Those who believed that laptops never get cheaper turned out to be wrong. Recently, new laptops have appeared that can provide the necessary minimum performance for everyday tasks, at a price that makes up only a small fraction of the cost of other models. These include, for example, the Lenovo IdeaPad 100, Dell Inspiron 5545, Acer Aspire E15 and Lenovo Yoga 500. The latter laptop has about the same hardware, but costs a bit more due to 360 ° hinges.
In any case, the laptop Dell Inspiron 3552-0514 does not shine with equipment, but the quad-core Pentium N3700 processor will cope with most of everyday tasks and multimedia playback, as it offers a connection via the HDMI port. In addition, the build quality is not bad, and input devices are some of the best in their price range.
The laptop comes in a standard box with the usual user manuals, a charger and a cable for it.
Dell Inspiron 3552 Design Review
The body of the laptop is entirely made of plastic, but with a different finish. The relatively light (2.4 kg) and rather thin (21.7 mm) budget model is able to compete with other alternatives on the market, such as the Lenovo IdeaPad 100 and Acer Aspire E15. But in general, the design of the laptop is very different from them.
Like other devices of the manufacturer, the laptop Dell Inspiron 3552 looks quite strict and minimalistic and is limited only by a small number of functionality. The cover is distinguished by a textured black plastic with the manufacturer's logo in the center and under pressure bends a little more than acceptable, but this is usually for laptops in this price range. Fingerprints on the case are very noticeable. The hinges are tight, so it is impossible to open the laptop with one hand. Below there is a large service hatch that provides access to the hard drive, RAM slot and Wi-Fi module.
Glossy flat sides provide the required minimum of conveniently located ports. On the left are a DC charging socket, the main ventilation hole, an SD card slot, USB 3.0 and HDMI ports. On the right are a 3.5mm audio jack and two USB 2.0 ports.
The inside of the Dell Inspiron 3552 Black is finished with the same textured plastic as the lid. Here the cover is quite hard, and the keyboard does not bend much. Unfortunately, there is a problem with noticeable fingerprints here, but, more importantly, input devices work just fine. The keys have sufficient travel, they are well spaced, and there are the usual media player controls. The touchpad for this price range of laptops is just perfect. The touchpad does not stagger and accurately determines all gestures, and its buttons are delightful - they are not rigid and almost the entire surface is reserved for the left mouse button. It's funny that Dell managed to make an excellent touchpad, while some of the expensive models on the market cannot even come close to such a level of comfort and practicality.
Display
Screen Dell Inspiron 15-3552 is a TN-panel with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels and a size of 15.6 ”diagonal. This corresponds to a pixel density of 100 dpi. The display is made by the Taiwanese company CHI MEI. The screen can be considered as a Retina, if you look at it from a distance of more than 86 cm. Of course, the viewing angles are not very good due to the use of TN-technology.
The brightness of the screen Dell Inspiron 3552 user reviews called low and uneven. In the center, it is equal to 257 cd / m2 (232 cd / m2 on average). This means that the maximum deviation is 17%. At least the color temperature is pretty close to optimal and equal to 6550 K (D65 is 6500 K). Thus, the largest deviation of dE2000, compared with the center of the screen, at 100% sRGB and 100% brightness is 4.4 at the top right and middle. Everything above 4.0 is considered a big deviation, but since this laptop is not designed for optimal color reproduction, you can put up with such parameters.
Display laptop Dell Inspiron 3552 reviews blamed for the lack of color rendering. The screen covers only 49% of the sRGB color gamut before calibration and reaches 54% after it. Since more than half of the colors are not enough, you should not expect a bright image. The contrast ratio before calibration is 380: 1, and then reduced to 320: 1.
According to the owners, the test for the reaction time of pixels when switching from black to white from 10% to 90% and vice versa gives 20 ms, which is slightly slower than most TN panels. Unfortunately, the panel uses pulse-width modulation with aggressive pulsation with a frequency of 260 Hz. This means that most users will experience the negative effects of screen flickering.
Picture and sound
The TN panel presented in this model is no different, but given the price of the product, the test results are expected. Some middle-class laptops have almost identical characteristics, so you don’t have to be too picky. Viewing angles are uncomfortable, the maximum brightness is low, more than half of the sRGB space is not covered, and the contrast is below average. However, the color temperature is almost perfectly aligned and is optimal. And last, but not least, the PWM appears on the screen at all brightness levels, except 100%, and the frequency of the pulsating light is quite low (260 Hz) and is considered aggressive.
According to user reviews, laptop speakers provide excellent clarity at high frequencies, which is lacking in the middle and low ranges.
