Currently, finding a good laptop that can fulfill all your needs is a tough task, all thanks to the availability of lots of laptops in the market. But finding a good laptop at the limited budget is even tougher, as currently there are various and different laptops are available in the market. You can find lots of laptop at the price less than $600. Now, Dell has come up with yet another affordable laptop at the price less than $500. Dell has been known for making some serious laptops for every category. Thanks to its Inspiron and XPS series laptops. The Dell XPS laptop has been very popular that offers solid performance and stylish yet sleek design. The Dell Inspiron 17 5000 is another portable laptop that offers powerful performance in a durable and sexy body.
The Dell Inspiron 17 5000 is an affordable laptop that can be sufficient for your productivity and multimedia purposes. This is a 17-inch laptop offers solid performance at a limited budget. The Inspiron 17 5000 starts at the price of $449, whereas our review unit costs $499. If we consider all the specs of the system, this is a pretty good and solid 17-inch notebook for entertainment as well as productivity purposes. The relatively shorter battery life and decent keyboard stop it from becoming the best laptop at this price.
You may have some questions regarding this laptop like: is this notebook worth spending money on? Does this system fulfill all your expectations? Is this a good laptop for you at this price? Is this a good mainstream laptop for productivity and multimedia works at this budget? Should you buy this laptop? To get an answer to all these questions go to this post for detailed review and specification of this Dell Inspiron 17 5000.
Design
The design of this Inspiron 17 is similar to the 15-inch entry-level unit of 5000 series laptops. You are going to find a textured lid with Dell’s logo on the back of the lid. The company also offers different color options like Sky blue, black, plum, gold and red for this Inspiron budget laptop. Our review unit of the system comes in black color. When you open the lid, you will be welcomed by a black deck with soft touch finish and a full chiclet style keyboard. The 17.3-inch display is surrounded by the black thick bezel.
The notebook weighs 6.6 pounds, which makes it heavier than all another 15-inch laptop we have tested but this is the price you have to pay for additional 2-inch display. The system measures 16.4 x 11.2 x 1.1 inches, which means that it is not as portable as every other, but can be carried to some places. This is also not going to fit easily in your every bag, as it also takes lots of space on your desk.
Display
The Inspiron 17 5000 notebook come with a 17.3-inch display with 1600 x 900 pixels resolution, which looks much larger than the display of all other rivals. The display of this system comes with lower resolution, as most of the other laptop at this price range comes with full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels resolution). If you want to buy a laptop mainly for multimedia experience, you just go for some other system; you don’t even need to consider this notebook from Dell. The display is not very sharp and colorful, which is quite evident when you watch HD movies on the system. It viewing angle is also not very wide. The display should have been better, but it is also not very bad. The display of the notebook is bigger but not better.
On the light meter, the brightness of its screen measures 194 nits, which is much less than the 252.44 nits average score of this category laptop. The display of the notebook is brighter than the display of the Toshiba Satellite Radius L55 C5340 (which measures 151 nits), but dimmer than the display of the Asus F55L (which measures 198 nits), the Dell Inspiron 15 5000 2016-edition (which measures 239 nits) and the Lenovo IdeaPad 500 (which measures 216 nits).
The 17-inch display of this notebook also reproduces 93 percent of the sRGB spectrum, which is much more than 86.14 percent score of this category average. The sRGB spectrum score of this notebook is more than the Asus F55L (which measures 70.4 percent of the sRGB spectrum), the Dell Inspiron 15 5000 2016-edition (which measures 59 percent of the sRGB spectrum), the Lenovo IdeaPad 500 (which measures 61 percent of the sRGB spectrum) and the Toshiba Satellite Radius L55 C5340 (which measures 63.4 percent of the sRGB spectrum).
Keyboard and Touchpad
The keyboard of this notebook is good if not great. The company has added a full chiclet style keyboard with full Number pad. The travel distance of the keys is 1.35 mm, which is less than 1.5 mm comfortable travel distance of the mainstream laptop. The keys require 60 grams actuation weight for pressing it, which makes it acceptable for typing. The keyboard is not the best in the laptop we have seen, but it is good enough to do all your works. When I was testing the keyboard on 10fastfinger.com, I typed 95 words per minute, which is much more than my average 75 words per minute. Overall the keyboard of this Dell Inspiron 15 7000 is good but not very impressive. The keyboard of the laptop could have been better.
The company has packed this system with a 4.1 x 3.1 inches touchpad, which is spacious and responsive. It is also pretty accurate and smooth. The touchpad has enough space for navigating all across the screen. The touchpad responded to our responses pretty quickly, the touchpad works fine for almost all kind of multi-finger gestures like pinch-to-zoom, three-finger swipe along with two-finger scroll. Overall the touchpad of the system is pretty good and responsive.
Ports and Webcam
The Dell has added lots of ports, which would be sufficient enough for all you connectivity problems. You’ll find a power jack, one HDMI port, a USB 3.0 port, one SD card reader and one Ethernet port on the left side of the system. The laptop houses a headphone and microphone combo jack, two USB 2.0 ports, one CD/DVD drive slot along with a Kensington lock slot on the right side. The company has added 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 for wireless connectivity.
The company has added a 720p HD webcam to this system, which captures decent pictures. The picture taken by its webcam was colorful yet noisy. This would be good for video chatting through Hangouts or Skype, but won’t be sufficient for taking Selfies. Overall, the Webcam of the laptop is pretty good if not great.
