Dell Inspiron 13 5000 Series 2-in-1 I7 Review

Dell Inspiron 13 5000 2-in-1 review

Dell Inspiron 13 5000 2-in-one

MSRP $649.99

"The Dell Inspiron xiii 5000 2-in-i performs for its budget toll, only information technology doesn't last."

Pros

Solid performance
Wide range of budget prices
Reasonable build quality

Cons

Poor battery life
Scratchy touchpad surface
Keyboard is merely adequate
Relatively thick and heavy
Slower storage speeds

Dell'due south Inspiron line is a classic case of significant growth in the ultra-flexible 2-in-1 marketplace, with the 5000 and 7000 lines offering a i-two punch for budget users.

Dell sent us a review unit that'southward been updated with the excellent quad-cadre 8th-generation Intel Core i5-8250U processor, 8GB of DDR4-2400MHz RAM (a slight uptick in speed), a 256GB SATA solid-state bulldoze (SSD), and a thirteen.three-inch Total Hd (1,920 x i,080 or 166 PPI) brandish for the reasonable price of $750. That compares to the Inspiron 13 7000 2-in-1 that comes in at $850 for the same configuration. Note that y'all can up the CPU to a Core i7-8550U, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD for $980, or drib downwardly all the style to $400 by opting for a Pentium processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 1TB hard disk drive (HDD).

We'll go to the differences betwixt the Inspiron 13 2-in-1 models throughout this review, to answer two questions: Is it worth saving a little chip of money to drop downwards to a lesser model, and does the updated Inspiron 13 5000 2-in-1 manage to balance depression cost with skilful functioning?

A decent enough — albeit plastic — design and build

Nosotros gave the Inspiron 13 7000 2-in-ane high marks for its solid metal pattern, and that's one area where the Inspiron thirteen 5000 2-in-1 compromises. Rather than using an aluminum chassis, the Inspiron 13 5000 opts for an all-plastic design. That's unchanged from the older model. It'southward likewise heavier, at effectually 3.7 pounds versus the Inspiron 13 7000'south 3.2 pounds, and thicker at 0.80 inches (at its thickest point) compared to 0.sixty inches.

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

Being made of plastic doesn't hateful it feels downright cheap, however. The Inspiron xiii 5000 2-in-i has a decent build quality and a chassis that we found mostly free from bending and twisting. In our testing, the lid did give a chip under moderate pressure and the keyboard deck was just slightly mushy, which tended to mark information technology as a upkeep machine. The Inspiron thirteen 7000 steps upwards the build quality for simply a moderate upcharge.

The Inspiron 13 5000 2-in-1 provides solid productivity operation, for whatever price.

That said, Acer's less expensive Swift three ($650) clamshell notebook proves that you don't take accuse a pretty penny for a metal chassis with a more solid feel to information technology, equally does the similarly price Asus ZenBook UX330UA. And then again, those machines lack the Inspiron thirteen 5000's more flexible two-in-1 course cistron. To jump up yet another level of build quality in ii-in-1s means choosing something similar the Asus ZenBook Flip 14 that retails for $900 or the Microsoft Surface Pro that starts at $800 (without its detachable keyboard).

One area where the Inspiron xiii 5000's budget nature really shows upwards is the hinge. We found it quite stiff, requiring both easily to open up the lid, and the brandish was nevertheless quite wobbly when nosotros used it in the lap. Information technology managed to hold things together when we flipped the display around to the three ii-in-i modes, merely the thickness and weight made information technology specially uncomfortable as a tablet. A thinner (0.55 inches) and lighter (3.3 pounds) car similar the Asus ZenBok Flip 14 makes for a more pleasant tablet experience.

Aesthetically, the Inspiron 13 5000 2-in-one is non-descript, and its bezels, while not huge by the standards of a few years ago, still haven't been shaved downwards to match today'southward virtually modern notebooks – including the Inspiron xiii 7000. The light grey plastic chassis won't win any beauty contests, simply information technology won't embarrass when it'south pulled out at the conference room tabular array either.

Bountiful old-school connectivity

As usual for thicker notebooks, the Inspiron xiii 5000 ii-in-one enjoys a decent collection of ports. Two USB-A iii.1 connections line the left-hand side, along with a full-size HDMI port, a three.5mm audio jack, and the proprietary charger input. On the right-hand side, a unmarried USB-A two.0 port sits in between an SD card reader and a Noble lock security slot. In a nod to the auto'southward budget nature, at that place's no USB-C port, although the ZenBook UX330UA and the Swift 3 both manage to squeeze one in.