Software
The laptop runs on Windows 10 (64 bit), all the necessary drivers for which can be found on the official Dell Inspiron 3552 support page. Windows 7, 8.1 and Ubuntu 12.04 are also supported.
Battery life
The battery capacity of the Dell Inspiron 3552 reviews is called sufficient. You can confidently count on a laptop. Although 40 W / h does not seem to be too high, the battery performs its functions well due to high energy efficiency and low processor power, built-in graphics processing system and a simple TN-panel. These are the main consumers of energy, so the battery life of the battery pack is pretty good - it is much higher than the average level in this price category. This is proved by tests performed with standard settings - Wi-Fi turned on, power saving mode turned off and screen brightness equal to 120 cd / m2. According to user reviews, browsing the web gives a surprisingly good result - 7 hours 38 minutes. Video playback in HD quality is almost an hour less, but still excellent - 6 hours 36 minutes. Even in games, the laptop remains hardy. The result is 2 h 52 min.
Dell Inspiron 3552: CPU Specifications
Pentium N3700 is a mobile processor used in budget laptops and netbooks. It is part of Intel's Braswell generation and is the successor to the Bay Trail CPU. The most notable improvement is the manufacturing process, which is based on 14nm technology. Reducing the size of transistors increased energy efficiency and lowered the heating temperature in laptops in the lower market segment.
Pentium N3700 consists of 4 cores operating at a frequency of 1.6 GHz, the value of which, thanks to Burst Frequency technology, can reach up to 2.4 GHz. All four cores are based on the Airmont microarchitecture and share 2 MB of L2 cache. The processor also integrates the 8th generation GPU Intel HD Graphics with a normal frequency of 400 MHz, which can increase to 700 MHz. Power consumption is 6 W for the entire SoC system, including a controller that allows you to install up to 8 GB of DDR3L-1600 RAM. The chipset also supports virtualization technology, since Intel has introduced support for DirectX 12 and Open GL 4.2 for GPUs. In addition, the graphics processor is capable of processing data for 3 external displays with a resolution of up to 4K, but the internal implementation is limited to 2560 x 1440 pixels.
CPU performance
The Cinebench 11 test gives the Dell Inspiron 15-3552 1.72 points. For comparison: Inspiron 5551 is gaining 0.96 points, Lenovo Ideapad 100 - 0.83, and Acer Aspire E15 - 2.14.
The benchmark for evaluating the processor’s computational ability to calculate chess moves Fritz Intel Pentium N37000 processor calculates at a speed of 4,068 million moves per second. For comparison, one of the most powerful computers Deep Blue has managed to achieve a productivity of 200 million moves / s.
GPU Performance
Integrated GPU is used in all Braswell generation chips. Its frequency can vary widely and depends on the model. The GPU consists of 16 execution units, and its architecture is almost the same as that of Core M (although the graphics of the latter include 24 units). The GPU supports up to 3 displays with a maximum resolution of 4K, but internally copes only with QHD via eDP. External monitors can be connected via HDMI or Display Port. Other key features include support for DirectX 12 and Open GL 4.2.
In the 3DMark Cloud Gate test, the Dell Inspiron 3552-0514 scores 3091 points, compared to 1590 points on the Dell Inspiron 5551, 1382 on the Lenovo Ideapad 100, 3786 on the Acer Aspire E15.
Temperature mode
This test may not be a good representation of real use, but it demonstrates how the Dell Inspiron 3552 laptop handles high and long loads. In addition, he talks about the stability of the system in the long run. A 100% load on the processor for an hour using all four cores at a maximum frequency of 2.4 GHz raises the chip temperature to 83 ° C. As expected, the surface of the laptop heats up a little - from 25.7 to 30.7 ° C.
Conclusion
Notebook Dell Inspiron 3552 reviews of owners are called reliable in general, but it has a number of small drawbacks. In terms of design and assembly, the laptop impresses with its relatively light weight and compact size, although some parts bend and fingerprints remain on the case. However, this is typical for all models in this price range. It’s not often that you encounter such good input devices. The keyboard and touchpad are very comfortable. The TN panel will not strike right away, but the battery performance exceeds expectations. The screen is characterized by a very low frequency PWM, which can be considered aggressive. To eliminate this drawback, it is advisable to set the maximum brightness of the display. Depressing lack of a LAN port. The quad-core Pentium N3700 can easily cope with everyday and uncomplicated multimedia tasks. We can say with confidence that this is an improved version of the previous Inspiron 5551, and the updated processor makes the laptop a profitable purchase.