dicota replicator 20 driver windows 7. Performance with 3D was okay for the category, but the Heaven and Valley gaming tests returned 17 frames per second (fps) at best on medium quality settings, while 30fps is considered smooth. You could turn down the settings on some less-demanding games to get playable frame rates, but that's about the best you can hope for. If that does appeal to you, the Inspiron 17 5000 Series and Cloudbook couldn't crack 10fps, so you'll have more luck with this system.
Finally, the Inspiron 15 (3558)'s battery life was good; it lasted 8 hours, 44 minutes, on our rundown test. That's a lot longer than the Inspiron 17's time of 5:20, which is shorter due mainly to its larger, higher-resolution (and thus more power-hungry) screen. The Aspire Cloudbook had both Inspirons handily beat with a time of 13:59.