Dell Inspiron 15.6” Touchscreen Laptop i3 Review – A Deep Dive

A Deep Dive Into Dell Inspiron 15.6” Touchscreen Laptop i3

If you are looking for a laptop at an affordable price for your professional work and daily home tasks, you should look at this 2020 model Dell Inspiron 15.6″ Touchscreen Laptop with Intel Core i3 Processor. Advertised as “Essential for every day – 15″ laptop with all your everyday needs in a contemporary, portable design. Featuring AMD processors and a variety of ports.”

For the price, this Dell Inspiron is a great laptop. In this package, you’re getting an i3, 8GB of RAM, a decent 15.6” touchscreen, durable build quality, and a reputable brand that can be trusted. 

Further, the clincher could be that it has a solid-state drive. If you’ve ever had a system with one, you know how much faster it is than a traditional (i.e. mechanical) hard drive, and you won’t look back. This laptop boasts a powerful Intel 10th Gen Dual Core i3-1005G1 Processor with clock speeds up to 3.4GHz, 8GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD, and 1TB of HDD. Plus, Intel UHD Graphics.

Those are going to serve you better than many of its competitors, enabling you to handle multitasking with ease. It comes equipped with Windows 10 which features Cortana, the personal assistant that can open apps and answer questions on command. 

This 15″ 2-in-1 PC, is stylishly designed with an innovative 360-degree hinge that allows you to switch between four flexible modes: tent mode, stand mode, laptop mode, and tablet mode. 

We got a week to put it through the tests in our office and to deliver our verdict. 

Who’s It For?

If you’re shopping for a laptop, you have a plethora of options to choose from. Where even to start? Sometimes the easiest thing to do is to narrow down your options based on what you know. And that could be an established brand that’s well trusted.

Whether you’re after a powerful laptop for number-crunching at work, or for staying productive at home or on the go, Dell’s Inspiron range fits the bill. Whether you’re working on spreadsheets in the office, managing your finances at home, editing family photos, or watching a film on the plane. Inspiron’s many options fit both screen-size and budget needs for most buyers. 

What We Like About Dell Inspiron 15.6 Touchscreen Laptop i3

It may look like most budget notebooks, but it doesn’t this Inspiron by Dell doesn’t feel cheap at all. Its top has a nice textured black finish, which makes it good for gripping, with the Dell logo proudly inscribed in the center. The front edges are well rounded so they won’t irritate your wrists while typing, and on the sides is shiny glossy plastic. 

Measuring only 0.8-inch thick Dell Inspiron 15.6 Touchscreen Laptop i3 is thinner than most of the competition in this category. Lighter too than its rivals, at 4.5 pounds, so you can carry it around with one hand relatively easily. Yet it feels well-built, as you’d expect from a Dell, and you feel confident that it could take a few unfortunate, but inevitable knocks and drops.  

Its underside is made of the typical plastic casing, but with a removable battery and a compartment that gives you access to replace the RAM, Wi-Fi card, and hard drive. Again, something that most of the competition lacks. 

The firm and full-size keyboard, made from the same textured finish as the lid, doesn’t pick up as many as a high-gloss finish does. The key travel is good, with the keys well-spaced apart and located where you’d expect. Touch typists shouldn’t have too many problems adapting to this keyboard. There’s even enough space for a full number deck too; very helpful if you work with spreadsheets. Just don’t expect back-lighting at this price. 

The smooth surface of the touchpad responds pretty well to swipe, pinch and zoom inputs. It’s a click pad, with the right and left clicks integrated into the bottom corners. Overall, it tracked okay-ish, with reasonable sensitivity and accuracy. 

The same can also be said of its touchscreen. And while it lacks full HD, thanks to the HDMI port, you can easily connect an external monitor to bump the resolution to at least 1920×1080. But even at its native 1366×768, pictures and video still look fine in a well-lit environment. 

Powered by an Intel 10th Gen Dual Core i3-1005G1 CPU, this laptop can handle typical tasks with ease, including Microsoft Office and web surfing. It’s fine for watching movies too, helped by good WiFi performance. We were able to max out our office’s internet connection (50Mbps) at reasonable proximity to the router. There were no noticeable slowdowns while internet browsing. 

Also, there wasn’t any excessive heat generated, although it did get a little warm. The fan cools it adequately, and quietly too with little noise. 

Dell Inspiron 15.6 Touchscreen Laptop i3 has very good battery performance. The stock battery test in Power Saver mode, 30% brightness (60 nits), WiFi and Bluetooth off, and running a standard definition movie in a continuous loop at full screen with the volume muted, timed at just over 7 hours from full-charge until shutting down. And that’s from just a 40W lithium-ion battery.

Dells have a reputation for coming with a lot of bloatware, but Inspiron 15.6 Touchscreen Laptop i3 had much less than we expected. Or at least our test model did. 

What We Don’t Like About Dell Inspiron 15.6 Touchscreen Laptop i3

One thing that stuck out big time with the screen is the plastic bezel. It’s probably the only touchscreen laptop that we’ve reviewed that isn’t edge to edge glass. 

