Work, study, entertainment – for each activity has its own kind of laptops, but what if these areas are intertwined? In such a case requires a universal device that can adequately enforce any task, whether it is a complex calculation, writing an essay or a playback of multimedia content. It’s about this “jack of all trades” and will be discussed today. Presented in this review laptop Dell Inspiron 17R (5737) combines the portability of a notebook and desktop productivity. But what he has to pay for his versatility – find out more.
Started, education, entertainment – for each activity has its own kind of laptops, but what if these areas are intertwined? In such a case requires a universal device that can adequately enforce any task, whether it is a complex calculation, writing an essay or a playback of multimedia content. It’s about this “jack of all trades” and will be discussed today. Presented in this review laptop Dell Inspiron 17R (5737) combines the portability of a notebook and desktop productivity. But what he has to pay for his versatility – find out more.
Design – Dell Inspiron 17R
Dell Inspiron 17R outwardly looks quite pleasant and harmonious, despite their considerable size. In many ways, it has become possible due to the fact that the designers have done a laptop rounded contours. The cover of the laptop is made of brushed aluminum, which is tinted a dark gray color, but the other parts are made of plastic, and the lateral edges are painted silver, and the bottom – no.
As for the design elements, except for the ground surface in combination with a silver border, you can select a mirror Dell logo placed in the center of the lid. The build quality housing well made, but not perfect, still affects what developers had to save to squeeze Dell Inspiron 17R in the budget segment.
As noted above, the bottom of the notebook is made of rigid plastic. It has a battery compartment, two speaker grilles, four round rubber feet at the corners, air vents and a compartment for easy access to internal components. Thanks to the latter, you can easily replace the drive and memory, it is necessary to unscrew just two screws and remove the cover.
By the standards of the 17-inch segment of the Dell Inspiron 17R has a very compact dimensions that make up 412x270x28 mm. As for weight, it is at around 2.7 kg, it is worth noting that the difference with most 15-inch laptops is about 300-400 grams.
Display and sound – Dell Inspiron 17R
17.3-inch display has a resolution of 1600×900 pixels (WXGA ++), of course, it’s not Full HD, but for such a diagonal is obtained quite acceptable pixel density. Also the quality of the display is quite good, even despite the fact that it is the technology TN. But he has two weaknesses and – viewing angles and a glossy finish. As for viewing angles, their lack of evident if a laptop is a few people, and we have to consider the picture on the screen at a large angle. Glossy coating deliver a disadvantage when working in bright sunny weather or intense artificial light.
As for the acoustics, the sound output of the two corresponding speakers located on the bottom of the notebook. Their volume is quite large, but the sound quality is not as good as we would like, largely due to absence of a subwoofer. Corrects the situation a little specialized software MaxxAudio 4, in which you can select one of the options sound: voice, music, movie, game, etc. All this allows the acoustics Dell Inspiron 17R (5737) earned a solid four and a bit to get ahead than its competitors.
Webcam Dell Inspiron 17R is in the frame of the display and has a resolution of 1 megapixel. It is useful for video conferencing or chat via Skype.
Keyboard and Touchpad – Dell Inspiron 17R
Dell Inspiron 17R is equipped with a Chiclet keyboard. It is worth noting that it has a respectable size and is very comfortable when typing. Also a big plus of this keyboard is the presence of her separate number pad, which is simply indispensable in some cases.
The keys have a rectangular shape and the average speed. Marking and dimensions as the letter, so the function keys are also very thoughtful. Even dial a block here is not pressed down vertically, which can not but rejoice. The buttons of this keyboard is very quiet and do not emit clatter. But it is worth noting a few negative points, for example, high-gloss finish of the substrate and its keyboard noticeable deflections in several places.
Unfortunately, there is no backlight, and some multimedia buttons, allowing cheaper laptop, but also affected its functionality. The only freestanding key in Dell Inspiron 17R is a button, it is located on the left above the keyboard.
The touch surface is large, so the fingers will be a place to roam. All the most common multi-touch gestures such as two-finger scrolling, zooming and turning, performed very well. In general, the touchpad is pretty good, but it has one weakness – mouse button. The whole point is that their depression is accompanied by a very nasty sound, so once again to touch them there is no desire.
