Dell Inspiron 15R SE (7520 Base) Review after 6 months in use

Hello all readers,

A couple of days ago I received an email from the Dell Support Wing wishing to know about my views on the product. I decided it would be great if I could share my experience of using The Dell Inspiron 15R SE (7520), as this would help a lot of people into making the right buying decision.

My main computing systems since 2006 has been a DELL be it a desktop, a netbook, or a laptop. My latest product from DELL is the above mentioned laptop. I have to mention here that technically I have not had any major/hair pulling/panic attack issues with my DELL computers so I am not surprised to see most of the stuff working fine with my new laptop as well.

The computer does what it is supposed to do at an acceptable speed, quality, noise and heat.

However, I would like to list a few issues which may or may not be directly connected with the DELL brand and may have more to do with the operating system or third-party components/software.

1. The system will not allow me to install my own Windows 7 installation over the standard shipped Windows 8 or on a different partition. Tried a lot of things but finally had to settle in using the newer operating system over the preferred one. (I hear what you are saying DELL Support Team, but customer preference comes first :) ).

2. The Wireless card seems to have a issue and requires the user to run the diagnose every time it fails to connect to the network (it can discover the networks but will not connect to any) to fix it, I hope the new drivers are helpful in sorting this issue out.

3. The USB ports are apparently 3.0 but it takes ages to fully charge my phone via any one of them, I might be missing something but there could be something someone can suggest to fix this issue.

4. The RAM, many are going to laugh about this, my system has 6 Gb of RAM, 4 Gb of which is from a good OEM, however the other 2 Gb is from some OEM almost never heard of, I know I can not hold DELL responsible for this, but are you kidding me :)

Now for a short review of the rest of the system:

-> The screen at 1366x786 is not the best in the world but it is better than most of the other ones in this category. I would recommend to go for the Full HD (1080p, not the 1600x900 one) Anti-glare screen.

-> The RAM is sufficient for the work I need to get out of my system, however 8 Gb would be recommended if you can afford it, there is always a possibility to upgrade it all the way up to 16 Gb.

-> At 750 Gb, the HDD is enough to play around in, but if you are hungry for space for photography or have bought loads of games it might be wise to have an external HDD unit. Although I have never tried it before I would love to have a SDD for the operating system with a standard HDD on my system.

-> The graphic card at 2 Gb is better than good for gaming, but a GeForce card  with GDDR5 is really recommended for graphic hungry applications.

-> Not sure, if everyone is going to use the Blu-ray so a standard DVD-RW/RAM drive is more than enough for me at least for a few years, saying this I haven't used my DVD drive in months now. Good to have one, if you still have devices whose drivers are on CDs.

-> The speakers are good, but using the HDMI port and have the sound coming out of the TV is a more lucrative way to get the music going.

-> As I said I did not have any major issue with the system so everything else works well with me, the battery works good for two and a half hours before you need to worry about charging it again, the keyboard and mouse-pad are nothing to complain about.

-> There is internal graphics on the chip as well and you can hardly mark the difference.

Go for a system that you actually are going to use it everyday, for example no need of paying extra for an extra-ordinary graphic card if you are going to use it once a while.

I hope the review helps and do write back, I am sure many including me would be eager to hear your view and give more feedback about the systems each one of us are using.

Regards,

NP