To see how much graphical horsepower a system has, we test Windows PCs' graphics with a pair of DirectX 12 gaming simulations using UL's 3DMark Night Raid (low-intensity) and Time Spy (high-intensity) tests. The speakers, located underneath the machine, are loud and clear for a laptop of this caliber, though hitting maximum volume actually makes the chassis vibrate. As for the quality, it’s fair; tinny, but not unbearably so.

Moreover, this laptop has two SO-DIMM slots that you can configure with up to 16GB of DDR4-2666 RAM. Similarly, you get 256GB/512GB of SSD. There is also a vacant 2.5″ SATA slot for storage expansion. First Group: The LED blinks with an Amber color 1 to 9 times, followed by a brief pause with the LED off for 1.5 seconds.

The Inspiron 15’s Time Spy score is about half that of its competitors, though the HP Laptop 17 which simply couldn’t complete the test. It’s a similar story for Night Raid, with all the other laptops coming out about 50% to 75% faster, and the HP Pavilion Plus nearly doubling the Inspiron’s score. In our GFXBench tests, the HP Laptop 17 stays well ahead of the Inspiron. The Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i failed one test at 1440p though came out faster in 1080p. Meanwhile, the ZenBook 13 doubles the Inspiron’s score, and the HP Pavilion Plus 14 more than triples it. Rounding out the productivity tests is the Geekbench benchmark, another CPU stress test meant to simulate real-world applications. The HP Laptop 14's processor helps it nab the top spot here, but the Dell still manages to best most of the competition. Hard drive retention: Hard drive retention is not available on models with a soldered hard drive, including XPS 9315 2in1, Chromebooks or Venue tablets, except the Venue 11 Pro. Th Inspiron 15 3511 is perhaps one of the easiest budget laptops to service and upgrade. Performance-per-dollar is high, but you'll have to get over the less-than-stellar chassis design.

All other products will be delivered via the fastest available method (excluding bank holidays and weekends) and generally within 3-5 days, depending on customer location. The next test on our list is Cinebench R23, the multi-core benchmark meant to exercise all of a processor's cores and threads. The Inspiron's Intel Core i3-1115G4 chip does well enough but is bested by the HP Laptop 14's Intel Core i3-1125G4. The Asus VivoBook 15 sat on the bench for this test, as Cinebench would not run on the hardware. Disconnect all external peripherals including the keyboard, mouse, and external monitor. Peripherals also include external storage devices such as flash drives, USB devices, printers, cards etc.Finally, we turn our attention to the screen and use Datacolor's SpyderX Elite calibrator tools to measure display performance. We test screen-brightness output levels at 50% and 100% brightness, as well as measure gamut settings for the three most relevant color spaces for laptop users: the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 standards. Disconnect all external peripherals including the keyboard, mouse, and external monitor. Peripherals also include external storage devices such as flash drives, USB devices, printers, cards, etc. Terms Apply. Promotion ends 3 December 2023. Items are subject to availability. Max 5 units per customer. The Inspiron 15 3000 also was the only laptop of the bunch that successfully ran GFXBench 5.0, another graphics stress test that runs low-level routines like texturing, and high-level tasks like game-like image rendering to gauge GPU performance. While the other budget laptops came up short, the Dell managed 15 frames per second (fps) during the 1440p Aztec Ruins test but more than doubled its frame rate during the 1080p Car Chase test. While not a gaming laptop by any means, the Dell might manage some undemanding games at 1080p at 30fps, as long as they're not too graphics-intensive. Three more of our benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs' Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).

Perform system maintenance on your computer, for more information see Optimization and Maintenance of Microsoft Windows or Troubleshooting Slow Performance Issues. Dell's Inspiron 15 (3525) is a peppy-enough and affordable-enough home or remote work machine, but it's not very ambitious; it does little to go beyond the basics. More the concern: It’s readily overshadowed by a number of machines that outperform and outclass it. Even if the Inspiron can get the job done today, its competition has the mettle to keep doing the job tomorrow in a way the Inspiron simply can’t promise. Plus, those alternatives are much more enjoyable after work.Sadly, the Inspiron also has the worst display of the bunch. Maxing out at 258 nits, it’s not bright enough to use outdoors well, and its 66% coverage of the sRGB color space is too low to use for any sort of design work. The HP Laptop 17 and Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i aren’t much better, but at least the latter can hit up to 400 nits of brightness. Estimated delivery times are provided to us by the respective delivery companies. We pass this information onto you, the customer. The Inspiron 15 3000 is what it says on the box. It's a budget-friendly laptop. It has a large, 15.6-inch display, a full number pad, and plenty of legacy ports. What surprised me about the Inspiron 15 3000 is how much it can get done despite its modest specs.