Hey, how's it going guys? This is Dave 2D and this is my review of the Dell Inspiron 15" 7559.
So this is kind of like an update to the 7000 series from earlier this year
But what makes this one special is the price. It's $800 and it's kind of geared towards gamers.
It's a black device with red accents so it looks pretty cool, but it's packed to the gills with stuff
that's like perfect for mid-level laptop gaming
which is really surprising because an $800 device from Dell that's good for gaming? Seems impossible, right?
Let's take a look. Now to keep the price of this laptop as low as possible
Dell had to cut some corners and packaging was one of the first corners they cut.
It's packed in this egg carton material
It's not the prettiest unboxing experience, but it works.
The top surface of this laptop has this black soft touch rubber finish
and it's got this distinct red Dell logo. I think this is actually the first red Dell logo I've ever seen.
I have this love-hate relationship with this soft touch material
I love it when it's new. It's like a very inviting material to use and has really great grip.
Feels nice in your hand and doesn't show fingerprints easily.
But then when it gets older, it can look really beat up. Scratches and scuffs show up really easily on this material.
But the laptop also comes with a regular plastic finish if that's what you want.
The bottom surface is plastic. There's two rubber strips here for grip, a small subwoofer,
and a single screw that gives you full access to the internals. I really like how easy it is to open it up.
And inside we have access to the hard drive, a spare M.2 SATA socket for a second drive, and the RAM slots.
Now this is an 8 GB model and the RAM they give you is an 8 GB stick instead of a pair of 4 GB sticks,
so if you want to update to 16 GB you only need to buy more of the 8 GB sticks so that's always nice.
It's a little bit less than an inch thick and 5.7 lbs.
On the left side, we have the power connection, exhaust vent, a pair of USB 3.0 ports, and a headphone jack.
And on the right side, we have the SD card slot, another USB 3.0 port, full sized HDMI 1.4, and an Ethernet jack.
And if you care, the SD card goes in pretty deep.
On the back side, there are some exhaust vents that have these red metal fins inside them,
and they look cool, but they can get bent pretty easily. You can bend them back with like
a screwdriver or something, but just be careful cause if you bend them back and forth a bunch,
they're going to look bad.
The overall build quality is pretty good. The hinge is solid,
the keyboard area is surprisingly sturdy, and the screen has some flux. Not a lot, but it's kind of
expected for the material that they chose.
The configuration I'm reviewing is the base model. It's a Skylake core i5 running at 2.3 GHz,
GTX 960M with 4 GB of RAM, a 15.6" 1080p screen,
8 GB of RAM, a 1 TB hard drive, and this will run you $800 US.
Lifting the lid, the palm rest has that same soft touch material, and again I have that love-hate relationship with it.
So the keyboard has that number pad split that you might have to get used to but the layout is otherwise good.
The arrow keys are well positioned, and it's not surrounded by any other keys
and also the backlighting as actually really nice on this keyboard.
There's a high setting, a medium setting, and off. But the typing experience isn't the best.
The travel on each key stroke seems okay, but the keys still feel really stiff even after using it for a week.
Playing games on it is perfectly fine. I don't love it as a keyboard for typing.
The trackpad is also kind of mediocre. It skips around a bit when you're tracking, and I don't love the texture on the surface
and I don't love the buttons, they're kind of stiff. Again, it's not the best, but for a gaming laptop
it probably doesn't matter that much anyways because you'll probably have a mouse connected to it.
The screen is a 15.9" IPS non-touch panel with a resolution of 1920 x 1080.
The viewing angles are okay, and it's matte so you don't get crazy reflections
but it's not very bright, and the color gamut is poor. Really poor. You won't notice it playing games
and the contrast on the screen is actually pretty good for darker games, but I wouldn't use the screen for color-accurate work.
It's just no good for that.
The webcam up top is a 720p camera and it looks like this.
The drive that they give you is pretty slow. It's 5400 RPM and it makes me die a little bit on the inside :'(
but thankfully it's super easy to swap out. So if your budget allows for it, try to get an SSD in here. It'll make it that much better.
If you're video editing, 1080p edits are very smooth and 4K edits are still pretty decent as long as you're not using that stock drive.
Like I've mentioned in other videos, having two drive slots in a notebook is awesome for stuff like
video edits and recording gameplay footage. It keeps your computer really responsive.
Gaming on 960M is solid. It handles current titles really nicely, so DOTA 2--I mean that's not really current, but that runs really well.
on max graphic settings and team fights, it can still drop below 50 FPS, but solo laning you're going to get 100/120 FPS.
Black Ops III will hit 60 FPS on high settings, but there's this weird flashing artifact on some of the particle effects.
It's definitely a driver issue and it's something that they're probably going to get fixed, but as of today
the game is pretty tough to play with blinding flashes everywhere you go.
The new Rainbow Six game is super fun, and it'll also float around 60 FPS on high settings, and I normally don't plug games on these reviews
but if you're looking for a different kind of shooter, take a look at Rainbow Six Siege. It's a shooter, but there's a lot of strategy and teamwork and this new one's pretty cool.
The speakers are up on the keyboard area here and they sound decent. They get loud but higher frequencies start to break up when the volume goes up
and if you remember, there's a subwoofer on the bottom of the laptop, but this one doesn't sound that great.
The one on the ASUS GL752 sounded nice. It looked gimmicky but it sounded good.
This one here just sounds okay. System noise isn't bad. It idles around 25 dB, mostly from that hard drive
and it hits mid- to high-30s when it's under load. The temperatures are also pretty good. It just breaks 100 degrees under heavy load.
The charger is a 130 W and it takes the battery about 2.5 hours to fill up. There's a blue LED on the AC tip.
The battery life isn't bad. I was getting around 5.5 hours of regular use with the screen at about 75% brightness and about two hours of playing games on battery.
There is a configuration with this laptop with a 4K screen. I haven't used it, but that screen would drain the battery a lot faster
and if your primary purpose is to play games, I would totally just get the 1080p screen. A 960M isn't ideal for playing 4K games.
Okay, recap of the Inspiron 7559. Good build quality, just be careful of that soft touch finish. It can scuff easily.
The 1080p screen is good enough for games, but the color accuracy is poor so I wouldn't rely on it for color-accurate work.
The keyboard is okay. It's shifted to the left for the number pad and the keys feel a little stiff when you're typing on it.
The trackpad skips a little bit and it's not the best trackpad out there, but again it's okay.
On the inside, we have a core i5 and a GTX 960M that handles most current games pretty well, 8 GB of easily upgraded RAM,
an upgradable 1 TB SATA hard drive, an M.2 SATA slot for a secondary drive, and a decent 74 W battery that'll last you about 5-6 hours of regular use.
You're probably wondering if this laptop is worth it.
Okay, for $800 I think Dell hit a home run. There's obviously stuff that I don't love about it like the screen, the trackpad, and the drive's a little bit slow which you can upgrade,
but for $800, if you have a budget of $800 or less, this should be on the top of your list because it performs well, it's super upgradable, and it's very inexpensive.
That's the end of this review. Hope you guys liked it. Thumbs if you did, subs if you loved it.
It's been nice and I'll see you guys next time.