Maintenance miracle. However, this can be fairly uncommon currently: The maintenance hatch, which is quite uncomplicated to get rid of, allows access to all main elements from the new multimedia notebook from Dell. A different highlight would be the high-resolution 4K touchscreen and thanks to its GTX 960M GPU, it ought to also attract gamers. Regrettably, some challenges have an effect on the initial excellent impression.
Using a weight of practically two.7 kg (~6 lb), the 15-inch Dell Inspiron 15 7559 is usually a multimedia notebook that may be not especially mobile. Probably the most noticeable feature will be the high-resolution 4K touchscreen with 3840×2160 pixels. Enough functionality is ensured by a brand new Skylake processor with four native cores and Hyperthreading, Intel Core i7-6700HQ, which can be supported by 16 GB of DDR3-RAM. The integrated SSD using a capacity of 128 GB is vital for smooth user handling, which can be complemented by a standard really hard drive using a capacity of 1 TB. The impressive package is rounded off by the efficiency GPU Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M, although this will be the limiting issue in games. The lack of an optical drive is unusual for this class of devices. Our overview sample from Dell was equipped with a U.S. keyboard.
The RRP for our critique configuration is 1299 Euros (~$1376); in the time of this critique, other versions weren’t listed on the web-site in the Dell. It is possible to find other notebooks from the 7000 series, however they do not have a good deal in common with our model. There was also some confusion since a search having a big value comparison in Berlin resulted only within a model together with the designation “7602” that was equipped using a traditional Complete HD show and only 8 GB of RAM.
Two of our 15.6-inch comparison devices this test, the Asus ZenBook Pro UX501JW-FI218H (no price readily available) plus the MSI PE60-2QEi581 (about 1100 Euros/~$1060), make use of the very same GTX 960M (2 GB) and comparable, albeit older CPUs. On the other hand, the especially slim Acer Aspire V 15 Nitro VN7-572G-72L0 (around 1200 Euros/~$1271) is equipped with all the slower GTX 950M as well as a frugal dual-core i7 processor with Hyperthreading. The MSI PE60 is the only notebook within this comparison that makes use of a conventional HDD.
Case
The style with the black plastic chassis with some red components is definitely a matter of taste and should be appealing to male customers in particular, but we liked it. Both the lid at the same time as the palm rest possess a silky and grippy soft-touch finish, which can be not really susceptible to fingerprints and can be effortlessly cleaned. Unusual: The Dell 7559 has 3 carefully designed fan exhausts. Two of them are situated at the back and 1 on the left side. Regardless of the absence of metal, the 15-inch device is not really light at two.7 kg
Despite the fact that the lid, which is simple to open with a single hand and tends to bounce, will not be seriously thin, you’ll be able to see picture distortions at some spots after you apply stress. As with most touchscreens, the display glass covers practically the entire show frame. It doesn’t call for lots of force to twist the base unit and there was also some unhealthy creaking, which impacted the strikingly flawless impression from the chassis. However, we did not notice any develop quality concerns like uneven gaps or protruding edges.
Connectivity
Due to the fact there’s no optical drive, Dell could have situated the ports further at the back and not at the center from the sides. No less than they’re not at the front, so attached cables and devices aren’t a huge dilemma. In spite of the greater price, you only get the essentials as well as three USB 3.0 ports, which even so needs to be adequate in practice. The HDMI 1.4 output must be utilised to connect to external monitors, as a result, it is only attainable to work with one particular monitor in addition to the internal screen. We measured transfer prices of about one hundred MB/s in the USB 3.0 port with an external difficult drive.
We also checked the performance with the SD-slot in mixture with our reference SD-card Toshiba Exceria Pro SDXC 64 GB UHS-II. The maximum transfer rate is up to 84 MB/s whenever you copy significant files, although you’ll be able to anticipate as much as 58 MB/s whenever you handle typical jpg. files (each about five MB).
Maintenance
Lastly! A single massive upkeep cover in the bottom secured by only one screw and is quite simple to eliminate, permits access towards the following components: Battery, HDD; Wi-Fi module, RAM slots and SSD. What additional are you able to want? The Inspiron 7559 may be the most maintenance-friendly notebook that the author has reviewed so far. Only a single issue is missing for perfection: A battery that will be removed in the outside.