Dell Inspiron 13 5000 2-in-1 review — Marker Coppock/Digital Trends

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

Wireless connectivity comes by fashion of dual ring 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth iv.2. Dell bundles its SmartByte software that prioritizes media streaming for a more consistent video experience.

Mostly adequate input, but the touchpad is a bit scratchy

The Inspiron 13 5000's island keyboard is set in a shallow low in the chassis and exhibits only slight flexing under pressure. The keys are black with legible white lettering and the backlight has two brightness levels, although they're so similar that information technology's difficult to tell them autonomously. The lights are consistent, though, and suffer from merely minimal light bleed, and so the keyboard is quite pleasant to use in a dark environment.

The keys were a bit shallow at one.1mm, and although the overall feel was business firm the action slightly bottomed out at the cease. Information technology's a perfectly serviceable keyboard that closely mimics the experience on the Inspiron 13 7000 2-in-ane and isn't nearly as precise equally keyboards on more than premium systems similar the HP Spectre x360 xiii.

The touchpad isn't quite so positive an experience. Although it conforms to the Microsoft Precision touchpad protocol, and therefore provided reliable Windows 10 gesture back up, we found its plastic surface to be rather rough. Information technology does provide sufficient feedback while swiping, but it results in slightly unpleasant gritty experience.

The Inspiron thirteen has the usual 2-in-i multitouch brandish that was responsive and accurate. Y'all can besides purchase Dell'due south active pen for Windows x Ink support, but one was not included with our review unit and so we were unable to test it. You tin can pick 1 upwardly for $35 at the Dell online shop.

Marker Coppock/Digital Trends

In a existent plus for a budget machine, the Inspiron xiii 5000 leverages infrared cameras installed on top and next next to the webcam for Windows 10 Hello support via facial recognition. Nosotros found the system to be fast and reliable.

The display represents a clear price-cutting measure out

The Inspiron xiii 5000 2-in-1 is equipped with a Full Hard disk IPS display, which tends to promise wide viewing angles and a generally pleasant feel. We were pleased with the screen on the slightly more than expensive Inspiron 13 7000, which left us hopeful that this wasn't the place where Dell tried to shave some toll.

As it turns out, the Inspiron 13 5000'southward display is a bit disappointing just not entirely unexpected for a budget auto. Dissimilarity was fine at 870:1 at full brightness, which is in line with our comparison group and bettered only past the ZenBook UX330UA and Dell XPS thirteen (which starts at $800). And, color accuracy is too roughly boilerplate at 2.three (less than 1.0 is considered splendid).

Things go downwardly from in that location, however. To begin with, maximum brightness is poor at 198 nits. That's not enough to overcome any kind of brighter environment. Gamma was 2.4, which means videos and images are likely to be darker than they should exist. And, the display's color support is extremely narrow with only 47 percent coverage of the AdobeRGB gamut. The reasonably priced Asus ZenBook UX330UA stands out here equally offering a adept brandish at a budget price.

Our real-world experience with the display was in line with our colorimeter's results. The display was only okay for productivity employ, with passable blackness text on white backgrounds and a serviceable browsing experience. But video was dark, images lacked pop, and the display simply couldn't compete with bright lights. It's non a terrible display by any means, but information technology's definitely 1 are where Dell clearly cutting some costs to bring the Inspiron 13 5000 into the budget field.

Solid sound for solitary users

Dell equipped the Inspiron 13 5000 with Waves MaxxAudio Pro audio that promises an enhanced soundstage for music and video. In our experience, the machine put out audio that was surprisingly detailed, with good stereo separation that enhanced the moving picture watching experience. Music was fairly typical for notebooks, with decent highs and midrange but weak bass. Volume was relatively low, though, making information technology best for individual use.

Impressive operation for a budget two-in-1

The Inspiron thirteen 5000 2-in-1 picked up the latest quad-core 8th-generation Intel Core processors, in the case of our review unit the Core i5-8250U. The newest CPUs are peachy performers with some real efficiency congenital in, and then we had high expectations for the Dell'south performance numbers.