Performance – Dell Inspiron 17R
Dell Inspiron 17R (5737-8168) comes with a preinstalled operating system Windows 8 (64-bit). And as the processor uses Intel Core i7-4500U . This dual-core solution for ultrabooks and laptops, which is characterized by low power consumption. Thanks to the Hyper-Threading technology two cores can process up to four data streams simultaneously, which leads to more efficient use of the processor. Another technology – Turbo Boost allows you to raise the base clock speed of 1.8 GHz with up to 3.0 GHz. In general, Intel Core i7-4500U can handle most tasks.
In addition, the processor has integrated graphics HD Graphics 4400 , the possibility of which is somewhat limited, but it can provide a decent battery life, due to the lower power consumption compared to discrete solutions.
In addition to the built-in HD Graphics 4400 graphics, the notebook is also equipped with a discrete graphics card AMD Radeon HD 8870M . This card is a “highlight” of this laptop, as it relates to the top segment and can provide great opportunities. Among its technical characteristics include the presence of 640 shaders, which operate at a frequency of 725 MHz to 775 MHz, 2 GB of memory standard GDDR5, clocked at 1125 MHz and 128-bit memory bus. Performance AMD Radeon HD 8870M is really quite high, it is between the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570M and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670M , but for this card pays a high power consumption, so it can only be used in such large laptops like Dell Inspiron 17R.
As already mentioned above, a discrete graphics card AMD Radeon HD 8870M has great potential due to which the laptop can cope with the most recent and demanding games, but not on ultra settings. Let’s start with the shooter Battlefield 4 and Call of Duty: Ghosts, the first to show the result of 35 fps, and the second – 20 fps. Dell Inspiron 17R also did a fine job with a racing simulator Need for Speed: Rivals, in this case we got 25 fps. It is worth noting that all the games were running at high settings with a resolution of 1366×768 pixels.
A hard disk installed in the Dell Inspiron 17R, has a large volume of 1000 GB and, unfortunately, mediocre performance. The latter is associated with a low rate of rotation of the spindle, which is only 5400 rev / min. The amount of RAM is 16 GB (2 trims memory 8 GB each). We can only note that this will be enough even for heavy computing tasks and applications, not to mention the daily work. By the way 16 GB of RAM is the maximum value, as the laptop is equipped with only two slots for RAM.
Ports and Communications – Dell Inspiron 17R
Set of communications was a disappoint. Firstly, because of the small number and a little variety, and secondly, because of the not very thoughtful location of some ports. Let’s start with the left side, which proved to be very congested. You can find three consecutive located x USB (one standard 2.0 and two 3.0), video output HDMI, network RJ-45 port and a combined audio jack. Also on this side is a connector for power supply, which is separated from the other interfaces lattice cooling system.
The right side is burdened with a laptop optical drive DVD Super Multi with Tray-loading, another USB 2.0 port and a Kensington lock.
Card reader found a place on the front side, and immediately there is a set of indicators.
A set of wireless communication is quite standard: Wi-Fi 802.11 b / g / n and Bluetooth 4.0.
Battery – Dell Inspiron 17R
Dell Inspiron 17R is equipped with a 6-cell lithium-ion battery capacity of 5700 mAh. What does this mean? And the fact that you can watch movies on your laptop without charge for nearly four hours, and work on the Internet for more than five and a half hours. But under the maximum load, battery life indicator drops to 1 hour and 40 minutes. Of course performance is not a record, but it is worth considering that this is a laptop with a good performance, so in that sense it’s pretty logical. Inspiron 17R is charged via the power supply capacity of 90 watts. By the way the battery is removable, so that his replacement will not cause any difficulties.
Conclusion – Dell Inspiron 17R
Dell Inspiron 17R (5737) is a typical home computer replacement. It has a large and pretty good on the characteristics of the display, keyboard and practical performance. With regard to the latter, then the role of the main violin plays a discrete graphics card, not the processor. But it’s also not forget that the development of the laptop manufacturers have tried to reach a certain compromise to laptop turned and functional, and not very expensive. Hence we have only partially aluminum body, the slow hard drive, not very modern set of ports, the lack of keyboard illumination and some multimedia keys, and the other is not particularly significant drawbacks. But in general, compromises Dell Inspiron 17R can be considered a success, as Dell managed to create powerful gaming notebook with the card and a 17.3-inch display, which costs just under $ 850.
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Last month I purchased Dell Inspiron 17R laptop on the suggestion of one of my close friend. At starting I was not very confident regarding my decision but later on after being a user of it, I realized that it actually works very efficiently. It being loaded with Windows 8 operating system facilitates the users with an unmatched performance.