Communication
As the name suggests, the attributes from the Wi-Fi module Intel Dual-Band Wireless-AC 3165 are truly quite clear. If the 2.4 GHz band is fairly crowded at your place, you will be content to hear that 5 GHz networks are supported at the same time, although you might definitely require a corresponding router. The common IEEE 802.11ac (“Gigabit-WLAN”), that is not seriously new any longer, guarantees potentially high transfer prices. Due to a defective router, the author had to adjust his person test atmosphere, so we can’t compare the outcomes with old critiques at this time. In combination using a new Asus RT-AC51U router and an alternative firmware version, web browsing on the Dell 7559 was nevertheless smooth at a distance of two floors and by way of various walls inside a two.four GHz network.
Accessories
Additionally for the mandatory energy adaptor, the box contains only the usual quick-start and warranty info. Recovery drives are certainly not incorporated, which signifies which you may have to rely on the recovery partition.
Input Devices
Touchpad
The conveniently sized touchpad in the Inspiron 7559 is implemented as a ClickPad with no committed mouse buttons. We actually just like the slightly roughened surface which is surrounded by a red stripe. Neither the gliding capabilities, nor the feedback give any result in for criticism. Regrettably, the lower aspect on the surface was not sitting perfectly around the button mechanics, so even slight pressure usually resulted inside a clattering.
On the other hand, there’s no criticism for the response plus the precision. Even speedy swipe gestures were perfectly executed, and drag-&-drop via double tap was no issue. Subjectively, the two mouse button replacements provide a well-adjusted feedback with a firm pressure point and also a clearly perceptible acoustic feedback. The limited functionality is rather disappointing (see image). The input will in fact recognize only two fingers at the identical time, so you’ll be able to hardly use any gestures. Even in the 400 Euros (~$424) price range most notebooks offer a lot more within this respect.
Keyboard
Dell has provided us with a assessment sample in the Inspiron 7559 using a U.S. keyboard layout. Large hands might have some problems using the narrow number pad. Visually, the first impression from the well-integrated keyboard is superior. Regrettably, it is often quickly dented in the center, which ought to not happen especially any time you consider the price tag of your notebook.
The spongy typing experience is less inspiring. You’ll be able to feel the pressure point, but it could have been more defined, in mixture with the soft stroke. Positive aspects of the keyboard are the subtle and even illumination, even though there is just one particular setting, the flat and anti-slippery keys with a clear lettering, the status LEDs for some keys at the same time because the pretty restrained noise development in the massive keys.
Display
Dell has followed the trend towards greater resolutions and equipped the Inspiron 15 7559 with an IPS UHD display using a native resolution of 3840×2160 pixels. This benefits within a pixel density of 244 PPI around the 15.6-inch screen, which means that the pictures are really sharp and you can’t see person pixels at a normal viewing distance of around 50 centimeters (~20 in). Even greater pixel densities are usually reserved for mobile devices, just like the Samsung Galaxy S6 (5.1-inch, 2560×1440 pixels) with 576 PPI. The pretty glossy surface is usually a result on the touchscreen functionality. Dell will not offer other displays within the Inspiron 7000 series in Germany.
276 cd/m² (center) is often a great, but not an excellent value for the maximum brightness. It really is sufficient for all indoor scenarios and only the Acer Aspire VN7 is noticeably brighter within the comparison group. The poor black value of 0.78 cd/m², which is even too higher for IPS standards, results in only a mediocre contrast ratio of 354:1. The situation is similar to the Asus ZenBook Pro, but the other two notebooks manage much greater values due to their better black values (~0.3 cd/m²). Subjectively, black (RGB 0, 0, 0) doesn’t even appear extremely rich compared to brighter picture contents, which is really rare. A brightness distribution of 85% is just average, but we could only notice minimal backlight bleeding at the decrease edge from the panel.
There can still be massive concerns due to the higher resolution with some applications in Windows 10 (see pictures). The tiny font in Origin, for example, required a magnifier to be employed comfortably.
Now we are looking at color deviations, which are represented by DeltaE values. Reduced values indicate a reduced deviation in the ideal value as well as the results need to be smaller than 3 for professional purposes. Only the MSI PE60 manages this ex-works, while the other comparison devices, including our overview sample manage average results for IPS screens between four and 5, which can be still adequate for private customers. The MSI display just isn’t suitable for (semi) professional picture editing, for the reason that it covers only 64% in the wider AdobeRGB color space. However, it truly is the best result within the comparison and slightly ahead of our Dell. Our review unit does not suffer from a visible color cast.
