Dell Inspiron 3552 Notebook: reviews, overview, specs

Those who believed that laptops never fall in price, were wrong. Lately, new laptops have appeared that can provide the necessary minimum of performance for everyday tasks, at a price that is only a small part of the cost of other models. These include, for example, Lenovo IdeaPad 100, Dell Inspiron 5545, Acer Aspire E15 and Lenovo Yoga 500. The latter laptop has about the same hardware, but costs a little more because of the 360 ° rotating loops.

In any case, the laptop Dell Inspiron 3552-0514 equipment does not shine, but the quad-core Pentium N3700 cope with most of the daily tasks and multimedia playback, because it offers a connection via the HDMI port. In addition, the build quality is not bad, and the input devices are among the best in their price range.

The laptop comes in a standard box with regular user manuals, a charger and a cable to it.

Dell Inspiron 3552: Design overview

The case of the laptop is entirely made of plastic, but with different finishes. 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 Lenovo IdeaPad 100 and Acer Aspire E15. But in general, the design of the laptop from them is very different.

Like other manufacturer's devices, the Dell Inspiron 3552 looks pretty strict and minimalistic and is limited only by a small number of features. The cover is characterized by a textured black plastic with a manufacturer's logo in the center and under pressure is slightly more than acceptable, but this is usually for laptops in this price range. Fingerprints on the body are very noticeable. Loops are tight, so you can not open a laptop with one hand. From the bottom there is a large service hatch that provides access to the hard drive, the RAM slot and the Wi-Fi module.

Flat glossy side surfaces provide the necessary minimum of conveniently located ports. On the left there is a DC charging slot, a main air vent, an SD card slot, USB 3.0 ports and HDMI. On the right there is a 3.5 mm audio jack and two USB 2.0 ports.

The internal surface of the Dell Inspiron 3552 Black is finished with the same textured plastic as the cover. Here the cover is rather hard, and the keyboard does not bend very much. Unfortunately, there is a problem with notable fingerprints here, but, more importantly, the input devices work perfectly. The keys have a sufficient stroke, they are well spaced, there are also usual controls for the media player. The touch panel for this price category of laptops is just perfect. The touchpad does not stagger and precisely defines all gestures, and its buttons cause delight - they are not rigid and almost the entire surface is allocated for the left mouse button. It's funny that Dell managed to make an excellent touchpad, while some expensive models on the market can not even come close to this level of comfort and practicality.

Display

The Dell Inspiron 15-3552 screen is a TN-panel with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels and a size of 15.6 "diagonally. 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 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.

Screen brightness Dell Inspiron 3552 user reviews are called low and uneven. In the center it is equal to 257 cd / m ² (232 cd / m ² on average). This means that the maximum deviation is 17%. At least the color temperature is pretty close to the optimal and is equal to 6550 K (D65 is 6500 K). Thus, the largest deviation of the dE2000, compared to the center of the screen, at 100% sRGB and 100% brightness is 4.4 at the top right and middle. Anything higher than 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.

Laptop display Dell Inspiron 3552 reviews are blamed for the lack of color rendition. The screen covers only 49% of the sRGB color gamut before calibration and reaches 54% after it. Since more than half the colors are not enough, you do not have to expect a bright image. The contrast ratio before calibration is 380: 1, and then decreases to 320: 1.

According to the owners, the test for the response time of pixels in the transition 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 at a frequency of 260 Hz. This means that the majority of users will feel the negative effects from the flicker of the screen.

Picture and sound

The TN panel presented in this model does not differ much in anything, but given the price of the product, the test results are expected. Some middle-class laptops have almost identical characteristics, so it's not too much to be picky. The viewing angles are inconvenient, 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 corresponds to the optimal temperature. Last but not least, PWM appears on the screen at all brightness levels except 100%, and the pulsating light frequency is quite low (260 Hz) and is considered to be aggressive.

According to feedback from users, the laptop's speakers provide excellent clarity at high frequencies, which is not enough in the middle and low ranges.

Software

The laptop runs under Windows 10 (64 bit), all necessary drivers can be found on the official support page of the Dell Inspiron 3552. Windows 7, 8.1 and Ubuntu 12.04 are also supported.

Duration of autonomous work

The battery capacity of the Dell Inspiron 3552 reviews is called sufficient. You can count on the laptop confidently. Although 40 W / h does not seem to be very high, but the battery performs well due to its high energy efficiency and low power, built-in graphics processing system and simple TN-panel. These are the main consumers of energy, so the battery life of the battery pack is quite good - it is much higher than the average level in this price category. This is proved by tests performed with standard settings - Wi-Fi on, power saving mode off and screen brightness equal to 120 cd / m ² . According to user feedback, browsing the web gives an amazingly good result - 7 hours 38 minutes. Playing video in HD-quality for almost an hour less, but still excellent - 6 hours 36 minutes. Even in games, the laptop remains sturdy. The result is 2 hours and 52 minutes.

Dell Inspiron 3552: Specifications of the CPU

The Pentium N3700 is a mobile processor used in budget notebooks and netbooks. It is part of Intel's Braswell generation and has become the successor to the Bay Trail CPU. The most noticeable improvement is the production process, which is based on 14-nm technology. Reducing the size of transistors increased energy efficiency and lowered the temperature of heating in notebooks of the lower market segment.

The Pentium N3700 consists of 4 cores working at a frequency of 1.6 GHz, the value of which, due to Burst Frequency technology, can reach up to 2.4 GHz. All four cores are based on the Airmont microarchitecture and share 2 MB L2 cache. The processor also integrates GPU 8th generation Intel HD Graphics with a normal frequency of 400 MHz, which can increase to 700 MHz. The power consumption is 6 W for the entire SoC system, including the controller, which allows you to install up to 8 GB of DDR3L-1600 memory. The chipset also supports virtualization technology, because Intel has implemented support for DirectX 12 and Open GL 4.2 for GPUs. In addition, the graphics processor is able to process 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

Test Cinebench 11 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 test for evaluating the computing power of the processor to calculate the chess moves of the 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 managed to achieve a performance of 200 million moves / s.

GPU Performance

Integrated GPU is used in all chips of the Braswell generation. Its frequency can vary within wide limits 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 graphics processor 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 main 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 for the Dell Inspiron 5551, 1382 for the Lenovo Ideapad 100, 3786 for the Acer Aspire E15.

Temperature conditions

This test can not be a good representation of real use, but it demonstrates how Dell Inspiron 3552 laptop copes with high and long loads. In addition, he talks about the stability of the system in the long term. 100% CPU load for an hour using all four cores at a maximum frequency of 2.4 GHz raises the chip temperature to 83 ° C. As you might expect, the surface of the laptop is heated a little - from 25.7 to 30.7 ° C.

Conclusion

The laptop Dell Inspiron 3552 reviews of owners are generally called reliable, but it has a number of small flaws. From the point of view of design and assembly, the laptop impresses with its relatively small weight and compact size, although some parts bend and fingerprints remain on the body. However, this is typical for all models of this price range. It is not often that such good input devices can be found. The keyboard and touchpad are very comfortable. The TN panel will not hit you on the spot, but the performance of the battery exceeds expectations. The screen is characterized by a PWM of very low frequency, which can be considered as aggressive. To eliminate this disadvantage, it is advisable to set the maximum brightness of the display. Depressing lack of LAN port. The quad-core Pentium N3700 can easily cope with everyday and simple multimedia tasks. It's safe to say that this is an improved version of the previous model Inspiron 5551, and the updated processor makes the laptop a profitable acquisition.