This machine is easily one of the best machines money can buy in its price range. Sure you can go and spend $1000+ on a different machine but you will get similar specs for only a few "better" options. Most of the $1000+ machines have a better touchpad or better ram upgrade ability, or maybe even an Nvidia 965 card but mostly they aren't really any better. This machine has everything I wanted and more. I am not a major gamer, but I mainly bought the device to replace my old gaming machine (Lenovo Y480) and I am not disappointed. Here are my thoughts:
PROS:
1. Screen - you get a 15.6 inch, 1080p, IPS, Matte finish display that is absolutely killer. Its colors, viewing angles, and overall quality shines. I adjusted my color saturation and contrast (cause I prefer it more saturated) from the Intel control panel and love it even more. You will not be disappointed with this screen in those respects.
2. Keyboard - I cannot say enough good things about the keyboard. I love the ways the keys feel, look, and perform. They have a smaller distance to travel when pushing the keys which I really like plus I like how they are spaced out as well. The backlight is awesome (I prefer the white/blue type lighting) and it does have the timeout feature that can be customized via Windows Mobility Center. I personally turn the auto-off feature to "never" cause I don't like the backlights timing out but that is just me.
3. CPU - For the price range, you simply cannot beat the Intel Core I5-6300HQ found in this machine. Its super quick, consumes less power than previous chips and I haven't experienced a single hiccup. No it isn't hyperthreaded, but I don't use a single application that even takes advantage of such a feature (mainly games; which don't use it) plus I have done some (light) photoshopping and it processes so fast so I guess it would really only be advantageous to those who work heavily with photoshop or CAD or video encoding (none of which I do and have no plans to ever do).
4. GPU - the Nvidia GTX 960 4GB model in this machine absolutely blows my mind! I bought the game mainly to play Fallout 4 and Assassins Creed games and let me tell you, it doesn't disappoint. I run Fallout 4 on High to Ultra settings and never, I repeat, NEVER drop below 35 FPS. On just the High settings, I hit 45-50 on average. So this device is great for gaming. Don't necessarily believe everything you read about game requirements cause Fallout 4 initially put me to "low" settings but it will easily do much better. Keep in mind that consoles typically run games on "medium" settings at best and lock the framerate at 30FPS (boring). With PC gaming, you have so much control over your performance so its the way to go (for me at least).
5. RAM - It comes with 8GB of DDR3L ram at 1600Mhz. Its expandable to 16gb; but no further. Personally, I cannot see within the next 5+ years or so that it will ever be remotely necessary to have more than 16gb so its fine for me. Also, it doesn't support DDR4 ram but that's okay with me cause all DDR4 really brought to the table is power efficiency. No real performance changes (not yet anyway) plus DDR4 is more expensive. I have already ordered the popular Kingston 8gb ram from Amazon and installed it. It runs like a dream.
6. Ports - It has a satisfactory amount of ports. Its got 3 USB 3.0 ports (all very quick and one of them will charge when laptop is asleep) and it has an SD card slot along with HDMI. The HDMI is version 1.4 which supports up to 5 external monitors so its quite expandable. I am pleased with it.
7. Body - I actually really like the soft, rubber-like plastic of the device. Its very soft to the touch but still feel premium and sturdy. The hinges on my screen are so tight that they make a slight popping sound from time to time when opening and closing the laptop (which is good, means they won't break anytime soon). Overall, I like the body.
8. Customization - On laptops, there are really only a few things a user can customize, the RAM and the Hardrive(s) were the only ones I care about. This machine is by far, the easiest laptop to customize that I've ever owned. On the underside of laptop, there is one (that's right one) screw that holds the plastic cover/shield on and with a few simply snaps (the cover is snapped on but the cover is super simple to remove and replace) you can remove it to reveal the ram (all you need is one 8gb ram stick to max it out) and an empty 2.5 inch bay for a new hard drive. I scavenged a 2.5 inch, 500GB Western Digital 7200 RPM HDD from an old laptop and put it in there. Booted my machine up, formatted the new hard drive and it works like a charm. Took me maybe 15 minutes to add ram and the hard drive. Couldn't be more simple. Also, there are no screws to hold in the new hard drive but they aren't needed as it is designed to fit snug (and it does). Any 2.5 inch drive should work (I plan on adding another 250SSD before long, but don't have the cash at the moment).
9. Hard Drive - who doesn't love their OS to come installed on an SSD? The SSD performs super fast and is quite solid. I had exactly 200GB of usable space when I pulled it out of the box and I am completely fine with that. I have several (and you probably do too) external drives plus the new drive I added so space isn't an issue. I know you can buy other laptops with larger drives but they are HDD's and you would have to go through the lengthy process of cloning your OS and that takes time I simply don't have. Plus, there is a margin of error so do yourself a favor and buy a laptop with the OS already installed on the SSD. Solid slate is the way to go!
