Just received this laptop today, 10/27/2015.
***Summary***
Overall, I am very pleased with this laptop. I think it's a fantastic value for the parts you are getting. The overall look and feel of the laptop is great, the red trim is not overbearing. Using the laptop feels fast and snappy. Boots Windows 10 in less than 20 seconds! The weight and size keeps it portable, but it's no Ultrabook. The laptop doesn't have a touchscreen, if that's a deal-breaker for you.
More details are below, wanted to keep the summary at the top for the folks who don't care to read the whole review.
***Short review***
Build quality seems good to me. The unit is all plastic on the outside; however, I am okay with this. It is a very soft plastic that is nice to the touch. The unit does not feel flimsy and seems fairly durable. It also appears (at first glance) that access to the HDD and RAM won't be terrible, as opposed to some other new laptops on the market, there seems to be a removable plate/panel on the bottom of the laptop to access the bottom of the mainboard, picture attached.
Boot time is rather fast. From the time I hit the power button it takes about 17 seconds until I am at my Windows 10 desktop environment. This is exactly what I was looking for. You will not achieve this in laptops without an SSD hard drive.
Wireless internet signal is pretty strong. I am fully able to receive a signal in the very back room of my house (35+ feet w/ walls), on par with iPhone 6 Plus.
The main storage drive is an SSD, it is a SanDisk Z400s M.2 2280 256GB. Read/Write speeds are fairly strong, I have attached a picture from a CrystalDiskMark speed test I ran. The SSD drive from Dell has (4) partitions, you are left with approximately 200GB free of 225GB available when you receive it. The Dell backup image takes up about 12GB. The fact that your operating system is installed on the M.2 drive would mean that you can add an additional HDD or SSD in the spare 2.5" SATA bay for additional storage. I am not familiar with the spare bay yet.
Memory/RAM is pre-installed 8GB of DDR3, installed in 1 of 2 available slots, according to CPUZ. This leaves spare slot open for future expansion. The RAM is PC3-12800 (800mHz) (PC3 1600) Hyundai Electronics P/N - HMT41GS6BFR8A-PB, with a CAS Latency of 11, according to CPUZ.
Battery life is unknown at this point, I haven't had enough time to fully test this. While playing around with the laptop for the last 3-4 hours I still have about 87% left.
Keyboard is comfortable to use, even with large hands. The 10-key pad is a little undersized, but this keeps the primary keyboard area nice and roomy. The CapsLock key does have a light on the key to indicate whether or not CapsLock is on; although, NumLock does not. The backlit keyboard features (2) brighness levels and is a nice blueish white color light output. The backlit keyboard seems to provide adequate light.
Sound quality seems very good thus far. I watched a couple music videos online and the vocals were clear. The bass was lacking, but this is a laptop, this is to be expected.
I really like that the charger has an indication light on the cord, on the end that plug into the laptop port, that lets you know the charger is powered. The charger also features a built in strap to keep the cord neatly stowed while not using.
Not an overly amount of bloatware installed. Mainly Dell proprietary applications for updates and registration.
***For those who care...why I decided on this laptop.***
I had been shopping for a laptop for everyday use that could also handle heavier tasks such as multi-tasking with multiple browser windows open, music playing, light duty photo editing etc.. I did want a laptop that was portable, but I was not willing to trade off the "more affordable" power you get by not shopping for an Ultrabook. I was also not as concerned with a touchscreen (don't care for a smudgy screen).
My criteria was:
Sub $1000
256GB or greater SSD, I wanted something that would boot Windows fast!
8GB Ram Minimum
15" Screen Minimum
1920x1080 Resolution Minimum
Decent dedicated GPU.
Windows 10
| Standing screen display size | 15.6 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1920x1080 |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1920x1080 Pixels |
| Processor | 2.3 GHz core_i5 |
| RAM | 8 GB DDR3L |
| Memory Speed | 1600 MHz |
| Hard Drive | 256 GB Solid State Drive |
| Graphics Coprocessor | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M |
| Chipset Brand | NVIDIA |
| Card Description | Dedicated |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 4000 MB |
| Wireless Type | 802.11ac |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 3 |
| Average Battery Life (in hours) | 4.5 Hours |
