DELL has been one of the top suppliers of laptops since its inception, based in the United States the company has the market for its products all over the world. The laptops have the superior build quality and at the same time, the better specification for the same price compared to the rivals, because of better marketing strategies and relations with the component suppliers.
DELL is known for its separate series for the laptops that are marketed towards different consumers, their flagship laptops XPS series are known as the best Windows notebooks, other than this their Alienware series provides best gaming machines to its consumers.
But the series that is for every consumer is their Inspiron series that has laptops ranging from business notebooks to the entry level gaming devices. The nomenclature of the laptops defined the type of the laptop, e.g., Inspiron 5000s are notebooks while Inspiron 7000s are gaming machines.
After a long hybrid run of Inspiron series, DELL is making it their mid-range notebook series while the gaming laptops will be released under a new name that is the G-series. DELL announced in a custom event that their mid-range gaming laptops that usually release under Inspiron tier will now be released under the new G-series tier. These laptops were announced quite a while ago, but there were not many customizations available regarding specifications at that time, DELL has added the customizations now making it a perfect time to review the first G-series laptops named as G3, G5, and G7. Let’s dig in!
Design
Entry level gaming laptops have always been a little inferior regarding design, these new G-series laptops are no exception suffering from a little inferior design choice, but DELL has done a good job keeping the aesthetics of the laptops. The laptops are built with the polycarbonate material that is better than plastic in term of build quality but worse than aluminum that is usually used in the premium devices, the chassis looks premium thanks to the lustrous finish, but feels too delicate for a gaming machine. The palm rest area especially is brittle, I was afraid that my hands might break it, but it kept up with me the whole time. These laptops come in three color choices namely Black, Recon blue and Alpine white.
The best thing regarding design in these machines is their thickness; they are incredibly thin, DELL announced that the G3 is the worlds thinnest gaming laptop to date, that was true indeed because the Max-Q graphics were just announced at the time. The concern about the screen flexibility that the last gen Inspiron gaming laptops resolved got back making the overall design of the laptop less durable at least when the lid is opened. The polycarbonate material is stiff around the edges, and the lid is also made of hard plastic. The thin profile of the laptops is the only standout design spec, the dimensions of the 15-inch device are 0.98-inch x 15.32-inch x 10.82-inch with an average of 5.76 pounds weight depending upon model, while the exclusive 17-inch G3 model has 0.98-inch x 16.35-inch x 10.99-inch with 7.2 pounds weight.
Specifications
The mid-range gaming laptops are known for their top of line specifications with affordable prices. These laptops are by far the best in this regard, although they have different models the core specifications and customizations are the same throughout with one or two differences here and there. These laptops come with Intel’s 8th gen processors from Core i5-8300H up to Core i9 Hexa-Core CPU ensuring better multi-tasking performance complemented by the different variations of DDR4 memory clocked at 2666Mhz that is up to 16GB inbuilt but can be expanded up to 32GB.
As these are mid-level gaming machines, they have the whole range of Nvidia’s mid-range mobile graphics starting from GTX 1050 to the Max-Q designed GTX 1060 thus ensuring top of the line 1080p gaming. The lower laptops in the series have the spinning drives (Hard drives) while, the higher end versions have the combination of PCIe SSDs and Hard drives. The Hard Drive is a 1TB 5400RPM drive while SSD comes up to 512GB.
Display
To feast the eyes of the gamers, DELL has provided a display capable of producing true to life colors; the screen comes in 15.6 inches mostly FHD AMOLED backlit display that is also Anti-glare there is an option for a 4k panel, but it is reserved for G7 only. It is almost the same display that you find in the much expensive MacBook lineup except for the retina display precision. The brightness and contrast ratio of the device has not been revealed officially from DELL, but our hands-on experience was very good in this regard.
Peripherals and connectivity
The laptops come with a range of wired and wireless connectivity options, starting with the wired connectivity options, on the left side, the laptops have the noble security lock, DC power-in, Gigabit Ethernet port, USB 3.1 Gen1 type-A port and Micro SD card reader. On the other hand, there is a Headphone/Microphone duo jack, another USB 3.1 port, Thunderbolt port and an HDMI 2.0 port. The wireless connectivity options include dual-band WIFI and the Bluetooth 5.0.
The speakers in the device, however, are very good, with good sound quality and bass productions Waves MaxxAudio Pro tunes the speakers.
Keyboard and Mouse
The laptops have a full-size keyboard that is not premium, and by far not good for gaming, the switches are mushy and tactile, the spill-resistant keyboard support RGB lighting but that is available only in some selected regions that do not include the US. The trackpad too is somewhat inferior with less than average tracking, but it has support for Windows precision drivers so, we expect a future update will resolve this issue.
Performance and battery
As the devices have 8th gen Intel processors and the mid-range Nvidia’s 10-series graphics we can expect top of the line performance from these laptops. In our early testing these laptops handled everything that we threw at them with greater ease the photoshop and video editing was a piece of cake for the processors while the current gen games can be played fairly well on medium settings in case of the GTX 1050 or GTX 1050Ti while the Max-Q GTX 1060 can play the games at higher settings too.
The dual fan design of the laptop kept the device within favorable temperatures after an hour of gaming the fans were a little loud, but the device did not thermal throttle at all and most importantly the keyboard area that suffers a lot due to higher temperature remained cool the whole time. The battery life of the laptop is very good considering the battery is very small for the gaming standards, it is a 56Whr 4-cell battery.
Verdict
We all love Inspiron laptops due to their superior build and affordable devices; these rebranded laptops are very well rounded regarding specs and performance if the polycarbonate material does not bother you that much than these devices are worth looking for in this price range. All of the laptops start at $749 while the highest-end model that has GTX 1060 goes around $1200. You can find the whole range of customizations and a financing plan on the DELL’s website. If these laptops do not intrigue you have a look at the best gaming laptops to buy in 2018.