Dell Inspiron 15 7570 review – a bit pricey multimedia laptop with Intel’s 8th Generation CPU behind the wheel

If you are into premium looking multimedia notebooks with a little extra power under the hood, Dell’s got you covered with their latest release in the Inspiron family – the Inspiron 15 7570. Although a bit pricier than some of the alternatives on the market, the laptop leads the pack with several distinctive features like all-aluminum chassis, USB-C supporting (Gen 2) DisplayPort and a Core i7-8550U CPU, which is part of Intel’s latest 8th Generation processors.

Other hardware includes an M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD slot in addition to the 2.5-inch HDD bay, 15.6-inch Full HD IPS display and NVIDIA GeForce 940MX discrete GPU sporting 4GB of GDDR5 memory and although the latter will affect overall gaming performance, we still feel like that the newer GeForce MX150 chip would have been a better fit, especially given the price point. Still, there are plenty of other details that the specs sheet can’t disclose like real battery life, image quality of the display etc. Find out in the thorough review below.

You can find the available configurations here: Compra desde Amazon.es (#CommissionsEarned)

Contents


Retail package

The retail package contains all the usual user manuals, AC adapter, power cord and the laptop itself.


Design and construction

We can’t really see any striking similarities between the Inspiron 7570 and other Dell models but you can definitely guess that this is a Dell-made machine. Aluminum is the main order of the day and the chamfered edges around the lid and touchpad give the device a more sophisticated and premium feel. In terms of portability, though, the notebook doesn’t break any records – it weighs around 2.16 kg, which is fine but not really that impressive. Still, a thickness of 18.8 mm is pretty good.

As we’ve already mentioned, the lid comes with anodized aluminum sheet with machined edges and Dell’s logo in the middle. Bending the middle results in slight deformation while our twisting attempts didn’t result in severe flexing – quite the opposite actually. The whole lid feels firm and solid and the same goes for the hinges, although they are way too tight to our taste. In fact they are so tightly pulled that opening the notebook is a challenge and the absence of indentation makes matters worse. On the other hand, the hinges keep the screen firmly in place in unstable environment and allow a 180-degree opening. As for the bottom, it’s made of the same material with a big grill for dispersing the heat and two smaller ones for the loudspeakers.

Even though the sides are quite thin, the laptop doesn’t compromise in I/O – the left comes with a USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 connector supporting the DisplayPort standard, a full-sized HDMI, two USB 3.0 ports and a 3.5 audio jack. This means that you can hook up to two external displays at the same time – great for productivity. Switching to the right side, we see the RJ-45 LAN port, another USB 3.0 port and the SD card reader. The port distribution is rather good and cables won’t get in the way while using an external mouse.

The interior is in line with the notebook’s exterior and incorporates the same anodized aluminum finish. It feels pretty solid all around the keyboard and the touchpad and the power button is well-separated from the keyboard. Speaking of which, it’s centered and misses on the Numpad block for maximum comfort while typing. The layout is in typical Dell fashion – island-style keys with plenty of separation, clicky feedback and reasonably long travel. As far as the clickpad is concerned, we have some mixed feelings because we are not quite sure everyone will like it – the surface is slightly roughened instead of smooth gliding-friendly finish and the mouse clicks lack tactile feedback. However, it’s responsive and accurate so it will definitely get the work done on the go. Again, not everyone will like it.

All in all, the Inspiron 7570’s chassis justifies the higher price because it offers premium, simplistic and clean look while being extra stable and robust. It might not impress with low weight but it’s pretty thin and falls into the “portable” category for sure. Also, the keyboard feels really good and subjectively, the touchpad is comfortable as well. Still, some users will probably prefer the good old mouse.

Disassembly, maintenance and upgrade options

The bottom is made of a whole piece without any dedicated service covers but it is still super easy to remove and access the internals.

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

As expected, the laptop comes with an M.2 PCIe NVMe-enabled SSD slot and another 2.5-inch HDD/SSD bay as well. The former also supports Intel’s latest Optane technology if you are on a budget but still want a better HDD performance out of the system. Anyway, the unit we’ve tested came with a 256GB 2280 M.2 SATA SSD from Sandisk from the X400 series. This is rather disappointing since the laptop is in the price range of PCIe NVMe drives. And as for the HDD, it’s Seagate with 1TB capacity and spinning at 5400 rpm.

SlotUnitUpgrade price
M.2 SSD 2280 slot 1256GB SanDisk X400 M.2 SATA SSD (2280)Upgrade options
2.5-inch HDD/SSD slot1TB Seagate HDD @5400 rpmUpgrade options

RAM

The motherboard comes with two RAM slots and in our case, they are both occupied by two 8GB DDR4-2400 Apacer chips. You can always upgrade up to 32GB of DDR4-2400 memory, though.

SlotUnitUpgrade price
Slot 18GB Apacer DDR4-2400Upgrade options
Slot 28GB Apacer DDR4-2400Upgrade options

Other components

The Wi-Fi card is the commong Intel 7265NGW and it’s placed next to the cooling fan.

The battery is also in its usual place – under the wrist rest area – and it’s rated at 42Wh.