We weren't disappointed. The Inspiron 13 5000 scored a solid 4079 in the Geekbench 4 single-cadre test and 12824 in the multi-core test. That's slightly behind the Inspiron 13 7000 and the Asus ZenBook UX330UA, both using the same Core i5-8250U, and it beats out our comparison machines notwithstanding equipped with dual-core seventh-generation Intel Core processors. The Swift 3, for instance managed simply 3809 and 7515.

In our more demanding Handbrake video encoding test, which taxes the processor for a longer menstruum to shake out any thermal-related issues, the Inspiron xiii 5000 did very well at 709 seconds. That'south again a fleck behind the Inspiron 13 7000, but faster than the ZenBook UX330UA. Information technology's twice as fast equally the Swift 3 and Yoga 720 13, showing off the significantly improved performance of the latest generation of Intel Core CPUs.

Our existent-world testing confirmed these benchmark results, with the Inspiron 13 5000 two-in-1 providing solid productivity performance. Web browsing, media consumption, and working in Office 2016 was fast and efficient, and the quad-core CPU means you tin can get some college-level creative work done in a compression. The fans did run when the processor was existence pushed, merely the Inspiron 13 5000 was otherwise relatively quiet.

Slow storage, even for a SATA drive

You tin can purchase the Inspiron thirteen 5000 two-in-i with anything ranging from a 1TB SSD upward to a 512GB SSD, and we were glad to see Dell equip our reasonably-priced review unit with a 256GB SSD for some added performance. Information technology's a SATA version, however, meaning that we weren't expecting the aforementioned kind of operation every bit pricier machines that sport PCIe SSDs.

Unsurprisingly, the Inspiron 13 5000's CrystalDiskMark results were unspectacular, at 492 megabytes per second (MB/s) in the read test and 391 MB/s in the write exam. The Inspiron 13 7000'southward SATA SSD was slightly faster at 537 MB/southward and 500 MB/s, respectively, while the Acer Swift three's surprising PCIe SSD put that upkeep machine into another course of functioning at 1169 MB/s and 512 MB/due south.

As usual, while this is a slow SSD, it doesn't actually result in a slow notebook. Booting the Inspiron 13 5000 was quick plenty, and we didn't detect whatsoever slowdowns during our real-world testing. If you need to work with very large files then you might notice that things are slower than you'd like, simply for most productivity tasks these speeds should be sufficient.

The usual integrated graphics gaming limitations

You don't expect machines of whatever cost equipped with the Intel UHD 620 integrated graphics to exist good for much more than casual gaming. Nosotros therefore suspected that the Inspiron 13 5000 2-in-1 would join the social club of systems that simply don't have the firepower for modernistic titles.

As we suspected, the machine scored right in line with other similar systems in the 3DMark synthetic benchmark, specifically scoring 840 in the Burn down Strike test. That's a flake on the low side of our comparing group, just bluntly not enough so to make a practical difference in whatsoever of today'southward modernistic gaming titles.

The SATA SSD that Dell chose for the Inspiron thirteen 5000 is one of the slowest we've tested.

Even so, we still ran the Inspiron 13 5000 ii-in-1 through the Civilization IV benchmark at Full HD, and tested it at medium and ultra graphics detail. The results: 10 frames per 2nd (FPS) and 5 FPS, respectively. Again, that's no ameliorate or worse than our comparing group and it means you'll want to stick to older games or Windows 10 coincidental games and leave your hardcore gaming to another machine. If you want slightly better performance in a two-in-1 without spending a lot more, then the ZenBook Flip 14 with its discrete Nvidia GeForce MX150 GPU is a good choice.

A chunky chassis and poor battery life seriously limits portability

Likely thanks to the Inspiron 13 5000 two-in-i'due south thicker frame, Dell managed to pack in a 42 watt-hour bombardment. That's larger than the Inspiron xiii 7000'south 38 watt-hr battery, which with the aforementioned Core i5-8250U suffered from some poor battery life. Given the larger capacity, we expected the Core 13 5000 to provide at least a little more longevity.

Things didn't starting time out well. In our most ambitious Basemark web criterion that pushes the CPU and GPU, the Inspiron 13 5000 ii-in-1 couldn't quite get in to a total two hours. Information technology finished but a few minutes longer than its slightly more than expensive sibling. The ZenBook UX330UA lasted for a much more than solid 4 hours and 15 minutes.

