Dell Inspiron 15 7000 7547 - New Model Available

Dell spec sheet has the measurements: ftp://ftp.dell.com/Manuals/all-prod...iron-15-7548-laptop_Reference Guide_en-us.pdf

Height 19.90 mm (0.78 in)
Width 377.80 mm (14.87 in)
Depth 261.20 mm (10.28 in)
Weight (maximum) 2.20 kg (4.85 lb)

The bezel is about 5/8" (15.8mm) on the sides, 7/8" (22.2 mm) on the top and 1 1/4" (31.7mm) on the bottom.

The screen design from this is essentially the same as the XPS 13 (L321x) I have, but bigger bezels obviously. Bonded glass display with rubber seal, milled aluminum shell. Honestly it looks like what you would get if the XPS 13 and the old XPS 17 (L702x) had a child

 

So I am returning the beautiful, yet flawed (partially my fault) 7548. Here's the story: I had a few hours to play around with it and except for the "not so very good but still can cope with" trackpad, I decided to install windows 10 preview. And then it happened. There is a back bar on the bottom of the screen that looks like it's not accurately configured. I can't change the resolution or adjust the dpi scaling any more. Since it's a clean install, none of the drivers were there so I couldn't do anything with it. The screen was not functioning right at all. I tried installing the intel HD graphics and AMD driver from Dell but nothing worked. I can't even play video on it for christ's sake. Also the internet speed is very bad. That said, it might not be Dell's fault. But they obviously did something funky and made the whole process not as easy as before. I feel like using a 2000 Pentium to run this thing. The majority of the problem can be blamed on the horrible horrible HDD that is included (or prob the coin whine sound that I hear, I'm not sure on this so don't hold me responsible). Everything takes so long to run and after a while, it is very frustrating to work with it. It is just unbearable. So one advice for you is that if you want to buy this laptop, choose the one with SSD since it is kindda hard to open the base cover and install the SSD yourself without damaging anything. Moreover, the laptop will not boot if you just put an SSD and install windows from a usb. I don't know why or how and I am not too keen on finding a solution or tweaking the boot setting. So overall, if you get the SSD version and stick to windows 8.1 (I don't think you should clean install windows even since something might go wrong after that), this laptop might be a very good buy. Again it is not fair to just dump everything on Dell here.
Okay here are some of the positive thing: the thing is gorgeous as I previously had a chance to play with Best Buy model. It is quite big since Dell didn't even care about reducing the bezels (which is another reason I am not so heartbroken about returning this laptop). I bet next year model will be a better option when the bezels are cut to their edges and Maxwell is integrated. It is light weight. Much more portable than the 7537 mid 2013 model. The screen again is really awesome, maybe one of the best out there. I think it's at least 300 nits and contrast is around 900:1. The colors are warmer than those on 7537 which means the screen has a slight yellow tint covering instead of a blue-ish look. It's up to personal reference. But overall, it is very top-notch and worth the money. There's some light bleeding issue going on but I don't really care. Keyboard is sturdy and no-flex and evenly lit. Typing is a joy on this laptop. It resembles the MB feel a lot regarding the touch, the keyboard, the hinge...One last observation: the speakers are extremely loud and clear. Fantastic sound quality.
That's all I have to say about this unfortunately short marriage between me and this laptop as of now. If this thing had an SSD, I'd give it a 4 out of 5 really (points off due to the big bezels, the ugly adapter with no light on the jack, and the small battery size). I have some picture of the internal so if you guys are curious, I'd love to post them here. Otherwise, this will be the end for me. Sorry for messing up guys.

 

paulthuong you installed an unfinished version of Windows 10 that has plenty of bugs, also a 5400 rpm HDD is always slow.

About opening the laptop in their service manual dell states that it should be fairly easy thing to do link

Now what I would like to ask is about that R7 M270 that doesn't even exist on AMD's webpage. Can anybody run GPUz and post a screenshot with the specs of the card? or a screenshot of the catalyst's software under the hardware tab (it should list a summary with the specs).


Also here are the Dell Inspiron 15 7548 Specifications

Cheers

 

Well, I have the latest version of win 10 on the 7537 and the 3000 series and they are all okay. So it's not the prob with software but hardware compatibility. Anyway, I shouldn't talk since I'm the criminal here.

 

I didn't mean to sound harsh, I've been reading about issues with windows 10 even on Surface tablets. It wouldn't come as a surprise that there could be some issues on brand new laptops such as this.

Anyway do you still have it? Any info on the R7 M270?

 

Heh. that's alright. No hard feelings here. As I said, the laptop is no good to use now since I couldn't install both the Intel and AMD drivers. Therefore, everything is very choppy and laggy.

