Dell Inspiron 13 5379 review – a 2015 laptop with 2017 performance

Among all the convertibles on the market, Dell is one of the first to equip its mainstream Inspiron lineup with Intel’s latest 8th Generation CPUs. But is this enough to compete with Lenovo’s already reigning Yoga series in this segment?

Well in some cases, yes, but in other not exactly. Dell’s 13-inch Inspiron 13 5379 comes with an already familiar all-plastic shell – identical design to the Inspiron 15 5579 – but since its smaller than its sibling, it’s definitely more portable. Ranging from Core i5-8250U to Core i7-8550U, all configurations seem to be in the same ballpark as Lenovo’s Yoga 720 when it comes to pricing. However, Lenovo Yoga 720’s updated variant with Intel’s 8th Generation of processors is a bit more expensive. In any case, we will look more closely into the Inspiron 13 5379 and examine how well the laptop handles the powerful Core i7-8550U and its wide Turbo Boost range, how the screen fares against its 13-inch competitors and is the 42Wh battery enough to deliver good battery runtimes.

You can find some of the available configurations here:  Buy from Amazon.com (#CommissionsEarned)

Contents


In 2 minutes…

We know that many of you don’t have enough time to read our in-depth tests so we made a 2-minute recap of the most important things. Enjoy!


Retail package

The laptop comes in a standard small box containing all the usual user manuals, AC adapter and power cord.


Design and construction

Unfortunately, the price puts the Inspiron 13 5379 in the same category as the Yoga 720, which not only looks better – although this is a bit of a subjective matter – mainly due to the thinner bezels, rounded edges and slimmer design but it also feels more firm due to the all-aluminum construction. Interestingly, the Inspiron 13 5379 drags behind its competitor in terms of portability as well – 1.6 kg in weight and 19.5 mm in height despite the plastic clamshell.

We observed the same weak points as in the 15-inch Inspiron 15 5579, which makes sense since both notebooks share the same chassis only in different dimensions. The back of the lid is a bit bouncy and the whole screen feels flexible during our twisting attempts. Something we didn’t observe with laptops in this price category. The hinges still feel a bit stiff when opening the device but since the screen is smaller, the wobbling effect is notably reduced compared to the 15-inch model. And as for the bottom, it features the same plastic plate providing a solid feel and some small grills for heat management.

Interestingly, the sides provide the same I/O as the bigger 15-inch variant – on the left you will find a full-sized HDMI port, two USB 3.0 connectors and a 3.5 mm audio jack while on the right, you will see the SD card reader and another USB 2.0 port. The only thing missing here is a USB-C connector, which we are used to seeing in considerably less expensive devices. At least another USB-A connector would have been greatly appreciated.

The interior continues the “plastic trend”, yet it feels pretty robust – virtually no bending occurs when pressing the interior. But the inherited good features from the 15-inch model don’t stop there – the device offers a good keyboard with a tad short key travel but clicky feedback. The touchpad also feels nice – light mouse clicks, responsive surface, although the slightly roughened surface gets in the way of gliding.

Our verdict of the overall design and build quality is practically the same as the one we gave on the 15-inch model – the lack of aluminum isn’t an issue here but the lack of rigidity in the lid and the awkwardly sharp corners that make the notebook hard to hold in tablet mode, definitely are. Also, the relatively limited I/O and slightly higher weight and the outdated design (thick screen bezels, less refined edges) don’t make a compelling case considering the price point either.


Disassembly, maintenance and upgrade options

Just like the 15-inch model, this one requires little effort to access the internals. Just remove the screws on the bottom and gently pry it up.

Storage upgrades – 2.5-inch HDD/SSD, M.2 SSD

Once again, the notebook still doesn’t have an M.2 SSD slot so you have to rely only on the 2.5-inch HDD/SSD bay for your primary and only drive. The unit we got arrived with 256GB SanDisk X400 SATA SSD.

SlotUnitUpgrade price
2.5-inch HDD/SSD slot256GB SanDisk X400 SATA SSD Buy from Amazon.com (#CommissionsEarned)

RAM

At least RAM upgradability isn’t crippled as the motherboard supports two memory slots each going up to 16GB of DDR4-2400 RAM.

SlotUnitUpgrade price
Slot 18GB Micron DDR4-2400 Buy from Amazon.com (#CommissionsEarned)
Slot 2Free Buy from Amazon.com (#CommissionsEarned)

Other components

The Wi-Fi adapter is placed right next to the cooling fan and it’s Qualcomm QCNFA344A.

Interestingly, the battery is the same we found in the 15-inch model and it’s rated at 42Wh.

Cooling system

The cooling design hasn’t been changed since the last generation and consists of the same small cooling fan with one heatpipe.


Display quality

The device features a Full HD (1920×1080) IPS panel with model number BOE06FD (R0VG9-NV133FH, which presumably is a BOE-made. The pixel density is 166 ppi while the pixel pitch is 0.153 x 0.153 mm – it can be considered as “Retina” from at least 53 cm.