Cooling system

As our stress tests confirmed, the cooling solution doesn’t quite fit the CPU + discrete GPU configuration and some throttling may occur during heavy workloads but most of the time should be fine. It consists of just one small and short heat pipe going through both heat sinks and connecting to the cooling fan.


Display quality

The IPS display used for the notebook is manufactured by BOE with model number BOE06B4 (84V7R NV15N35) with 15.6-inch diagonal, matte finish and Full HD (1920×1080) resolution. The pixel density is 142 ppi while the pixel pitch is 0.18 x 0.18 mm. The screen can be considered as “Retina” when viewed from a distance equal or greater than 60 cm.

Viewing angles are good due to the IPS panel.

The maximum brightness falls a bit short compared to its competitors – 234 cd/m2 in the middle and 232 cd/m2 as average across the surface with just 6% maximum deviation. The color temperature at maximum brightness is 7070K so colors will appear slightly colder than usual. And as we go along the grayscale, the color temperature becomes even colder compared to the optimal 6500K – 7140K. You can see how these values change at 140 cd/m2 brightness (60%).

The maximum color deviation dE2000 is just 1.6 compared to the center of the panel at 140 cd/m2 (60% brightness), which is an excellent result since values above 4.0 are usually unwanted, especially when color-sensitive work is involved. The contrast ratio is exceptionally high – 1370:1 before calibration and 1290:1 after profiling.

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 sRGB coverage is disappointing for a multimedia laptop at this price range – just 53%. Basically, this means that half of the web-based and HDTV colors will be missing.

Below you will see practically the same image but with the color circles representing the reference colors and the white circles being the result. You can see main and additional colors with 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% saturation inside the sRGB gamut pre and post calibration.

The “Design and Gaming” profile is created at 140 cd/m2 brightness, D65 (6500K) white point and optimal gamma in sRGB 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 = 31 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.

Unfortunately, the panel uses PWM from 0 to 99% screen brightness and the frequency of the light pulsations is pretty low (1 kHz) and falls into the “aggressive PWM” category. We strongly recommend keeping the brightness level at 100% at all times or just use our Health-Guard profile, which takes care of the issue.

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

Our verdict of the panel is rather negative since there are plenty of issues, most of which cannot be fixed with our custom profiles. The panel fits more into the budget-friendly category but it’s too “dull” for an upper-mid-range multimedia laptop like the Inspiron 7570. It has pretty high contrast ratio but the rest of the specs set it behind – limited sRGB coverage, low maximum brightness and uses PWM for regulating screen brightness. But at least, the latter can be fixed with 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 15 7570 configurations with 15.6″ BOE BOE06B4 (84V7R NV15N35) (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS screen and the laptop can be found at Amazon: Compra desde Amazon.es (#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.

Además de recibir perfiles eficientes y respetuosos con la salud, al comprar los productos de LaptopMedia también apoyas el desarrollo de nuestros laboratorios, donde probamos los dispositivos para elaborar las reseñas más objetivas posibles.

Trabajo de oficina

El perfil Trabajo de Oficina debería ser utilizado sobre todo por usuarios que pasan la mayor parte del tiempo mirando trozos de texto, tablas o simplemente navegando. Este perfil pretende ofrecer una mayor nitidez y claridad manteniendo una curva de gamma plana (2,20), una temperatura de color nativa y colores perceptualmente precisos.

Diseño y juego

Este perfil está dirigido a los diseñadores que trabajan con los colores de forma profesional, y también para juegos y películas. Design and Gaming lleva a los paneles de visualización a sus límites, haciéndolos tan precisos como sea posible en el estándar sRGB IEC61966-2-1 para Web y HDTV, en el punto blanco D65.

Salud-Guardia

Salud-Guardia elimina la perjudicial Modulación de Ancho de Pulso (PWM) y reduce la luz azul negativa que afecta a nuestros ojos y a nuestro cuerpo. Al estar adaptado a cada panel, consigue mantener los colores perceptivamente precisos. Salud-Guardia simula el papel, por lo que la presión sobre los ojos se reduce considerablemente.

Consigue los 3 perfiles con un 33% de descuento


Sound

The sound quality is good – the speakers provide clarity in the low, mid and high frequencies.


Specs sheet

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

Dell Inspiron 7570 tabla de especificaciones técnicas

Acer
Not available
Mostrar
15.6”, Full HD (1920 x 1080), IPS
HDD/SSD
256GB SSD + 1TB HDD
Ranura M.2
1x PCIe NVMe M.2 slot (2280, M-key)
RAM
8GB DDR4
Dimensiones
361 x 244 x 18.8 mm (14.21" x 9.61" x 0.74")
Peso
2.16 kg (4.8 lbs)
Material del cuerpo
Aluminum
Puertos y conectividad
  • 3x USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps), DisplayPort
  • HDMI
  • VGA
  • DVI
  • Lector de tarjetas SD
  • Ethernet LAN
  • Wi-Fi 802.11ac
  • Bluetooth 4.2
  • Conector de audio headphone/microphone
Features
  • Lector de huellas dactilares
  • Cámara web
  • Teclado retroiluminado
  • Micrófono
  • Altavoces
  • Unidad óptica
  • Ranura de bloqueo de seguridad

Battery

When it comes to battery life, we have some mixed feeling about the Inspiron 7570’s performance. On one hand, the rather small 42Wh handles pretty well the Core i7-8550U CPU during web browsing but fails to deliver the expected video playback runtimes. It might be due to the still unoptimized Intel UHD Graphics 620 drivers or an entirely different problem. In any case, the results are in and they show excellent web browsing runtimes and suboptimal video playback score.

