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Reviews<br />
4K one both have Nvidia GeForce<br />
GTX 1050 Ti cards rather than the<br />
standard GTX 1050. This is a faster<br />
version of Nvidia’s lower-mid range<br />
card, and is capable of running most<br />
games very well at 1080p.<br />
On the 1050 Ti version we were<br />
sent for review, Thief ran at an<br />
average of 51.4fps at max settings,<br />
1080p resolution, which<br />
is around 9fps<br />
more than the Dell XPS 15 manages.<br />
At 720p, minimum settings the<br />
frame rate rockets to 70fps.<br />
Alien: Isolation ran at 179fps at<br />
720p low settings, and 60fps at<br />
1080p high settings. For now at least<br />
you can play just about anything<br />
you like, including processorintensive<br />
titles. Nvidia’s latest<br />
cards are very capable.<br />
Typical of a gaming laptop, the<br />
Dell gets reasonably noisy under<br />
load, but the fans are not whiny<br />
or high-pitched and the welldesigned<br />
air flow stop the parts<br />
you touch from getting too hot.<br />
Battery life<br />
Laptops this powerful do not<br />
tend to last very long off a<br />
charge, even when using<br />
a battery saver mode.<br />
Around 4.5 hours of light<br />
use is to be expected,<br />
but the Inspiron 15<br />
Gaming’s stamina is<br />
miles ahead of this<br />
slightly depressing<br />
standard. Thanks<br />
to Dell’s clever power management,<br />
this laptop lasts staggeringly long<br />
for a quad-core Intel CPU machine.<br />
Playing a 720p video on loop with<br />
the screen brightness at 120cd/m 2 , it<br />
lasted eight hours and 50 minutes.<br />
It also has reasonable speakers,<br />
with better-than-average bass<br />
thanks to a ‘subwoofer’ driver. Unlike<br />
some gaming machines, clarity isn’t<br />
thrown away as a result, and the<br />
tone is natural-sounding enough.<br />
We’d still choose to plug in some<br />
headphones for gaming, though.<br />
Verdict<br />
The Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming<br />
gets just about everything right<br />
apart from its screen. The design is<br />
fine, its performance admirable and<br />
its battery life a jaw-dropper. This<br />
makes its low screen quality all the<br />
more annoying, although at least<br />
Dell lets you upgrade this if you can<br />
afford £1,299 rather than £899. It’s<br />
something to consider carefully if<br />
£899 is your upper limit, though,<br />
as the poor colour and contrast<br />
really does not do games justice.<br />
J Andrew Williams<br />
38 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews <strong>July</strong> <strong>2017</strong>
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