Viewing angles are excellent.

We were able to record only 238 cd/m2 peak brightness in the center and 232 cd/m2 as average across the surface with only 6% maximum deviation. The correlated color temperature at maximum brightness is 6530K and it’s nearly perfect. As we go along the grayscale, it becomes unnoticeably warmer – 6420K. You can see how these values change at 140 cd/m2 (60% brightness) on the image below.

The maximum dE200 (color deviation) at 140 cd/m2 compared to the center of the screen is just 1.8. This is a rather good result since values above 4.0 are unwanted. The contrast ratio is good – 1070:1 (950:1 after calibration).

Color reproduction

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction of the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The panel covers just 52% of the sRGB color space making it rather suboptimal for multimedia.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and reverse.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 34 ms.


PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

We’ve recorded aggressive PWM from 0 to 99% brightness so we suggest using the notebook at 100% brightness or just use our Health-Guard profile that makes the brightness level more bearable and eliminates the PWM.

Blue light emissions

Installing of our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

You can see the levels of emitted blue light on the spectral power distribution (SPD) graph.

Conclusion

The only thing that this IPS panel excels at is the contrast ratio. All other properties suggest of a budget IPS panel that is usually found in less expensive solutions. The sRGB color space is limited, the maximum brightness isn’t enough for outdoor use (which might be problematic for some users since it’s a 13-inch convertible) and the aggressive PWM will put unnecessary strain on your eyes unless you use it at maximum brightness at all times or applying our Health-Guard profile.

Buy our display profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package is meant for Dell Inspiron 13 5379 configurations with 13.3″ BOE06FD (R0VG9-NV133FH) (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS screen and the laptop can be found at Amazon: Buy from Amazon.com (#CommissionsEarned)

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


Specs sheet

The current specs sheet is for this particular model and configurations may differ depending on your region

Dell Inspiron 5379 technical specifications table

Acer
Not available
Display
13.3”, Full HD (1920 x 1080), IPS
HDD/SSD
256GB SATA SSD
RAM
8GB
Dimensions
325 x 224 x 20.5 mm (12.80" x 8.82" x 0.81")
Weight
1.62 kg (3.6 lbs)
Ports and connectivity
  • 1x USB Type-A 2.0
  • 2x USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • HDMI
  • VGA
  • DVI
  • Card reader SD
  • Ethernet lan
  • Wi-Fi 802.11ac
  • Bluetooth
  • Audio jack headphone/microphone
Features
  • Web camera
  • Microphone
  • Speakers
  • Optical drive

Dell Inspiron 13 5379 configurations


Software

We used the pre-installed Windows 10 Pro for the writing of this review but if you wish to perform a clean install of the OS, we suggest downloading all of the latest drivers from Dell’s official support page.

Battery

Battery life isn’t that impressive but thanks to the well-optimized Core i7-8550U CPU, the Inspiron 5379 still managed to get decent scores on our battery tests. Probably a bigger 42Wh unit will do the trick next time. In addition, we see that the 13-inch Inspiron 5379’s battery scores are almost the same (if not slightly lower) as the ones from the 15-inch Inspiron 5579.

All tests were run with the same settings as always – Wi-Fi turned on, screen brightness set to 120 cd/m2 and Windows battery saving feature turned on.

Web browsing

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.

Pretty average score on the web browsing test – 467 minutes (7 hours and 47 minutes).

Video playback

For every test like this, we use the same video in HD.

Considerably lower score on the video playback test – 362 minutes (6 hours and 2 minutes).

Gaming

We recently started using F1 2017’s built-in benchmark on loop in order to simulate real-life gaming.

Of course, the laptop isn’t made for gaming, especially away from the power source but it’s good to know that it can run at least two hours away from the plug – 127 minutes (2 hours and 7 minutes).

CPU – Intel Core i7-8550U

The Intel Core i7-8550U is part of the new 8th Generation Kaby Lake Refresh and it’s a direct successor to the Intel Core i7-7500U from the Kaby Lake generation and the Intel Core i7-6500U from the 6th Skylake generation. With the latest alteration to the ULV (ultra-low voltage) processors, Intel doubles the core count from 2 to 4 and retaining the so-called Hyper-Threading technology, keeping the same 14nm manufacturing process and feature the same 15W TDP.

However, due to the core count change, the base frequency of the Core i7-8550U is lowered to only 1.8 GHz while Turbo Boost frequencies remain pretty high – somewhere between 3.7 – 4.0 GHz. This ensures considerably higher multi-core and single-core performance during short workloads before going back to more bearable frequencies considering the 15W TDP but most of the other specs and features remain the same.

The chip also incorporates a newer Intel Gen 9.5 integrated graphics called Intel UHD Graphics 620. The support for Google’s VP9 codec and H.265/HEVC Main 10 is still the most notable feature of the iGPU. Intel claims that the new UHD 620 chips improve the overall power consumption compared to the previous one.

