Dell Inspiron 17 3780 review – very decent budget 17-incher

This laptop comes from a big world of great value devices, which offer good enough specs at pretty affordable prices. They call it the Inspiron 17 3780 and it is the newest 17-inch member of the Inspiron 3000-series. They have long been known with some poor design choices and aggressive cost-cutting and today we are going to find out whether the manufacturer has done its homework, or they are still slaking back.

Af of the moment of writing this review, you can find this laptop with the Core i3-7020U or get the real deal – Core i5-8265U/Core i7-8565U. Additionally, you have a choice from 1080p TN panel and a 1080p IPS panel, that is surely going to cost a few dimes more. There is one more feature that is even more rare to see than a 3.5mm jack on a smartphone – the DVD optical drive.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/dell-inspiron-17-3780/

Contents


Specs Sheet

Dell Inspiron 17 3780 tableau des caractéristiques techniques

Acer
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17.3”, Full HD (1920 x 1080), IPS
HDD/SSD
1TB HDD, 7200 rpm
Fente M.2
1x 2280 M.2 NVMe slot Voir photo
RAM
8GB DDR4, 2400 MHz
Dimensions
415 x 279 x 21.9 - 25.6 mm (16.34" x 10.98" x 0.86")
Poids
3.03 kg (6.7 lbs)
Matériau du corps
Plastic / Polycarbonate
Ports et connectivité
  • 2x USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-A 2.0
  • HDMI 1.4b
  • Lecteur de cartes SD, SDHC, SDXC
  • Ethernet LAN 10/100 Mbps
  • Wi-Fi
  • Bluetooth
  • Prise audio 3.5mm audio jack
Caractéristiques
  • Lecteur d'empreintes digitales
  • Caméra Web HD 720p@30 fps (78.6 degrees)
  • Clavier rétro-éclairé
  • Microphone
  • Intervenants 2x 2W
  • Lecteur optique
  • Fente de verrouillage de sécurité

What’s in the box?

Expectedly, the packaging of this laptop is pretty straightforward – a laptop, paper manuals and a mighty 45W charging brick.


Design and construction

Of course, at this price point, you shouldn’t expect anything more than plastic. It is also not the best of build qualities, but there is no too much flex on the body, whatsoever. Weight-wise it tops the scales at just over 3 kilos (6.7 lbs), while the profile starts from 21.9 mm and goes up to 25.6 mm.

Despite the huge size, it is impossible to open the lid with a single hand, unless you’re Captain America, of course. There is a slight bend on the lid when force is applied, but as you can imagine it is inevitable for a 17-inch plastic laptop.

Next is where you can see a little bit of disappointment – there are huge bezels around the screen, which are legacy to the older devices from a couple of years ago. This is purely cosmetic and subjective, though, so we can’t deduct points for that. Further below there is the keyboard, which has a little short travel but is rather clicky. We should note that it lacks backlight, but Dell says that it is spill-resistant, which we all know is a feature that has to be available on every laptop.

Additionally, we felt that the touchpad was very responsive and is one of the better ones on the market. However, the texture feels a little cheap and is susceptible to early wear.

On the bottom, you can see a pretty small air intake cut-out and the two speaker grills. Naturally, the hot air is exhausted from in between the lid and the body.

Ports

On the left you’ll find the charging plug, as well as an HDMI connector, an RJ-45 connector, two USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1) ports and a headphone jack. On the other side, there are the famous DVD optical drive as well as another USB Type-A 2.0 port and an SD card reader. Sadly, there is no Type-C connection to be found anywhere. In fact, the layout of the I/O is identical to what we saw on the HP 250 G7.


Disassembly, upgrade options and maintenance

Opening this laptop is not a difficult job at all. There is just a step more than the regular backplate removal – you first need to remove the DVD optical drive, that happens with unscrewing the appropriate screw and than you can just pull the drive out. After that just undo the rest of the screws and you’re done.

As you can see, the unit we tested was not equipped with a dedicated graphics card, so there is just a single heat pipe, leading the heat to the heatsink and a single fan that blows the heat away – pretty standard.