 

Here you go: http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/15/01/25/9vn.png

 

So do not use the latest Catalyst drivers from AMD, keep the Dell driver. I swapped the driver and it identifies the graphics card as a R7 M265 in device manager. I benchmarked it before and after and it dropped by 23% on the Futuremark Cloud Gate benchmark. Switched the driver back and the performance bounced right back.

 

Thank you 9Blu. It's pretty weird because it looks like a R7 M265 (clocks, bandwidth) but says it has a 32 bit bus!!! It has to be an error,

Maybe It's so new that the drivers doesn't recognize it yet. Can you share some benchmark numbers to compare it to the m265?

Also, dell should also give more info on this it is ridiculous that this GPU doesn't even show in the vendor's webpage.

 

Yea everything seems to get it confused for a R7 M265. I suspect it's just a tweaked version of it. I don't have a great benchmark to use yet. The link below shows a full run for 3DMark but it's well below what the M265 scores (1800). I probably need to tweak the background processes to get the score up. You'll notice it even says M265 on the futuremark site. In the 3DMark software it shows up correctly as a M270.

AMD Radeon R7 M265 video card benchmark result - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5500U CPU @ 2.40GHz,Dell Inc. 0AM6R0

 

Looks like the Ice Storm test is off compared to other M265 link.

Probably what you say a tweaked version of a R7 M265 which doesn't have the right drivers yet. I just wish Dell had placed a 850m or a 950m instead. Something a bit more powerful.

 

Hi guys. I am really thinking about buying the top i7 with the SSD. For a start I am bemused HDDs are still fit in products of this calibre but there you go. Yes I said calibre, i'm British! Well I currently own an Acer 5920G from 2008. It was the top model and it has served me so well, but this year it must be replaced. I am guessing even with any criticisms of this new Inspirion 15 7000, it would be a major leap forward for me.

I do have some questions though. So far I see in the UK we only have the i7 models. Will there be i5? (I presume so). In which case is it worth waiting? I am not a gamer, although it could be nice. I would like to play COH2 with a friend. The i7 has hyperthreading right? But I am impatient. Secondly the screen brightness. You guys seem to think it isn't so good? It's available here for £949 which probably doesn't mean much, and I don't know if there are any offers. They told me finance isn't available, so...hmmm.

I expected the bottom to be metal but hey plastic isn't so bad. Oh I meant to say. I primarily use my laptop as my main desktop PC. It sits there plugged in 85% of the time and is a really nice solution for me. I could send a photo of the current setup. I understand this hurts the battery but hey.

Sorry for the essay! Thanks.

 

I've ordered the Dell 7548. I've had Dells for the last 8 years or so, and they are bulletproof, so I've no qualms getting another.

I've gone for the 256GB SSD version, as I updated my old Dell's with SSD's and they make an enormous difference. The 2x2 wireless card is useful as well - an extra £100 for both is pretty good.

For the price it looks like an outstanding laptop. Yes, you can get quicker laptops, but the combination of the 4k 15 inch screen, 16GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, 4GB of video card, 4 cell battery & backlit keyboard - all in a body 0.75 inches deep - is pretty compelling and I've not seen anything that matches that value at that price.

Dell have to be careful as this is getting very close to XPS territory at a lot less money. Inspiron's are supposed to be dependable, solid and mostly uninspiring. They have put in a slower video card (the R7 M270 is a souped up M265) compared to the XPS and dialled the contrast ratio down by the look of it, but it's still a very capable machine for pretty much anything I can throw at it. I don't game - at least not on a PC - so I'm looking forward to it arriving sometime next week. I try and buy a reasonably fresh machine so that it lasts a good 3-4 years and I expect this one will do that nicely.

 

Hi guys, I'm tempted to buy this new Dell Inspiron 15 7000 (7548) but I don't know if the i7-5500u can meet my needs... I will use the laptop essentially for software/web developing and big data analysis. Do you think that the cpu will limit me?

P.S.: The numpad has been removed?

 

The 5500U is a dual core with hyperthreading proc, so 2 physical, 2 logical cores. It's not slow and would be fine for most development work, but it's not a powerhouse compared to some of the higher end mobile procs. This should give you some idea where it sits:

PassMark CPU Lookup

And yes, they axed the numpad

 

Can some one please tell me a actual tested figure for the battery life on the dell inspiron 15 7548. Please state is the battery is 3 cell or 4 cell as well. Thank you

 

What is the screen model of 4k screen? Can someone please share?

 

I am also confused. 400:1 seems like a really low contrast ratio? Can anybody testify to this? Is it an ips?

 

Is there a separate number pad on the keyboard?