Performance
The Inspiron 17 comes with a 2.10 GHz Intel Core i3 5015U processor with 4 GB of RAM and 500 GB of 5,400 rpm HDD storage space. The processor is more than enough for all your daily works like browsing the web watching movies and working on the doc, but won’t be enough for playing some intense games. This system works smoothly when I was streaming HD movies with multiple tabs opened on Google Chrome. This system can handle almost all your works without any sign of slowing down.
On GeeKbench 3 test, which is used to measure overall performance, this Inspiron 17 laptop scored 4,436 points, which is much less than 8,711.53 average scores of these category laptops. The performance score of the Dell Inspiron 17 is more than the Asus F55L (which scored just 2.080 points), but less than the Dell Inspiron 15 5000 2016-edition (which scored 6,331 points), the Lenovo IdeaPad 500 (which scored 6,128 points) and the Toshiba Satellite Radius L55 C5340 (Which scored 5,564 points).
The transfer speed of its 500 GB HDD storage space is 30.65 MB per second, which makes it much slower than 161.72 MB per second speed of this category average, but was on par with all other notebooks of this price range. The transfer speed of this laptop is faster than the Toshiba Satellite L55 C5340 (which hits 28.4 MB per second), but little slower than the Asus F55L (which hits 32.2 MB per second), the Dell Inspiron 15 5000 2016-edition (which hits 31.93 MB per second) and the Lenovo IdeaPad (which hits 31.42 MB per second).
Graphics
This Inspiron Notebook from Dell comes with an Integrated Intel HD 5500 graphics card, which is not a very powerful graphics card, but it is enough for your daily tasks like watching movies, streaming videos, playing casual games and even some video editing. But don’t expect this graphics card to handle some intense games and some other high graphical works.
On 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited graphics test, the laptop scored 45,111 points, which is much less than 72,103.47 average scores of this category system. The graphical score of this notebook is on par with the Asus F55L (which scored 46,285), but less than the Dell Inspiron 15 5000 2016-edition (which scored 62,763 points), the Lenovo IdeaPad 500 (which scored 76,761 points) and the Toshiba Satellite Radius L55 C5340 (Which scored 54,638 points).
Audio
The Inspiron 17 notebook comes with solid speakers, which produced pretty good sound. The audio quality of the system is solid. It is more than enough for producing a loud sound that can fill your entire room with rich sound. You can watch movies, play games without using external speakers and headphones, but won’t be very impressive for listening to music without using any external speakers or headphones. The Audio of this system is pretty good, which produced loud and clear sound.
The company has added the Dell Audio Software for improving sound quality. The software comes with some presets profile. But the Rock profile was the best profile for all your usage, as it produces better sound than all other pre-sets of this software.
Heat
The Inspiron 17 notebook manages heat decently, so you don’t have to worry the overheating problem, as most of the parts remained cool. When we tested the laptop on our test, most of the parts of the laptop remained cool during our testing time. The touchpad and keyboard remain cool and registered 84 and 86 degrees Fahrenheit respectively, which is less than our threshold 95 degrees Fahrenheit temperature. The hottest part of the system was the bottom, which reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit, which is more than our threshold value. This means that you can use this laptop comfortably without any problem, but you have to be careful if you are going to use it by keeping on your lap.
Battery Life
The Inspiron 17 failed to impress us on the battery test, as the system lasted 4 hours and 32 minutes, which is only longer than the Lenovo IdeaPad 500 (which lasted 3 hours and 53). The battery life of this laptop is even shorter than the average battery life of this category laptop (which is 6 hours and 6 minutes). We test the battery by continuously using the laptop for surfing over Wi-Fi. The battery life of the Inspiron 17 is also shorter than the Asus F55L (which lasted 5 hours and 54), the Dell Inspiron 15 5000 2016-edition (which lasted 6 hours and 32) and the Toshiba Satellite Radius L55 C5340 (which lasted 5 hours and 24). Overall, the battery life of this laptop could have been better.
Software and Warranty
The Dell Inspiron 17 5000 runs Windows 10 Home, but also comes with lots of bloatwares where most of them are not useful. The system comes with Candy Crush Soda Saga, Flipboard and CyberLink Media Suite. The company has also added Dell Shop app that allows you buy accessories for your laptop along with other company’s laptop and desktop.
The company has also added some useful apps like Dell Update that provides all necessary drivers for your notebook and Power Manager that will improve the performance and endurance of your system. Dell also offers 20 GB of cloud storage on the Dropbox for one year along with one-month subscription of Microsoft Office.
This Inspiron 17 5000 comes with a one-year warranty, but you can avail the premium warranty of Dell that includes accidental damage and remote diagnosis for one year by paying extra $69.
Configurations
The company offers various configuration options. The basic model of this laptop costs $449.99 and comes with a 17.3-inch display with 1600 x 900 pixels resolution, a 2.10 GHz Intel Pentium 3825U processor with 4 GB of RAM and 500 GB of 5,400 rpm HDD storage space along with an Integrated Intel HD 5500 graphics card.
Our review unit of the system costs $499.99 and comes with a 17.3-inch display with 1600 x 900 pixels resolution, a 2.10 GHz Intel Core i3-5010U processor with 4 GB of RAM and 500 GB of 5,400 rpm HDD storage space along with an Integrated Intel HD 5500 graphics card.
Another configuration of this laptop costs $599.99 and comes with an Intel Core i5 processor with 8 GB of RAM and 1 TB of HDD storage space. The company also offers various other configurations based on the processor and storage space.
Conclusion
The Dell Inspiron 17 5000 is a good notebook with a large 17.3-inch display at just $500. The laptop comes with the solid processor and good display in durable and strong chassis. If you are looking to buy a notebook for entertainment and productivity works and want to have a large screen, you should consider this Notebook from Dell.
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