All tests were run with the usual settings – 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.

We got some really good readings on the web browsing test – 534 minutes (8 hours and 54 minutes).

Video playback

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

The video playback test returned a surprisingly low result – 216 minutes (3 hours and 36 minutes).

Gaming

We recently started using F1 2015’s built-in benchmark on loop in order to simulate real-life gaming.


Of course, the laptop isn’t made for gaming away from the power source but it’s good to know that it can handle heavy workload a little over an hour – 131 minutes (2 hours and 11 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 12.765 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 – NVIDIA GeForce 940MX (2GB GDDR5)

geforce-940m-3qtrThe NVIDIA GeForce 940MX is a refreshed version of the older 940M mobile chip but paired with a faster GDDR5 memory and slightly higher clock speeds, which result in noticeably better performance compared to the standard 940M. However, some OEMs will still choose to use the cheaper DDR3 version of the GPU.

Announced back in the first quarter of 2016, the chip is almost identical to the standard 940M (Maxwell) but with clock speeds increased up to 1242 MHz and base 1122 MHz. Again, the memory uses a 64-bit bus and has 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM. It still supports the DirectX 12 API and Shader 5.0 feature along with the usual NVIDIA technologies – CUDA, GPU Boost 2.0, Optimus, GeForce Experience, PhysX. The whole GPU is rated at around 15 to 30 Watts depending on the clock speeds and memory used in the specific notebook.

You can browse through our GPU ranking to see where the Intel HD Graphics (Broadwell) stands: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-graphics-ranking/

For more information about the GPU, follow this link: http://laptopmedia.com/video-card/nvidia-geforce-940mx-2gb-gddr5/


Temperatures

Of course, the stress tests that we perform don’t represent real-life usage but it’s still the best way to determine the overall effectiveness and stability of the cooling system in the long run. Also, it gives us a good idea of how well the system utilizes the hardware’s performance.

Starting with the CPU stress testing, the brand new Core i7-8550U ran at 3.5 GHz for a second, then kept it stable at around 3.3 – 3.4 GHz and after a while, it gradually went down to 2.6 – 2.8 GHz while running at a toasty 90-93 °C.

Turning on the GPU stress test resulted in immediate GPU throttling – the chip didn’t go above 405 MHz while running relatively cool at 68 °C. The CPU went down to 2.4 – 2.5 GHz at that point but no throttling occurred.

Interestingly, the interior remained cool throughout the stress test and most importantly, the palm rest area stayed frosty.


Verdict

The Dell Inspiron 15 7570 stands as an upper-mid-range all-rounder or multimedia-centric laptop but unfortunately fails to deliver in some key areas in which you’d expect that a notebook at this price range would not have troubles with. From design standpoint, the laptop has a simplistic, clean, robust and all-aluminum build with good keyboard and decent touchpad.

Also, the relatively small battery life delivers good web browsing runtimes probably due to the well-optimized Core i7-8550U chip but we saw suboptimal video playback score and we are unsure of why is that. Still, the performance of the new Core i7-8550U is pretty impressive so we can’t wait to see how the rest of the market adopts the new generation of Intel’s chips.

Finally, we want to address the elephant in the room – the screen. Although there’s nothing particularly wrong with the display, except the low-frequency PWM used for regulating brightness, the rest of the properties make it an unfit solution for this price range. As a multimedia-centric laptop, we expected higher sRGB coverage and higher maximum brightness. In addition, the GeForce 940MX GPU should have been replaced with an MX150 but the latter won’t make such a big difference in the end, on contrary to the display.

So unless you are strictly looking for the new generation of Intel’s processors in an elegant package, we strongly recommend the ASUS Vivobook Pro N580VD as an alternative due to its higher performance and better image quality. Other similarly-priced but with 14-inch solutions with better displays are the ASUS ZenBook UX410UQ, Acer’s Swift 5 or the Lenovo Ideapad 720s.

You can find the available configurations here: Compra desde Amazon.es (#CommissionsEarned)

Pros

  • Robust all-aluminum chassis with clean and simplistic look
  • Good keyboard, decent touchpad
  • Fairly portable for 15-incher
  • Has great web browsing runtime
  • A good amount of connectivity options including USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 with DisplayPort output


Cons

  • Subpar video playback battery performance
  • The GPU could have been better for the price
  • The screen is rather dull (low brightness, narrow sRGB coverage)
  • The panel uses aggressive PWM for regulating screen brightness (our Health-Guard profile fixes that)
  • The GPU throttles under heavy workload, although it runs pretty cool

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