Memory-wise there are two RAM DIMMs that support up to 32GB of DDR4 memory, which makes the laptop perfect for development and content creation. In terms of storage, there is a single M.2 slot that supports PCIe drives, while the SATA slot is located right next to the battery.

Speaking of the battery, it is a 42Wh unit, which is a little disappointing, given the size of the laptop.


Display quality

Dell Inspiron 17 3780 has a Full HD IPS screen, model number AUO B173HAN01.3 (AUO139D). Its diagonal is 17.3″ (43.94 cm), and the resolution – 1920 х 1080. Additionally, the screen ratio is 16:9, the pixel density – 127 ppi, their pitch – 0.1995 x 0.1995 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 69 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels).

Viewing angles are comfortable. We have provided images at 45 degrees to evaluate quality.

The maximum measured brightness is relatively high – 361 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 356 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 12%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 6900K (average) – slightly colder than the 6500K optimum for sRGB. The average color temperature through the grey scale before profiling is 6690K.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from uniformity perspective. The illustration below shows how matters are for operational brightness levels (approximately 140 nits) – in this particular case at 38% Brightness (White level = 142 cd/m2, Black level = 0.11 cd/m2).
Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color sensitive work (a maximum tolerance of 2.0 ). The contrast ratio is very good – 1350:1 (1300:1 after profiling).

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to 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 yellow dotted line shows Dell Inspiron 17 3780’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers 93% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976.

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.

Below you can compare the scores of Dell Inspiron 17 3780 with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).

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 (Gaming capabilities)

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

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 27 ms.


Health impact – PWM / Blue Light

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.

Dell Inspiron 17 3780’s display doesn’t flicker at any brightness level. This makes it rather safe for use in this aspect, during extended periods of time.

Blue light emissions

Installing 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.

Conclusions

Dell Inspiron 17 3780 in the configuration we got has a Full HD IPS panel with comfortable viewing angles, decent contrast ratio, and a very high maximum brightness. Additionally, it covers 93% of sRGB, has adequate default settings and doesn’t use PWM to adjust its brightness level.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Dell Inspiron 17 3780 configurations with 17.3″ AUO B173HAN01.3 (AUO139D) (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS.

*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.

En plus de recevoir des profils efficaces et favorables à la santé, en achetant les produits de LaptopMedia, vous soutenez également le développement de nos laboratoires, où nous testons les appareils afin de produire les examens les plus objectifs possibles.

Travail de bureau

Le travail de bureau devrait être utilisé principalement par les utilisateurs qui passent le plus de temps à regarder des morceaux de texte, des tableaux ou simplement à surfer. Ce profil vise à offrir une meilleure distinction et une meilleure clarté en conservant une courbe gamma plate (2,20), une température de couleur native et des couleurs perceptuellement précises.

Conception et jeux

Ce profil est destiné aux designers qui travaillent avec les couleurs de manière professionnelle, et pour les jeux et les films également. Design and Gaming pousse les panneaux d'affichage à leurs limites, les rendant aussi précis que possible dans la norme sRGB IEC61966-2-1 pour le Web et la TVHD, au point blanc D65.

Santé-Guard

Santé-Guard élimine le modulation de largeur d'impulsion nocive (PWM) et réduit le lumière bleue négative qui affecte nos yeux et notre corps. Comme il est adapté à chaque panneau, il parvient à maintenir la précision perceptive des couleurs. Santé-Guard simule le papier, ce qui réduit considérablement la pression sur les yeux.

Obtenez les 3 profils avec 33% de réduction


Sound

Dell Inspiron 17 3780 has a relatively loud sound, coming from its speakers. Its low tones are a bit muffled, however, the mids and highs are crisp and clear.


Drivers

All of the drivers and utilities for the Inspiron 17 3780 can be found here: https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/inspiron-17-3780-laptop/drivers

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. The results we got were to be expected given the 42Wh capacity of the battery.

While browsing the web, we were able to extract 6 hours and 15 minutes of work, while video playback set us back at 6 hours and a half. Gaming on battery power is going to suck the energy inside this 42Wh unit for less than an hour and a half.


