Dell Inspiron 17R Review Discussion

The newly designed Inspiron 17R is the latest 17.3-inch desktop-replacement notebook from Dell. Equipped with the Intel Core i3 and i5 processors with Intel GMA HD graphics, this budget-friendly system is aimed at the masses. In this review we take an in-depth look at this new system and see how it performs.

Read the full content of this Article: Dell Inspiron 17R Review

 

Nicely written review. This is a very reasonable notebook for the money. The keyboard looks quite strange, it's very wide-looking. Dell likes the soft rounded edges a bit too much IMO.

It seems that getting a 17.3" screen is the only way to get better than a 1366x768 resolution. 1600x900 is decent these days.

 

I personally wouldn't want a 17-inch laptop that didn't have discrete graphics or a 1080p display. However, based on what I've heard about Dell's sales figures for this type of notebook, it looks like there are quite a few consumers out there who want a low-cost desktop replacement notebook with a big screen.

Those folks don't care about extreme gaming performance or Blu-ray playback as much as they care about getting a big-sceen notebook at a low cost.

The Dell Inspiron 17R probably works perfectly for those people.

 

It is always more confortable to work in a big screen and with more definition. Even if i wouldn't need a discrete GPU for my 3D apps i would want a 17".

 

For a starting price of $499 that's not bad. I personally would never buy a Dell again after my experience with my E1705 (I know that was 3 years ago) and Dell's CS. Perhaps they've improved since then, which can only be better for the consumer.

 

Anyone noticed i3 laptop prices has dropped like a rock to the point that they make netbooks seem irrelevant?

 

I'd like to share. I recently bought a refurbished 17R from the outlet. This system was a 2.4 ghz i5 with dedicated nvidia card, 4 gigs of ram, and bluray. It worked fine first.. but then I realized that there was a noise coming from near the fan.. something was loose.. Turning it around on and hearning an awful sound of components in the fans was enought to make me call tech support asap.. They first had my install software to verify that the system was spec.. At that moment.. the video to the screen is killed. The screen maintained power.. but there was no signal and some noise.


Dell sends a technician to swap all new components.. He scratches the case before I can give him something to protect it from scratching. The jingling sound came from six pieces of hard plastic that appears to have been cut from something else and placed inside the system before shipping. After the swap.. the system seems to be normal.. I decide to refresh the system software to eliminate all the extra software.. but not before doing a bios upgrade. When installing windows.. all goes well.. its FAST!

I run updates and after a bit.. BSOD. Now all I get are BSOD, cant even repair. I try to reinstall windows.. BSOD in the install. In the bios the system monitor checks everything to be OK. Keep getting BSOD.

I call dell. They are sending me a studio 17 with an i7 720. No blu ray. Hopefully after all of this I have a much faster system.. but its not over yet.

 

that's the problem with buying refurbs.

 

Buyers Beware. This laptop has some significant negatives.

The multi-touch pad behaves strangely. No matter what settings I try, it's either too sensitive to the edges of your palms hitting it while typing (yanking the cursor off to who knows where) or it's "jerky" and not very responsive when you're trying to scroll or do other smooth movements.

The fan cycles on and off with CPU activity even when the laptop is freshly booted and stone cold. And it always starts with a noisy WOOOSH! and then slows down. It's really annoying. Temp monitoring software show the temps under 40 C (plenty cool) and the fan still cycles as often as every 10 seconds even with the latest bios update. This is just sloppy thermal management.

The keyboard is also odd and I can't type nearly as fast on it as my other Dell laptops. I'm not a big fan of "chicklet" keyboards but this one is far worse than most (although it is fairly solid with minimal flex). I think part of the problem is too little key travel.

It's extremely difficult to access the hard drive. You have to remove the battery, optical drive, keyboard, literally 20+ screws, 4 fragile ribbon cables, and then worst of all, PRY the entire plastic top off the plastic base as it's snapped on with 12+ clips around the edges. This is just about impossible to do without leaving marks in the plastic base and top that are visible when the laptop is re-assembled. See Dell's online service manual.

And, after all that, I discovered Sandforce based SSDs (nearly all the good ones) don't work right in this laptop. They are not recognized when the laptop wakes up from sleep so you get a blue screen crash. OCZ, and other manufactures, blame the problem on Dell. Dell support, of course, blames the SSD manufactures and does not support third party hardware. See the SSD forums for more.

The factory configuration is really slow. Re-installing Windows 7 cut the boot time to about 1/4 what it was out of the box. There's lots of extra junk including trial security software, broken (and crippled) backup software, and lots of cheesy/questionable Dell apps that load in the background on boot. And some of it is "nagware" with Dell trying to get you to use their cloud backup, various upgrades to apps, etc. So expect some annoying pop ups, etc.

While Sandy Bridge, USB 3.0, etc. is great on paper. This laptop has some significant issues in my opinion. It also appears the Dell Vostro 3750 uses the exact same motherboard, keyboard, and likely marginal multi-touch pad. I don't know about the XPS 17 but those all have nVidia graphics and are rumored to run hot and have poor battery life.

I would suggest waiting for better Sandy Bridge options rather than opting for the current 17R (or Vostro 3750).

 

Resident Geek,

are you talking about the same laptop?

This is from the text: "Users looking to upgrade the Inspiron 17R will find it easy through one access panel on the bottom of the notebook. With a few Phillips head screws removed, you gain access to the system memory and hard drive."