Truth be told, I’m not partial to champagne pink, even though as shades of pink go the colour on this Dell Inspiron 15 7000 is much closer to metallic silver. It is a nice shade and the ladies I’ve shown the notebook seem to universally favour the colour, so I lived with it for this review. For a 15.6-inch notebook (not an ultraportable) the size is just right, and at 2kg so is the weight, and there’s a generous amount of built-in port connectivity running down the sides, including a multimedia card slot, three USB 3.1 slots (one with PowerShare) a single USB Type-C, HDMI out and the now very rare Ethernet port.
The rest of the Inspiron 15 7000 is quite decent for its price and features and it comes in three specifications (depending on processor and drive configuration) from S$1,599 to S$1,899. Ah, there’s also a Platinum Silver colour. Our review set’s specifications was right in the middle, with an 8th generation Core i7 8550U processor, 8GB RAM, dual drive with 128GB Solid State and 1TB Hard Drive, plus NVIDIA GeForce MX130 graphics. Overall this is more than enough to handle all video watching and online surfing, although if you play games it won’t be able to handle Overwatch on high settings.
I tested the Inspiron 15 7000 with a recent submarine simulator called Cold Waters (which you can purchase from Steam) that has some very nice water and wave motion effects that the Inspiron 15 7000 handled without issue, though when you use more demanding applications you might hear a noticeable fan noise from the rear heat vents.
The only issue I really had with the Inspiron 15 7000 was with the display, which is a 15.6-inch Full-HD IPS with LED backlight. Now the narrow bezel borders are great as they enabled Dell to design this notebook to be a bit smaller in width than a regular 15.6-inch notebook, but the screen is decent but not spectacular, and unlike other countries, in Singapore there’s no option for a touchscreen or 4K UHD, I’m probably nick-picking as my regular notebook has a much sharper 2K screen (which makes reading and writing articles much easier on tired eyes).
Verdict
Rating 4/5
From S$1,599
www.dell.com/sg
The Dell Inspiron 15 7000 is a decent all-rounder that provides you with a large screen for your school projects and to watch Game of Thrones, plus handle all your casual gaming needs.