10. Speakers - the speakers are quite loud and sound amazing. I know some reviewers have said they are just okay or subpar but I disagree. They sound full and quite nice. Plus the subwoofer does make a difference (it isn't a huge difference, but its there). I do have a slight popping sound that happens only when the speakers haven't been active for about one minute. As soon as they play a sound, the first thing they do is pop, but it isn't loud and is actually more noticeable at lower volumes. To fix this, simply use the generic Windows sound drivers and the popping will stop. However, you will lose the richness of the speakers and you won't be able to use the Dell equalizer software it comes with (which is pretty good). Plus it doesn't get as loud with the generic driver. The popping never happens so long as the speakers stay active. So, in other words, I only hear it once while playing a game and then never again. I know some people have said it pops constantly for them, but I haven't experienced this. I updated the RealTek driver from Dell's website but it doesn't stop the popping. I don't really care as they sound amazing and the pop only happens once so I'm good with it. The red speaker grille is a nice touch too.
10. Touchpad - now I know what you are thinking, why is the touchpad in the "Pros" section, well that is because once you get it working right, its a fantastic touch pad. I actually love the feel of the pad. I like that grainy texture and the size is nice. I know some people don't like that it isn't centered but that doesn't bother me because my work laptop is like that so I'm used to it. It has a nice click to it as well (even though I use mainly tapping as opposed to pressing). Now....Dell really needed to do a better job and preparing this touchpad before shipping this device. It has A MAJOR DRIVER conflict with Windows drivers. It is an ELAN compatible touchpad; but mine didn't come with any ELAN software installed. I had to go and find it (only to discover that I didn't like their version of the software so I downloaded a better one [download below]).
[...]
That version of software is much better and provides ALL the features of the touchpad (unlike the Dell one they provide which only provides some of the features). You will have to load it in through Device manager (the installed doesn't work right) so keep that in mind. Now, to get it work properly, I had to follow these steps:
1. Open Device manager
2. Under "Human interface devices" find the "I2C HID" driver and disable it. It won't say anything about a touchpad on it; but if you don't do this, then the touchpad will take the standard Windows 10 driver and use that instead of your custom ELAN software (which is far more flexible).
3. Reboot
4. Open Device manager again
5. Go to "Mice and other pointing devices" and you should find something called "Dell touchpad" or PS/2 Device"
6. Right-click and select "update driver software"
7. Choose "browse my computer for driver software"
8. Choose "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer"
9. Choose the "have disk" option and paste in the path from the drivers folder (see below on how to do that)
10. It will pop up a window saying these drivers are unsigned and might cause problems, ignore it, and continue (I've done this 50 times, it works)
11. Reboot
12. Upon boot, in the lower right side of your task bar, open the mouse properties by right clicking and hitting the properties option.
13. Customize away!
In order to obtain the path for step 9 above, download the driver via the link I provided, then EXTRACT the files using an extraction tool (I use Winrar but the built in Windows one will work too). Then go to the path on top the explorer and copy the path (its next to the arrow navigation). Once copied, you can paste it in for step 9.
So you might be wondering what the downsides are to disabling that "I2C HID" driver. Well here is what I have found. It will disable the touchscreen (which the machine doesn't have anyway so no big deal) and that auto timeout feature for the keyboard backlight will no longer work (I couldn't care less; the backlight still works, its just all manual now). That's all I've found! My game controller, keyboard, ports, screen, speakers, blah blah all work perfectly fine. The touchpad is buttery smooth with no jankiness or weird scrolling issues that others are reporting. It isn't the touchpad that is causing those issues; its the driver conflicts.
11. Battery- this comes with a rather beefy 74W battery. I easily get 6-7 hours on normal usage with half brightness. I bet I could get 10 with lower brightness. I haven't tried gaming on the battery yet so I couldn't say the life but I am thinking around 3 hours or so. Its one of the reasons the laptop is kinda heavy and a bit thicker than similar laptops (along with the 2.5'' bay for a new hard driver).
CONS:
1. Screen - I do have the light bleed that many are reporting on the bottom of the screen. However, you can only see it on a black screen and if the brightness is cranked to 100%. I can't even see it on 90%; only at 100%. I rarely ever use 100% because its plenty bright at 60-70% so its not an issue for me.
2. Ports - No VGA or Optical drive - this is purely subjective but I don't care about either personally. Not really a con for me, but might be for some.
3. RAM - No DDR4 support and cannot go above 16GB (again, not a big deal).
4. Body - It is a fingerprint magnet. Not a horrible issue, but still one worth mentioning.
5. Speakers - they will pop once after they have been inactive for a least one minute. Otherwise, no popping or cracking. Easy fix is to change driver over to generic sound driver built into Windows.
6. Touchpad - really Dell, why did I have to waste 8 hours of my life trying to figure out why the features my touchpad should have weren't working? Horrible QA process apparently on their part. Once you get it working, its great but its a shame that process wasn't listed anywhere or that you even have to go through it.
SUMMARY:
This machine is an excellent buy for the money. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a great laptop for really anything. It should be future proof for at least 5 years or so (graphics card will get old first, but what else is new...). Also, I never had any freezing or bootup issues (I've installed the latest BIOS too).
TL/DR....buy this machine.
| Standing screen display size | 15.6 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 pixels |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1920x1080 Pixels |
| Processor | 2.3 GHz core_i5 |
| RAM | 8 GB DDR3L SDRAM |
| 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 |
