Top 5 Reasons to BUY or NOT buy the Dell Vostro 5490

Not so long ago we reviewed this little fella – Dell Vostro 5490. If you haven’t checked our review and you are curious about the details regarding the Dell Vostro 5490 – our article is here. Right now we will present the top 5 pros and cons of the Dell Vostro 5490.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/dell-vostro-14-5490/


5 reasons to BUY the Dell Vostro 5490

1. The look

This little notebook is a very good looking one. Just a 17.9 mm profile, 1.49 kg of weight, its bezels are slim, and the aluminum cover of the lid implements the whole stylish look. It is almost as slim, light, and compact as possible but you can always want more.


2. Performance and efficiency

You can choose between some very efficient and at the same time fast Comet Lake CPUs. Most of them have just 15W TDP, as our test configuration with Core i7-10510U – the CPU was snappy all the time, the performance was there alongside decent efficiency. Even the top GPU option – the NVIDIA GeForce MX250 (2GB GDDR5) has a TDP of 25W and its performance is way better than the integrated GPU variants. Dell Vostro 5490 is a good choice for the ones who love to own gadgets with low power consumption.

3. Battery life

The power-efficient CPU / GPU combos lead to a great battery life that is squeezed from a small 42Wh unit. The score is 11 hours of Web browsing and over 10 hours of video playback – nice one, Dell!

4. The display

The panel (Chi Mei N140HAC-EAC CNM14D4) has superb viewing angles and a decent contrast ratio too. The display uses PWM up to 60 nits and its PWM is a high-frequency one so that makes the panel comfortable for long hours of usage. You can use our “Health-Guard” profile for reducing the harmful Blue-light and eliminating the PWM.

5. Upgradability

Such a small body and so many upgrade options. You can go up to 1TB of NVMe and up to 2TB of a regular 2.5″ SATA drive. The RAM size can be expanded to 16GB DDR4. Nice.


2 reason NOT to buy the Dell Vostro 5490

1. Hot to touch

The cooling solution is not the best and combined with the thin profile of the machine lead to a hot body during heavy loads. In our test lab, the keyboard reached 51.7 °C. Not a very good result.


2. The touchpad issues

We had some problems with the touchpad. The issue is driver-related and it is not the first Dell machine that has problems like that. We hope that Dell will take a note about it.

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Garry Masters
Garry Masters
3 years ago

I wanted to buy this, BUT when I saw that it did NOT HAVE either a touch screen or thunderbolt, I opted out- While I could live w the non-thunderbolt USB-c that it had, virtually every modern PC has at least a touch screen? – whats up w Dell?. (at least it is 1080p FHD- seems like ridiculous thing that there are still models with only 720p screens) I was disappointed because I love that it still has ethernet port (hate mandatory dongles for that) and wanted to see what the mx250 might do for me (i understand that if… Read more »

Linda
Linda
3 years ago

THANK YOU for this review. Dell is offering a 45% discount today and I almost took the bait. Everything sounded very nice right up to the Con of overheating. I’ve had that problem with an HP and don’t want a repeat.