Dell has really been working hard at making a name for themselves in the gaming market. Recently, the company has launched a series of affordable gaming laptops that have made quite a stir on the market. It's latest bet to pay off big time was the Dell Inspiron i7559-763BLK launched late last year and now the company has done it yet again with the Dell Inspiron i7559-3763BLK.
On its latest venture onto the "cheap gaming market" Dell has decided to bet on a quad core Core i7 processor, a hybrid storage system, dedicated graphics and, of course, an impressive 16GB of RAM. There's a lot of ground to cover so let's get too it as we take a peek behind the curtain on our review of the Dell Inspiron i7559-3763BLK, a gaming laptop with a killer price.
Not your average gaming aesthetic
This is, by all accounts, a gaming laptop, and as such you shouldn't expect a compact lightweight ultrabook design. That said, for a gamers laptop the Dell Inspiron i7559-3763BLK is quite discreet, weighing a shy of 6 pounds and measuring about 1 inch on thickness. It's not gonna win any design awards but its pretty conservative to the eye and you can easily use it when you're out and about without the laptop screaming its a gaming machine first and foremost.
The only two elements that make it clear it's focused on gaming are the red borders on the trackpad and the red covered speakers on the upper side of the keyboard.
Moving onto the display, it's a standard 15.6 inch Full HD IPS LED display with anti-glare technology, a matte finish and a 16:9 widescreen ratio. What this basically means is that it's a pretty great display for gamers and you'll be able to use it both indoors and outdoors.
Finally, another benefit to being a full sized laptop as opposed to a 13 inch model is that we've got a fully fledged backlit keyboard with its very own numeric pad and everything. Also, I should point out that the trackpad is pretty precise, eliminating pretty much the need to use a mouse.
Quad core CPU, massive RAM and a Hybrid Storage
To have a gaming laptop it's not enough to just have a great dedicated graphics. Truthfully that's a big part of the task but you'll also need a high end processor and a solid amount of RAM. Coincidentally that means that not only is this great as a gaming laptop but it's pretty much great as a high-performing laptop for pretty much anything you can think off.
In that regard, the Dell Inspiron i7559-3763BLK's performance is defined by its Intel Core i7-6700HQ quad core processor. This is, in short, just about the best consumer laptop processor available in the market right about now. It's base speed is 2.7GHz but when you're in need of more processing power it can go all the way towards 3.5GHz, all of this with 6MB of cache and 8 threads working all at once.
In short, this CPU is ready for just about anything you can think off, seriously, pretty much anything.
RAM is the other impressive feature as we've got 16GB of DDR3L SDRAM working at 1600MHz. You should know that RAM in this case isn't upgradable but to be frank I doubt you'll ever need anything more than 16GB. What's more, unless you're a hugely intensive multitasker its unlikely you'll ever get past using 8-9GB of RAM at a time. As they say, it's better to have and not need then it is to want and not have.
Finally, in terms of storage we've got a hybrid 1TB hard drive with 8GB of SSD storage. This isn't as good as having a full on SSD storage unit but it's pretty close giving you the benefit of having a pretty big storage capacity coupled with a higher speed while accessing your most used apps which would be stored on the SSD part of the storage. Again, it's not as fast and snappy as an SSD but it's a way to deliver a mix of both worlds and, in general, most people are pretty pleased with this format.
It's also worth noting that you could swap the hard drive for an SSD, with plenty of high capacity SSD's being sold at very low prices. For example, you could get a 250GB SSD for under $100.
Battery Life and Graphics chip
Bad news first: battery life isn't all that good. Specifically, while Dell hasn't actually gone out to explicitly state battery life, preliminary consumer reviews suggest that overall battery life on the Dell Inspiron i7559-3763BLK is around the 5 hour benchmark when doing some light computing. This number would go along with our own assessment considering the specs involved; display, CPU, RAM etc. Therefore we'd argue that you shouldn't really expect anything beyond the 5 hour mark.
Onto the graphics chip, we've got an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M with 4GB of dedicated GDDR5 VRAM. This is an awesome graphics controller and you'll be able to play just about any AAA blockbuster at a Full HD setting with great frame rates.
Games such as Call of Duty Infinite Warfare will give you roughly 30-40 frame rates at Full HD, same as Titanfall 2, Battlefield 1, Overwatch, Doom and Need for Speed 2016.
Overall this is a pretty solid frame rate and though it's not the best graphics chip on the market it's more than enough to carry on with modern games without a hitch. Whats more, you'll also be able to do stuff like edit 4K video and do long photoshop sessions without worry.
What connectivity options do I have?
Finally, once we've taken a look at the most prominent features of the Dell Inspiron i7559-3763BLK in review, it's time to take a look at the more "boring" conventional connectivity stuff. To that point we've got three USB 3.0 Type A ports, an HDMI port, an ethernet port, audio jack as well as an SD card reader.
On the wireless segment we've got the latest WiFi 802.11ac standard as well as Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity. As expected, there's no optical drive in sight (pun intended), but that's beginning to be an increasingly common trait amongst high end laptops as well as convertibles.
There's also your run of the mill HD webcam and a pretty solid set of speakers which are pretty great for gaming as well as watching movies.
What's left to say? Should I but this laptop?
Our review of the Dell Inspiron i7559-3763BLK covers all the basics and then some. Should you buy this laptop? That will depend upon your needs. One thing's for sure; this is an excellent laptop from every stance.
It's got a killer processor, excellent graphics card, more than enough RAM to work with multiple heavy apps at a time and a hybrid drive to give you both space and speed at the same time. It's a great laptop whether you're a gamer or simply a power-user who's tired of using machines that aren't up to the task.
The only point where it lacks is battery life but considering this is a gaming laptop equipped with power hungry components we can't really blame it for that. All in all, just about the best budget gaming machine money can buy with a great price and stellar opinions to match.