Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
I haven't noticed a user review thread for this laptop and although it's not particularly new it can be bought inexpensively. My example arrived today ordered 12 days ago via the Dell UK Outlet site. It was categorised as certified refurbished but it arrived as-new, no marks, still with protective film all over the place. It has the 2.20-3.10GHz Core i7 2670qm quad core Sandy Bridge CPU and nVidia GT 525M GPU. The fitted HDD is a 5400RPM WD Scorpio Blue 750GB unit. Only 2GB of RAM was fitted but I had already ordered 2x 4GB SODIMMs to replace the single 2GB SODIMM.
Total price was £458, including VAT and special offer free delivery, plus a £15 discount coupon and the cost of the 8GB RAM (£29). Amazon UK is advertising the same spec. 15R new for £680. You can get refurbished 15Rs on eBay and the best price I saw for my model and spec. was about £40 dearer including shipping. But I might have received my unit quicker that way as it would have been shipped from the UK. The unit I received from Dell came from Hungary and took 12 days to arrive, a day longer than indicated in the order confirmation too. Dell's delivery tracking information tells you nothing useful until about the day before the consignment is delivered.
I hadn't seen or tried a 15R N5110 before deciding to order one. I had to rely on a fairly small number of professional reviews plus some forum discussions. The price/power ratio was the clincher. This laptop will be doing video editing using Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 and the Core i7 2670qm CPU plus GeForce 525M graphics with 96 CUDA cores essential for Adobe's Mercury Playback Engine hardware acceleration should add up to very smooth and fast video editing for a laptop. Photos of the N5110 also looked positive and as I will be lugging it around the reasonably slim look and not excessive weight were positive. I also liked the look of the chiclet-style keyboard and was impressed with the inclusion of 2x USB3 ports and an eSATA/USB port.
My budget could not extend to a full HD screen so I was not too bothered by the 1366x768 screen and I knew it would be substantially better than my old HP Touchsmart's 12.1 inch 1280x800 screen and so it is; much brighter and with a cleaner white. The lateral viewing angles are not bad although you need to be careful with vertical angles. There is a slight graininess, too. It's a glossy screen but I haven't been troubled by reflections indoors. I haven't yet calibrated the screen but I am confident it will be more than adequate for my needs considering the budget. I'll post some details about the measure gamut later.
Build quality is pretty good. It's an all-plastic chassis and the only creaking I can hear is the left palm rest if you press hard. The keyboard feel is fine, although the keys drum a bit when tapped. There have been references to a 'hollow' feel as if there is nothing under the keyboard and I concur. If you press the centre of the keyboard hard it does flex but not in normal use. So the keyboard is comfortable to use but perhaps not as quiet as hoped for but the noise is not hard-edged. The touch-pad is large and multi-touch. I haven't yet sorted out the pad configuration but am getting used to two-fingered scrolling, for example. The touch pad buttons feel nice to me because they move a fair way and have a clear detent. Although there is no right hand scroll bar marked like with HP laptops and others you can configure it to work that way if you wish.
The palm rest is nicely finished in a dark brushed metal-effect but the chrome strip around the keyboard looks tacky. I like the option of a replaceable screen lid and am already dropping hints that a nice designer lid would be a nice Christmas present! It also means if the lid gets scratched you can replace it. The general finish in black plastic is lacking in the luxury feel but it is solid. The PSU supplied with my unit is the heavy duty 130W version to serve the i7 processor and GT 525M GPU load. It's slim but wide and quite heavy. I don't see the point of an illuminated connector if the illumination shines even when it's disconnected from the laptop - on my HP it's much more sensible, the power port is illuminated when power is feeding the laptop only.
Changing the memory SODIMM modules was very easy. I do want to fit an SSD in place of the HDD but that will require a comprehensive dismantling of the laptop's innards including the removal of the keyboard and motherboard. I'm also going to put an HDD in the space currently occupied by the DVD-writer using a standard 2nd drive SATA caddy.
I have only had my N5110 for one day so my experience of using the unit is fairly limited. I have installed Adobe Lightroom 4.1 and compared to my old HP Touchsmart it is infinitely more responsive. A Lighthroom batch job of nearly 400 adjusted photos took 57 minutes to complete compared to three and half hours with my old HP (which benefits from an SDD, remember). That's all down to the CPU superiority. I haven't really stretched the CPU yet. I haven't yet tested the battery life, but I will post an update in due course. Heat has not been an issue at all so far and neither has been fan noise, even when the CPU was pushed quite hard while Lightroom was processing its batch job.
Overall I'm delighted with what I have received considering the price I paid for it. I'm looking forward to upgrading the HDD to SSD and possibly doing other mods like overclocking the GPU and even improving heat efficiency using thermal compound on the CPU and GPU heat sinks - we'll see if this is required first.
Ian
-
-
Great review. Congratulations!
-
Actually, it wasn't difficult or particularly 'good' - just a thought download
My work is writing about tech., including reviews and in particular about digital photography. But am pleased you appear to like it. Looks like your 15R is similar to mine; did you fit the Seagate yourself? That Lenovo spec. looks hot too!
Ian -
Well I managed to dismantle the whole laptop about three times to repaste and I can get to the hard disk easily now but I don't plan to replace it anytime soon.