You can browse through our top CPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-cpu-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook we’ve tested with this processor: http://laptopmedia.com/processor/intel-core-i7-8550u/

Fritz

Fritz is a chess benchmark that tests the computing capabilities of the CPU with various chess moves. The Intel Core i7-8550U managed to get 12.192 million moves per second. For comparison, one of the most powerful computers, Deep(er) Blue, was able to squeeze out 200 million moves per second. In 1997 Deep(er) Blue even beat the famous Garry Kasparov with 3.5 to 2.5.

GPU – Intel UHD Graphics 620

Intel UHD Graphics 620 is a refresh of the HD Graphics 620 found as an integrated solution in many ULV Kaby Lake processors. UHD Graphics 620 is codenamed “Kaby Lake R U GT2” and it’s a part of the Gen 9.5 generation.

Intel UHD Graphics 620 has roughly the same performance as HD Graphics 620, depending on the memory in the system. UHD Graphics 620’s performance is similar to AMD Radeon R5 M420X and NVIDIA GeForce 910M/920M.

You can browse through our top GPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-graphics-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook with this GPU that we’ve tested: http://laptopmedia.com/video-card/intel-uhd-graphics-620/


Temperatures

The torture tests, especially on this machine, cannot be taken as a representation of a real-life working scenario, yet it’s the best way to determine the overall effectiveness and reliability of the cooling system in the long run.

The CPU stress test didn’t start all too well. The Core i7-8550U ran at around 3.3 – 3.5 GHz for a split second but swiftly settled between 2.2 and 2.4 GHz and stayed there for good. This shows poor Turbo Boost utilization of the chip and struggles to maintain a bit higher clock speeds for the desired time span. Working temperatures were a bit elevated as well.

Switching the GPU stress test resulted in CPU throttling, which is normal because this way the CPU cores give some headroom for the iGPU (UHD Graphics 620) to perform.

We also measured the temperatures on the surface – they all seemed normal given the nature of the stress test. But when talking about how the cooling design affects user experience, we would also like to mention that the fans were loud only during the small CPU peak frequency but after a few seconds, they were barely noticeable. It seems that working at lower clocks, the six cores don’t need much cooling.


Verdict

If you are looking for a cheap 2-in-1 13.3-inch solution sporting the latest of what Intel can offer, the Inspiron 13 5379 should definitely be on your list, especially if there’s a decent discount like the one running now (at the time of writing this review).

However, since the previous generation (Inspiron 5578), our opinion has changed quite a bit. Now, the device still feels like 2015 although, we are in 2017. There are essential features missing like USB-C and M.2 SSD slot while the design is rather clunky in our opinion – all-plastic shell, sharp edges making it a bit awkward to hold in tablet mode and thick screen bezels.

And as for the display itself, it’s definitely better than the TN alternatives out there, yet the limited color space, low maximum brightness and aggressive PWM make up for a suboptimal experience. Colors won’t be as vibrant as you wish them to be, outdoor use will be problematic due to the low brightness and glossy surface and PWM is likely to cause fatigue after extended use.

In any case, you’d be delighted with the fully utilized performance of Intel’s 8th Generation CPUs, comfortable keyboard and decent touchpad. Do consider, however, the Lenovo Yoga 720 (13-inch) if you can spend a little more cash for the refreshed variant. The Lenovo Yoga 520 (Flex 5) is also a nice alternative that falls in the same price category as well. And if you are not “married” to the 2-in-1 form factor, the ASUS VivoBook F510 has just been released with the latest 8th Generation Intel chips for just about the same price.

You can find some of the available configurations here:  Buy from Amazon.com (#CommissionsEarned)

Pros

  • Stable base
  • Good input devices
  • Full utilization of the new generation Intel CPUs
  • Decent battery life


Cons

  • Flimsy and bouncy lid
  • Color-deficient display (low sRGB coverage) with low brightness
  • The panel uses aggressive PWM (our Health-Guard profile eliminates it)
  • Outdated design with sharp corners, hefty chassis, thick screen bezels
  • No USB-C connector and no M.2 SSD slot

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Jim Gearing
Jim Gearing
6 years ago

Just discovered your site. I’m reading the Dell Inspiron 5379 review. I’m impressed by the depth of analysis, the good writing, and the even tone.

Enjoyed the discussion of color and PWM.

You’ve probably moved me to a Lenovo Yoda (sic)…

Cristian Home
Cristian Home
5 years ago

Great article.

Can you confirm if this inspiron support the Dell active pen?
I want to buy this laptop.

emmanuel G
emmanuel G
4 years ago
Reply to  Cristian Home

comes with active pen from factory

Ender ALTIN
Ender ALTIN
4 years ago

Hello,
Thanks for the review.
I have the same product (Dell inspiron 13 5379 i7 8550U).
Seeing that on the system features is Toshiba “KSG60ZMV256G 256GB M.2 SSD” Disk?
How can that be? (M.2)

Are you sure there is also Active pen support?

wyatt
wyatt
2 years ago

Hi What is the keyboard connection ribbon cable. Can you label it. I need to fix mine