Efficiency
Thanks to the i7 quad-core processor and plenty of fast dual-channel RAM, the Dell Inspiron 15 7559 provides a lot more than enough functionality for all frequent scenarios including HD video editing and 3D rendering. Even heavily parallelized games that benefit from four physical cores should really never be limited by the CPU. We have already mentioned that the GPU are going to be the limiting issue in this case. The SSD guarantees a smooth handling in practice, and 128 GB is adequate for the most essential games. Media files and other games may be stored on the additional HDD.
Processor
The fast quad-core Intel Core i7-6700HQ (4x 2.six to three.5 GHz, Hyperthreading, TDP 45 watts) is based on Intel’s current Skylake generation. Similar for the Broadwell processor, the chip is manufactured inside a 14 nm process. Because of many architectural improvements (“Tick”), the new CPU manages a five to 10% higher per-MHz efficiency compared to its predecessor. Skylake replaces both Haswell also as Broadwell and has an efficiency advantage over the 22 nm Haswell chips in unique, which really should result within a better Turbo utilization under load. The normal configuration of this chip has a specified TDP of 45 watts, which indicates that it truly is suitable for larger notebooks, but the TDP can optionally be reduced to 35 watts by the manufacturer (and by the user via energy settings), which will definitely impact the overall performance.
The processor has a nominal clock of 2.six GHz, but four active cores can reach as much as three.1 GHz (3.three GHz for two active cores) via Turbo Boost. A extremely similar overall performance is provided by the slightly larger clocked 47-watt chip i7-4720HQ (4x two.6 to 3.six GHz, Hyperthreading, Haswell), which can be soldered too. The cores could not maintain the specified 3.1 GHz in our Cinebench loop (R15, multi-core) and usually executed the test at 2.eight GHz. This indicates that there isn’t any throttling, although the Turbo utilization could be better.
Two out of three Cinebench tests determine the expected efficiency final results, which are not reduced on battery power. The diagram below shows that the single-core efficiency of your different CPUs is quite similar, when the quad-cores manage the expected lead over the dual-cores in the multi-core benchmarks.
System Efficiency
The outcomes in PCMark 7 and eight are slightly confusing. Why may be the PCMark 7 overall score with the less powerful Acer Aspire VN7 36% reduce compared to our Dell, but 53% higher in the Productivity benchmark? Moreover, why would be the similarly equipped (in terms of CPU) Asus ZenBook Pro 77% better? PCMark eight result is no less erratic, due to the fact the least powerful device, the Acer, comes out on top. And that the MSI PE60 with its standard really hard drive is ahead of our Inspiron 15 7559 is yet yet another unexpected result.
Nevertheless, the subjective overall performance in practice left a pretty very good impression. Windows 10 boots really quickly, applications launch immediately and even excessive multitasking isn’t a trouble for the quad-core.
Storage Devices
Presently, many modern SSDs are limited to sequential read transfer rates of around 500 MB/S as a result of the SATA-3 interface, which is also the case for the drive in our test model. If you look at the reading efficiency of small random files (4K Read), that is vital for the launch with the OS and applications, you’ll be able to see that the Dell Inspiron 15 7559 manages a excellent 25 MB/s according to AS SSD. This result is close to 30 MB/s, which can be what the fastest SSDs manage (Asus ZenBook Pro).
Surprising: Whilst the Acer Aspire manages only 10 MB/s, it has a massive advantage over the other SSD based notebooks when it reads 4K files in multiple threads (4K-64 Read). CrystalDiskMark doesn’t confirm this behavior, so it really is either an error on our aspect, or an oddity that we can’t explain. The ZenBook Pro has a clear advantage in terms with the not so vital write performance. Overall, the rather slow Lite-ON CV1-8B128 in the Acer is at the bottom on the ranking, when the SSDs in the Asus and also the overview unit are fairly much on par on a high level. Far behind all these devices is certainly the MSI PE60, despite the fact that the results are actually pretty good for a conventional difficult drive.
GPU Overall performance
The familiar Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M, which can be based around the even a lot more familiar GTX 860M (both Maxwell) but with a slightly greater clock, is often a performance-class GPU and here we have the highest configuration with 4 GB of GDDR5-RAM. In terms of performance, there’s in fact a rather big gap for the high-end chips 970M, 980M and 980 (desktop), which have additional shaders and wider memory interfaces in particular. On the other hand, the GTX 960M is easier to keep cool (quieter) and consumes less energy.