CPU options

This laptop is available with the dual-core/quad-thread Intel Core i3-7020 as well as the Whiskey Lake quad-core/octa-thread Core i5-8265U and Core i7-8565U. Of course, the latter is going to cost you pretty money, especially compared to the Core i3 option.


GPU options

If you need a little bit more graphics power, you can get the laptop with AMD Radeon 520 GPU with 2GB of GDDR5 memory.


Gaming tests

cs-go-benchmarks

CS:GOHD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Medium (Check settings)HD 1080p, MAX (Check settings)
Average FPS32 fps– fps– fps

DOTA 2HD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Normal (Check settings)HD 1080p, High (Check settings)
Average FPS53 fps27 fps– fps

GTA-V-benchmarks

Grand Theft Auto V (GTA 5)HD 768p, Normal (Check settings)HD 768p, High (Check settings)HD 768p, Very High (Check settings)
Average FPS26 fps– fps– fps

Temperatures and comfort

Max CPU load

In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.

Average core temperature (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

Intel Core i5-8265U (15W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Dell Inspiron 17 37803.28 GHz (B+105%)@ 96°C2.22 GHz (B+39%)@ 83°C2.10 GHz (B+31%)@ 83°C
Dell Inspiron 15 55842.92 GHz (B+83%)@ 89°C2.30 GHz (B+44%)@ 84°C1.83 GHz (B+14%)@ 64°C
HP ProBook 450 G62.69 GHz (B+59%)@ 64°C2.53 GHz (B+60%)@ 68°C2.09 GHz (B+31%)@ 71°C
ASUS VivoBook S15 S5302.99 GHz (B+87%) @ 77°C2.99 GHz (B+87%) @ 87°C2.29 GHz (B+62%) @ 71°C

Dell Inspiron 17 3780 starts extremely well in the torture test, going deep inside the 3.00 GHz zone with a 3.28 GHz. However, this comes at the expense of a high temperature – 96C. Then the clock speed drops, expectedly, at 2.22 GHz and then settles at 2.10 GHz. In the end, the temperature is the rather high 83C, but at least the fan noise is almost absent.

Gaming comfort

On the outside, the device is only comfortably warm, never exceeding 41C on the chassis, with the hottest spot being beneath the “T” key.


Verdict

Honestly, today we showed you a good all-rounded device. It does exactly what it is supposed to as a home multimedia laptop and even gives you the opportunity to do some developer work if you pair it with enough memory.

We were more impressed, however, by the IPS panel (AUO B173HAN01.3 (AUO139D)) of this laptop. In fact, we were happy to see an IPS display on a device like this in general, and after we did our lab tests on it we can declare that it is one of the best panels for a budget 17-incher. It is very bright, has a decent contrast ratio, its viewing angles are excellent and it doesn’t use PWM to adjust screen brightness. On top of that, it covers 93% of sRGB and with the help of our Gaming and Web design profile it gets right on par with the appropriate dE standard for design work.

Its battery life and input devices, on the other side, are around the average level for a device at this price. We managed to get around six hours – six hours and a half of web browsing and continuously watching a video before we drain the battery, while the keyboard has a little short travel to our likings. At least it has the beloved spill resistance, as stated by Dell. By the way, it is frustrating not to have a Type-C connection in 2019… just saying.

With its good upgradability options, IPS display, and decent performance, this laptop is indeed to be considered and at 3 kg it is more for people that are not intending to go out with their laptop very often.

Pros

  • Bright and punchy IPS panel (AUO B173HAN01.3 (AUO139D))
  • Doesn’t use PWM to adjust brightness levels (AUO B173HAN01.3 (AUO139D))
  • Covers 93% of sRGB and provides very accurate colors with the appropriate profile (AUO B173HAN01.3 (AUO139D))
  • Good performance output
  • Adequate upgradability options


Cons

  • Plastic body
  • A little on the heavier side (3.03 kg)
  • No Type-C connection
  • Battery life is below average

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/dell-inspiron-17-3780/

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R7ex
R7ex
4 années il y a un an

Cool!

I’m buying either this or Lenovo L340 17 (out of stock now). Both pretty IPS screens at low prices.