 

• 4-cell battery on the 4K models, 3-cell on the non-4K models. Have not tested yet, sorry.
• Screen is reporting as SDC4C46
• Screen is 60Hz IPS and looks great.
• No numeric keypad

Model spec sheet is available from here: ftp://ftp.dell.com/Manuals/all-prod...iron-15-7548-laptop_Reference Guide_en-us.pdf

 

So one thing I just noticed, there is a hot spot (as in temp, as in REALLY hot) just above the Dell logo on the lower screen bezel. Anyone else with a 7548 seeing this? I'll take a thermograph of the laptop tonight and post it.

 

Mines now shipped! It's got to get to the UK and it says it's currently in China, so it will take a few days to get to me.

 

I could do with some help.
I bought a Hp envy 15 140na with a 15 4200m and a 840m as a reasonably portable laptop with an emphasis on some low detail gaming in my spare time. It cooked itself in a sleeve so I returned a it and can now reassess what I want and came upon this model (the 7548) w/ i7 5500u, 1080p, 16gb ram!, and no ssd ,touch screen and 'r7 m270' (dell were very evasive about the card's performance when i asked them. For £750 in the uk.
I was satisfied with the envy for a bit of gaming and was wondering how well this woukd compare to the old Hp.
Dell: http://www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-15-7548-laptop/pd?oc=cn75805&model_id=inspiron-15-7548-laptop
Old HP: http://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=ECC_BUNDLE_4821225&opt=&sel=PCNB
This aspire nitro at seeming ridiculously low price although not to confident about 'Laptops direct' selling for 150 less than elsewhere: http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Acer.../version.asp?refsource=ldawin&affid=89247#top

Cheers,
Sorry for the wall of text

 

Let us know what you think maybe?

In fact can anybody give us a recent review of this? As I said before I am looking at the top model and I haven't come across any online reviews from the bigger names. I also find that the larger laptops tend to be rather ignored by the popular Youtube reviewers.

One thing that has disappointed me is Dell not offering finance. Do any other places sell the model that would?

Thanks.

 

Thermographs of the laptop. So yea, a little warm The good news is I used it all day and that is the only real warm spot I noticed. The keyboard and wrist wrest stayed comfortable and uniform. No noticeable hotspots. It's hard to get a good shot of the keyboard though, that spot on the screen is too bright.

 

Wow a FLIR camera, do they sell small cameras? We had one at my previous work but it was mounted on a helicopter lol and it was rather bulky.

Also 200ºF under the display, isn't that a bit too much considering there shouldn't be anything there?

 

The camera is a FLIR One camera for the iPhone 5. It's basically a case that slips on the phone and interfaces via the lightning port. It has two cameras, one thermal and one visual, right next to each other. That way they can use a low-res thermal camera and then overlay it over the visual camera image to give you an image that is still easy to read. They have a much smaller version that just clips to the bottom of an iPhone or Android phone coming out this year.

Not sure what is there. I noticed while using it at work that it was getting really hot, like almost painful to the touch. That's what prompted me to do the thermograph. CPU and graphics card are both in the laptop body according to the service guide. Really curious to see if anyone else with the 7548 sees the same thing when they get their laptops.

 

So now I'm undecided whether to buy this Dell 7548 or the XPS 15. Design seems pretty similar, but XPS 15 comes with a powerful (quadcore) i7 and a better battery life. Btw the i7-5500U will require less power so I don't know if the difference in battery duration will be considerable. What is surely different is the price! It's worth it to spend 700€ more?

 

Personally I didn't think so. My original plan was to get the XPS 15 but the Inspiron was just much more bang for the buck. The XPS has a better CPU, battery, GPU, and materials in a smaller package. Better CPU and battery would be nice but for what I am using the laptop for (work, mostly Office docs but occasional heavy number crunching in Excel and SPSS) neither was a big deal. I'm at a desk or conference table 99% of the time I'm using it so as long as the battery can survive a few hours here and there I'm OK*. Better GPU is a nice have but keep in mind that you will NOT be gaming at 4K on either laptop. I have 4K monitors at home and my overclocked 780ti barely keep up.

As for fit/finish it's just not enough for the price difference, especially now that the Inspiron also has an edge-to-edge glass display. The XPS is tiny for its screen size but the Inspiron isn't exactly huge either.

*So far I've gone just about 3 hours on the battery without draining it. Unfortunately I really didn't pay attention to how much battery was left when I went to plug it back in. Battery bar is estimating 5:58 minutes of run time. I suspect that's overly generous but 4 hours is not out of the question.

 

I would prefer the XPS more for the CPU than for the rest. As I said some posts ago, I will use the notebook for software development, web development and big data analysis, so I think that i7 quad core it's preferable and sure it will provides greater longevity to the device. I will not play games, maybe sometimes a tdm with CoD but without need of ultra details. I also will use it on the desk for most of the day time, so battery it's not a true problem. This is a veery difficult decision!