Seeing a glossy black border surrounding your display and the matte plastic bezel surrounding can be distracting. At first glance, it can be mistaken for an error in the screen resolution or something. Two colleagues in the office noticed and commented on how strange it looked right away. Ok, it’s not a deal-breaker, but it does look weird, especially as to have space for edge swipes, Dell has oversized the digitizer in relation to the LCD panel. 

Touch gestures worked as they should for the most part. There were a couple of instances when it was necessary to repeat gestures, but that might be due to the size. It’s plenty wide enough but not as tall as it should be. We often found ourselves running out of room on the top and bottom edges. This made closing Windows 8 apps on the trackpad difficult. But at least there’s the touchscreen for that. 

Talking of which, as it is a touchscreen, the panel is made of glass and is, of course, glossy. If you use your laptop outdoors, you’re going to struggle with reflections. This is made worse by a maximum brightness of only 166 nits; that’s definitely not enough backlight is to overpower bright ambient lights or sunlight.

Dell Inspiron 15.6 Touchscreen Laptop i3, as you would expect with laptops of this price, the screen gets a twisted nematic (TN) LCD panel. Despite that, the viewing angles aren’t bad, and the side-to-side angles only had minor color distortion, with the text still being perfectly legible. On the other hand, the vertical viewing angles were horrible, with the colors completely changing and the text starting to fade or blur. 

Also, it only has a resolution of 1366×768 pixels, which is low for a 15.6-inch laptop. While it will be sufficient for most people, it won’t be enough for anyone doing extensive photo or video work. The included webcam also isn’t of the highest quality. At 1MP, which means it will take pictures at about the resolution of the screen, if your lighting isn’t perfect, the shots get grainy pretty easily. This also goes for the video feed, which was also noisy in a dimly lit room.

The Dell Inspiron range is known for its many options in terms of specifications. It might be worth considering an ‘upgrade’ to its i5 and i7 processor models, as this i3 is nowhere near as fast. 

What makes it different from the i5 is the lack of turbo-boost clock speed, so the clock speed is stuck at 2.0Ghz. Further, in Power Save mode, there’s a 50% break-in TDP to save on battery life, with the clock speed dropping to a measly 600Mhz. We found this power-saving mode to be slow and barely workable. Even out of Power Save, some of the programs that we installed took more time than we would expect. 

Maybe it’s to be expected in this price range, but there’s definitely nothing special about the speakers. They’re ok for normal use, but not loud enough to replace your music player for playing your favorite sounds. 

They also lack bass and sound pretty tinny when the volume is turned up to the max. You’ll need a decent Bluetooth speaker instead. We also noticed an excessive delay with the sound kicking e.g. when a notification appeared, we only heard the second half of the sound due to the delay.

What’s Included?

Inside the box, you’ll find the laptop itself, an AC power cord and cable, a CD driver, a user guide, and warranty information with a card listing service provider. 

Overview Of Features

This 2020 Dell Inspiron 3000 15.6-inch HD Touchscreen Laptop PC, has an Intel 10th Gen Dual Core i3-1005G1 Processor, 8GB DDR4, 128GB SSD, and 1TB HDD. It comes with Windows 10 Home 64 Bit, which features Cortana, the personal assistant that can open apps and answer questions on command. 

You can speed through tasks and stay connected all day, with the latest processors with speeds of 1.2GHz up to 3.4GHz, with Intel 802.11, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1 connectivity, Intel UHD Graphics, and a rich HD display of 1366×768 pixels. 

It has good connectivity options with the following ports and slots:
2 x USB 3.0 Type-A, 1 x USB 2.0 Type, 1x headphone/microphone combo, 1x HDMI, and 1x RJ45

Dell Inspiron 15.6 Touchscreen Laptop i3 is stylishly designed in textured black, with an innovative 360-degree hinge that allows you to switch between four flexible modes: tent mode, stand mode, laptop mode, and tablet mode. Its dimensions are 15″W x 10.2″D x 0.78″H, and weighs approximately 4.45 lbs.

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Review Summary

When buying a budget laptop, you have to accept a few sacrifices. This 2020 model Dell Inspiron 15.6″ Touchscreen Laptop with Intel Core i3 Processor can’t display full HD of 1080 pixels, but if you want a solid and functional laptop PC for emailing, surfing the Web, and regular work and home-office tasks, its value for money is hard to beat. 

And maybe that’s still selling it a little short, as mixed opinions on this laptop, and with its 360-degree hinge allowing you to switch between four flexible modes, it’s more than that.  

What’s in no doubt is that it’s a great machine at the price. n this package, you’re getting an i3, 8GB of RAM, a semi-decent large touchscreen, and durable build quality. True, it might not be powerful enough for everybody, but for the average user who just surfs the web and uses light office programs, it’s plenty. 

And even if it’s not, it may still be worth at least some consideration as it’s easy to upgrade, with a compartment that gives you access to replace the RAM, Wi-Fi card, and hard drive. But that’s up to you.

One thing for sure is that in terms of pure reliability, you can’t go much wrong with a Dell Inspiron. 

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