The GM107 chip runs at up to 1202 MHz and is compatible with DirectX 12 (Windows 10), but only supports function level 11.0. Nvidia has put lots of work into the energy efficiency on the Maxwell generation. Due to the PureVideo-HD engine, 4K videos in the native resolution usually are not a dilemma, but external monitors can only be driven at 30 Hz in 4K due towards the absence of HDMI two.0. Much more details about special functions from Nvidia like Battery Boost, ShadowPlay and GameStream are available here. Except for some pretty demanding games, the GPU can manage smooth gameplay in all current games with higher to maximum settings, as long as you do not use resolutions higher than Complete HD (1920×1080).
Compared to other notebooks with all the exact same GPU, the functionality of the GTX 960M in our critique unit is usually average in the benchmarks (includes benefits in the 2 GB VRAM version) and therefore around the expected level. The other 960M chips only have a slight advantage of five to 12% in 3DMark (2013) Cloud Gate. The 3DMark 11 overall score doesn’t alter on battery power.
Emissions
System Noise
The Dell Inspiron left a negative impression with its aggressive-chaotic CPU fan behavior, no less than using the activated energy profile “High Performance”, which we use for our measurements. Even small workloads will occasionally result within a fan that suddenly spins up and may be clearly heard 1 meter (~3 ft) away. Increasing the load even further (as with Prime95) will reveal new and intermittent fan speeds, sometimes with high-pitched noises. Overall, it is actually an acceptable murmur, but it really is too loud for the performance level. Add FurMark and the overall noise will drop noticeably after a although, which can be probably caused by the throttling.
We recommend activating the power saving profile if you wish to work having a quiet notebook. Dell has set the energy and acoustics level to 1 (instead of five) and the passive system cooling guideline also helps to take care of your nerves.
Speakers
Regardless of the integrated subwoofer, the sound in the Dell Inspiron 15 7559 puts too much emphasis on the medium and higher tones ex-works (see pictures), that is sometimes additional and sometimes less evident depending on the title and can even be a bit obtrusive at times. Truly deep bass is missing, but the small subwoofer in the bottom does create a richer sound compared to notebooks without having an additional subwoofer. The sound is clear, mostly free of distortions, fairly dynamic for a notebook and there are no annoying volume fluctuations in the decent maximum volume, which is sufficient for medium-sized rooms. Bass-focused Metal music with multiple guitars and drums will bring the sound system from Dell to its limits and it will tend to blur the individual instruments. The sound menu provides an equalizer also as numerous tweaks and presets for gaming, movies and music.
Energy Management
Power Consumption
Are you able to truly notice the improved efficiency of Skylake over Haswell in practice? If you ignore the slower Acer and look in the idle outcomes, you are going to get just this impression, since the similarly powerful Haswell CPUs inside the Asus ZenBook and MSI PE60 consume much extra energy, although a portion of that additional consumption of the MSI is caused by the standard HDD.
The powerful components are nevertheless noticeable under load, where the critique unit consumes far more than the rivals with Haswell quad-cores and (pretty much) the same GPU. We can’t seriously explain the difference. The greater resolution will hardly be the reason. The energy adaptor is just not powerful enough to cover the maximum consumption, so the battery is drained.
Battery Runtime
First, we have a look at the battery capacities of the four notebooks within this comparison. Dell Inspiron 15 7559: 74 Wh, Acer Aspire VN7-572G-72L0: 52.five Wh, Asus ZenBook Pro UX501JW: 96 Wh (!), MSI PE60-2QWi581: 42 Wh. A direct comparison in the battery runtimes will not definitely make much sense whenever you consider these differences, but the outcomes represent the different CPU-GPU combinations and capacities pretty well. The exception would be the surprisingly bad result from the battery monster ZenBook Pro in the realistic Wi-Fi test
Verdict
We have already mentioned that the quite good initial impression with the rather expensive Dell Inspiron 15 7559 (RRP: 1299 Euros/~$1376) suffered a bit during our overview. The touchpad, that is truly very fantastic, revealed a construct good quality issue, and also the pretty soft keyboard disappointed the author. The visually flawless chassis does look pretty great (matter of taste), but should have been sturdier. Optical drives might be less popular, but we expected a single due towards the size as well as the multimedia orientation. The touchpad driver can be a bad joke, along with the pulsating fan control can only be turned down with overall performance restrictions. The author also thinks the use of expensive touchscreens, which have a glossy surface, does not make lots of sense for a non-convertible. A further question is whether you can really benefit from the high resolution on a 15-inch device or if there are only drawbacks like scaling issues along with the higher price tag.