 

You are not the only one in that position, Starfast. I also do not know if i shall go for the inspiron or the XPS :| right now i think about waiting for the next gen intel CPU, skylake, because they are due for Q2 and should be much more powerfull than the current gen. Hope than Dell will update the XPS 15 with one of those

 

I keep my laptop on my desk 99% of the time. It's basically my home PC and i've grown used to the setup. I have a 23 inch monitor to make it dual displays. I do not play games except for very rare COH2. Therefore even the Inspirion is overkill really but it will last me a long time and be one hell of an upgrade over my current laptop. Just waiting for some damn reviews to come out! The top Inspirion in the UK comes with SSD so I will have that.

 

So about that hot spot (again). Starting to get concerned. Today is the first day I've been working on the laptop for most of the day. After about 6 hours I've started to have intermittent hard lockups. Hard locks are usually indicative of some sort of hardware issue. I'm going to do some testing over the weekend and see but I may be calling Dell come Monday .

 

I'm in the same situation ...

 

For me, the additional money for the XPS in just not justified. I'm not going to need anything to handle serious number crunching that the better processor promises & I won't be taking it out & about very much - not that the inspiron is very big anyway.

It just seems very good value for money. The XPS is certainly a superior laptop, but in terms of value it lags behind the new Inspiron.

 

If it happens again send it back, you've got nothing to loose.

 

I've got exactly the same issue. But mine after one day. It will randomly lock up and nothing can be done. I have tried to reinstall from the recovery partition with no luck. I also will be calling dell on Monday. Not happy about this at all after waiting nearly 2 weeks for it to arrive.

 

I ordered the 7548 - the one with 4K screen and 256 GB SSD.
I am now contemplating Lenovo Y50-70 UHD which has better specs for almost the same price.
The thing that's holding me back is the brightness and the heat generation comments in the this review of Y50-70 UHD.
Can any existing user of Inspiron 15 7000 - 7548 with 4K screen comment on the brightness and heat under gaming load?
I can't find any number in nits for its screen's brightness.

 

Hi,
I am planning to switch my order to this model and fit in a 1 TB ssd by myself.
That would be a lot cheaper than buying their SSD version.
But I am worried now that you mentioned that you weren't able to do a clean install of windows.
May I know what did you use for this installation and if creating some kind of restore point on a USB would work?

 

Please somebody do a review of this damn machine!

 

Are you seeing the same hotspot on the screen bezel? Right around the top of the Dell logo?

 

The specs mention a RJ-45 port, however the pictures from Dell do not show one. Does it have an RJ-45 port and if so, is it a 1 Gbit or a 100 Mbit port?

 

It does not have an ethernet port. Here is the full spec sheet for the 7548 model: http://downloads.dell.com/Manuals/a...iron-15-7548-laptop_Reference Guide_en-us.pdf

 

Mine has arrived. I've used it for about an hour and these are my initial thoughts:

The screen is great. Bright, colourful & very responsive to touch - amazingly so.
The laptop is fairly thin & light, it weighs a lot less than I anticipated.
The battery is built-in. Maybe it's me, but I was expecting a swappable battery.
Keyboard is cool. Backlight works well, responsive, well spaced, but no number keypad.
Speed is very impressive. Web pages download instantly, Google Earth flies. I have the SSD version.
No buttons other than the power button. Uses function buttons instead without need to use shift key.
Runs cools, except the screen around the Dell logo. It's warm.

So far, I'm impressed.

 

Hi guys, mine (SSD version) arrived today as well and so far I really like it.

I just find it to become quite noisy from time to time (eg when doing a Windows Update, copying data...). Anyone having the same experience? Is that normal?

 

The fan occasionally kicks in, but it's the only noise the laptop makes. It's only for a few seconds at a time and I'd not call it noisy.

It's a very smooth case design. No panels anywhere, unlike Dell's I have had before which have panels for HDD's, memory, etc.

 

How are the speakers? Can you guys take some pics / maybe do youtube video review?

 

I'll post some pictures tomorrow.

Two speakers are located at the front underside, either side of the touchpad, & produce perfectly good sound.

I must say it's the most un-Dell like Dell I've ever had. Fast to start, fast to run, slim & very cool looking, with horsepower to spare. I'm struggling to meaningfully criticise it.

Not having a swappable battery, no number keypad & no DVD player perhaps, but none of those are a deal breaker & keep the weight down.

At the moment, very pleased. I'm not a power user, but if you want a fairly light, bright, good value laptop that will last a few years, you could do worse than get one of these.

 

Appreciate the reviews guys. Had no idea the battery wasn't swappable. I killed the battery on my last laptop as it was predominantly plugged in. I guess I'll have to be more careful with this one.

 

Someone mentioned video reviews. I happen to know that a very good and new YouTube reviewer called 'Dave Lee' (That's his channel name), has the new inspirion and is currently making the video review for it. He has also reviewed the XPS 13.