I'm facing heat issues ( Starting from summer ). I'm going to replace the thermal paste one last time ( I failed about 3 times ).
The lenovo is not actually mine, it's my brother's but I can play with it anytime I want
-
-
Was looking at the thread on here about mSata caching. I can't see an option in the BIOS for Intel Rapid anything - is this feature not supported on the N5110? My BIOS is A09.
Just run my first Premiere Pro CS6 video render. A 12 minute video project that took three and a half hours to render on my HP Touchsmart took 28 minutes on the N5110 and that's purely software processed. Once I get the GT 525M GPU enabled for Adobe Mercury Playback Engine hardware acceleration it should be significantly faster again (8-10x faster with a bit of luck). The fans certainly started to work hard during the render
Ian -
-
I have had my N5110 for almost a week now and here are some more thoughts:
I have profiled the screen with Datacolor Spyder4 Elite and it confirms that the uncalibrated display is on the cool side. The colour gamut is rated at 75% of sRGB, which is a little disappointing. I will see whether xRite i1 Pro can produce a better profile. The screen is also very (read: too) bright. I'm currently using it on 54% brightness. I occasionally notice the calibration loads and changes the screen hue without warning, probably when the HD3000 Intel integrated GPU switches back and forth between the nVidia discrete GPU. Incidentally, I have updated to the latest GeForce GT 525M drivers form the nVidia website as advised for enabling and using GPU acceleration for Adobe Mercury Engine Playback hardware acceleration.
* see note below * Battery life in standard Dell power plan mode with nVidia GPU preferred in the settings is only about 2 hours but switching to Power Save plan for browsing and word processing light use is a much more useful 4.5-5 hours. My old laptop was pushing it to get 2.5 hours even with its big battery and under-volting, so relatively-speaking I am very happy again. A 9-cell battery could boost that to around 7 hours and I may even try some of the tricks in the N5110 BIOS thread here to undervolt the system and eak out a little more battery life
* (UPDATE) The above is actually incorrect - I'm getting just under 5 hours with the Dell power plan with Intel HD3000 integrated graphics preferred in the settings. I thought I was using Power Saver mode - but I was very surprised to see that all along I wasn't. So I will try Power Saver mode and report back!
In Dell power plan (which is their customise version of 'Balanced' plan) the cooling fan is working most of the time with a moderate amount of noise. In Power Saving plan you can only hear the fan occasionally unless you are in a very quiet room when the fan makes an occasional faint whisper/rasping noise.
I have got used to the keyboard and while it isn't as positive as my old HP or my wife's Compaq, I can type quickly, so no major issues there.
Some observations about the exterior controls and ports - I personally prefer ports on the sides rather than hanging off the back as you need to turn the laptop around to see the back, and the N5110 has the power, LAN, monitor D-Sub and a USB port all on the back. The power plug has become disconnected without falling out a couple of times and the silly light on the plug doesn't go out when this happens. There is no dedicated Wifi button/switch, which I miss. Instead you need to press one of the three extra function buttons at the top right of the keybaord that summons the Windows Mobility settings on-screen. The power button is also only accessible when the lid is up, so if you are using an external monitor, as I do at the office, you need to open the screen to turn the laptop on and off. Having the LED status lights on the front of the unit is good when the screen is down when I use it at the office but hidden when I'm typing on my lap.
I like the big touch pad - it's smooth and comfortable and the big buttons are good, although some might not like their deep action. The multi-touch capability is new to me on a laptop and it's a shame that the finger combinations and actions are different to a typical smartphone but this might be adjustable in the settings. I only use the two-fingered scroll action at the moment.
In terms of size and weight, it's more size than weight that I notice. I have two laptop bags and the width of the N5110 makes it a tight fit in both!
I'm very pleased with the build quality considering this is a budget laptop with an entirely plastic chassis. Only the left palm rest moves and make a slight noise if you press it. Although there is a trademark hollow sound when typing, and a bit of flex in the keyboard, the rest of the chassis is solid and creak-free. This is also a fairly slim design unlike the XPS 15 I was also considering, so Dell has done a good job on the torsional rigidity. I can't get any ripple effect by pressing on the back of the screen either. The screen doesn't go very far back but I get an optimal viewing angle without a problem - the screen is quite sensitive to vertical viewing angle.
Performance is superb as I have found when running video renders in Premiere Pro CS6 with GPU acceleration enabled. When the system is worked hard the fan also works hard but it's not an awful din and I have not experienced any dire effects of overheating that have been reported elsewhere like unexpected shut downs.
I have briefly played with the Webcam after installing Skype and it's nice and sharp and with a good framerate. It's quite a wide angle view so one's head is not very large in the view, but good if you want to include several people and in my case with the screen tilted to my liking my head is at the bottom of the screen.
My plan is to fit an SSD and a Seagate Momentus 750GB hybrid drive in the optical drive bay so I have been recording some application benchmarks. It certainly blitzes my old HP Touchsmart (which does have an SSD) being between 5-80 times faster depending on the application.
That's all for now
Ian -
-
-
Dell Inspiron 15R N5110 - user review
Discussion in 'Dell' started by ifb-online, Jul 31, 2012.
