Design and Features
The Inspiron 13 has a 2-in-1 convertible-hybrid design, which allows you to flip the screen around and use it handheld in Tablet mode, with the keyboard facedown in Stand mode, and with the hinge up and keyboard away from you in Tent mode. Each of these three modes places the touch screen front and center, so you can interact with Windows 104 or view videos easily. The remaining Laptop mode gives the Inspiron 13 the traditional look and functionality of any clamshell notebook PC. Most of the Inspiron 13’s surfaces, including the top lid, bottom lid, and keyboard deck, are finished in a dark gray, while the glossy screen has a black bezel under its glass surface.
The system measures 0.8 by 12.76 by 8.85 inches (HWD), and weighs 3.53 pounds. That’s a little heavy for all-day use in Tablet mode, but perfectly fine for a 13-inch laptop. To wit, the Acer Aspire R 14 has a 14-inch screen, weighs about a half pound more, and is wider and deeper (by less than an inch extra in both dimensions). If we had to choose a similar computer to carry around all day, however, we’d choose a lighter, smaller 11-inch model like the Dell Inspiron 11 3000 Series 2-in-1 Special Edition (3153).
The backlit keyboard is easy to type on, though the keyboard on the similarly priced Lenovo ThinkPad 135 represents the gold standard for comfort. The Inspiron 13’s one-piece touchpad is wide and well proportioned, and it supports multitouch gestures if you’d rather use a traditional mouse rather than the touch screen. The 13.3-inch LCD touch screen has a 1,920-by-1,080 (full HD) resolution, which is becoming common for systems even at the low end of this price range. For example, last year’s Acer Aspire R 146 had a 1,366-by-768 screen, while the current 2016 version’s display is full HD. The extra pixels give you better fidelity for 1080p videos, as well as more screen room for viewing webpages, PowerPoint presentation layouts, or Excel spreadsheets. The screen lacks IPS technology, which means that some graphical details and text may look a bit dimmer or less sharp when you’re viewing them at extreme angles a pretty big deal since the convertible screen rotates 360 degrees. In any case, it takes a critical eye to notice that it’s not an IPS screen, and we didn’t experience lot of color shifting in testing. Connectivity isn’t bad, with a couple of caveats. There are a headphone jack, an HDMI port, and two USB 3.0 ports on the left side of the laptop, and there’s a Noble lock port, a SD card reader, and a USB 2.0 port on the right. Notably absent is USB-C connectivity, which is becoming more important as that standard is being adopted in more hard drives, phones, and laptops. Also, the USB ports all have the same gray and black coloring, so you’ll have to remember that the single port on the right is the slower USB 2.0 one. Use that for your wired mouse, and keep the two quicker USB 3.0 ports on the left free for hard drives and other speedy peripherals.
The 128GB solid-state drive (SSD) helps keep boot times quick and performance snappy, and is both faster and of much larger capacity than the eMMC flash storage we sometimes find in less expensive systems like the Asus Transformer Book Flip TP200SA7. That 128GB is certainly enough local storage if you tend to stream your music and videos using a live Internet connection, rather than download them to watch later. The Inspiron 13’s 4GB of memory is becoming a little light these days, however the Acer Aspire R 14 has 8GB of memory and a 256GB SSD, though it costs just £50 more than the Dell. You can easily add storage using the SD card slot, and if you want to swap out the SSD storage or add memory (up to a total of 16GB) you can open the case after undoing nine screws on the bottom lid. There are a few preloaded apps that are part of the current standard Windows 10 build, like Flipboard, iHeart Radio, and Twitter, but on the whole there is very little bloatware. The Inspiron 13 comes with a one-year warranty.
Performance
Powered by an Intel Core i5-6200U processor (with Intel HD Graphics 520), the Inspiron 13 returned a score of 2,759 points on the PCMark 8 Work Conventional test, which is typical for this category. Likewise, its times on the HandBrake (2:37) and Photoshop (5:13) tests were right in the middle of a range of laptops like the Acer Aspire R 138, the Acer Aspire R 14, the Dell Inspiron 11 3000 Series 2-in-1 Special Edition (3153), and the Toshiba Satellite Radius 129. These scores tell us that the system will last for a few years before it starts to feel slow. Also, the fact that you can upgrade the memory may help later as websites and programs continue to add background functions that tax performance. Gaming scores on the 3DMark, Heaven, and Valley tests were also representative for the category, which is to say that you may have enough power to play games like Diablo III and Minecraft, but you may want to switch to a more specialized gaming PC for titles like Doom and No Man’s Sky.
See How We Test Laptops10
Battery life was about average, at 7 hours, 20 minutes. It’s competitive with what we’ve seen from rivals like the Dell Inspiron 11 2-in-1, Toshiba Satellite Radius 12, and Radius 1411, which lasted between 6 and 7 hours, though both the Acer Aspire R 14 (9:37) and R 13 (10:57) managed several hours longer. It’s shorter than the 8 hours we use to define all-day computing, but close enough that it’s not terribly worrisome. The Dell Inspiron 13 5000 Series 2-in-1 (5368) is a very good choice if you’re looking for your first convertible-hybrid laptop, or if you need to buy a Windows laptop for your senior high school or undergrad student. It’s in between our current top dogs in this price range: the Dell Inspiron 11 3000 Series 2-in-1 Special Edition (3153), a more compact model designed for better portability, and the Acer Aspire R 14, which has better battery life, double the storage, and extra memory for multitasking. If you’re looking to spend between £500 and 700 for a new laptop, the Dell Inspiron 13 is a practical alternative, and should be on your short list.
References
^ convertible (www.pcmag.com)
^ Acer Aspire R 14 (www.pcmag.com)
^ Inspiron 11 3000 Series 2-in-1 Special Edition (3153) (www.pcmag.com)
^ Windows 10 (www.pcmag.com)
^ Lenovo ThinkPad 13 (www.pcmag.com)
^ Acer Aspire R 14 (www.pcmag.com)
^ Asus Transformer Book Flip TP200SA (www.pcmag.com)
^ Acer Aspire R 13 (www.pcmag.com)
^ Toshiba Satellite Radius 12 (www.pcmag.com)
^ See How We Test Laptops (www.pcmag.com)
^ Radius 14 (www.pcmag.com)
^