On our web browsing test that runs through a series of popular sites until the battery runs out, the Inspiron 13 5000 redeemed itself the slightest flake, lasting 4 hours and 50 minutes compared to the Inspiron xiii 7000's 4 hours and 17 seconds. That's more than in line with what we expected given the larger battery. However, it's still way behind the ZenBook UX330UA's eight and a half hours, and the Yoga 720 13 lasted for more than than vi and a half hours.

The Inspiron 13 5000 2-in-one won't concluding even shut to a full work or school mean solar day away from a accuse.

Then, things really fell apart in our video test, which loops through an Avengers video. The Inspiron 13 5000 couldn't even go far to six hours, which is a very poor consequence and far less than the Inspiron 13 7000'south seven hours and 42 minutes. Nosotros even repeated the test to see if these results were consequent, and they were. The ZenBook UX330UA lasted for over 11 hours, the Acer Swift 3 lasted for more than ten, and the Yoga 720 13 well-nigh made information technology to ten hours of longevity.

The bottom line is that the Inspiron 13 5000 two-in-i isn't going to last a total piece of work or school day away from a charger. In fact, y'all'll demand to plug information technology in by lunchtime, fifty-fifty if you're not stressing the processor. That'southward not good, even past upkeep standards today.

Beyond simply its poor bombardment life, the Inspiron 13 5000 2-in-1 is too a bit chunky at just over 3.7 pounds and between 0.77 and 0.80 inches thick. It still fits into a haversack cheers to its overall dimensions, only yous're going to be well aware that it'due south there. Having to carry effectually its proprietary power brick to go on working is only adding insult to injury.

Software

Dell packs in a few extra pieces of software to go with the usual Windows ten load of casual games and Microsoft utilities. There'southward a McAfee antivirus trial, Adobe PDF app, and Dropbox software to take advantage of the free 20GB of space included for a year. Otherwise, the usual Dell diagnostic and back up apps are on hand.

Warranty information

The Inspiron 13 5000 2-in-1 comes with a standard 1-year postal service-in parts and service warranty. That's par for the course, even for more premium notebooks.

Our Take

Dell improved the Inspiron 13 5000 2-in-1 with the newest quad-cadre eighth-generation Intel Cadre processor, and performance is certainly better. It retains its plastic build that's mostly decent just a bit as well bendy in places, and it offers usable input options. Nonetheless, its battery life is just disappointing, and it's a bit too thick and heavy to make it comfortably portable for its size.

Is at that place a better culling?

In terms of 2-in-1s, the Inspiron 13 5000'south strongest competition is from Dell itself in the Inspiron thirteen 7000. It's merely $100 more for the same cadre i5-8250U CPU, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and Full Hard disk display, and for that money you get a thinner and more robust metallic chassis and half a pound less weight. Battery life is also better, although not quite bumping up into premium notebook territory. We've mentioned the ZenBook Flip 14 a few times, and for but $150 more you'll go improve battery life, significantly better graphics functioning, and much better build quality.

On the other hand, if you're determined to stick with a two-in-1 just can give upwardly Windows x, then the Samsung Chromebook Pro is an intriguing option. It's less expensive at $550 for a seventh-generation Intel Cadre m3 processor, 4GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and a 12.3-inch ii,400 x i,600 (235 PP) display, and it's also arguably more robustly built. It likewise sports an active pen, although Chrome Os doesn't have the same excellent pen back up as Windows 10, and you'll be able to run Android apps. Chrome OS is a relatively lightweight OS, but it withal won't offer the aforementioned level of performance.

Finally, y'all can step exterior of the 2-in-ane space and pick up the Asus ZenBook UX330UA clamshell notebook. You'll become a superior build, every bit good performance with the latest 8th-generation CPU refresh, and much better bombardment life. And, you'll pay a very similar $750 for a Core i5-8250U, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and xiii.iii-inch Full HD display.

How long will it last?

The Inspiron 13 5000 2-in-1 isn't quite in the premium category in terms of build quality, simply it nevertheless feels like it should last as long as you need it to assuming that it's taken care of. The eighth-generation Intel Core CPU is up to date, but the SSD is boring. The lack of USB-C means that connectivity volition become dated as that standard continues to take over.

Should you buy it?

No. The Inspiron 13 5000 2-in-1's battery life is just besides poor. There are other budget machines available at similar prices that volition last longer on a charge, and the Inspiron 13 5000 is only as well heavy by itself to brand carrying the charger around a reasonable proposition.

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