Dell Vostro 16 5620 review

Dell’s Vostro series has always been jumping from being a business device to one that is used mainly for entertainment. To be frank, we couldn’t have been more confused now, as it comes with a quite powerful processor – up to the Core i7-1260P, and an optional NVIDIA GeForce MX570.

What makes this review even more interesting, is the fact that this is the first laptop in our office that comes with this graphics card. Ultimately, it is the bigger brother of the MX550 and has “limited” support for ray tracing. One of the major downsides of this GPU is its low memory capacity of 2GB. Nevertheless, it should be significantly more powerful than the MX450.

At 30W of TGP, the cooling solution will play a huge role. Given the fact that the Vostro 16 5620 is basically the Intel version of the Vostro 16 5625, we won’t be surprised to see the same cooling solution inside. This in turn will be unfortunate, because the AMD CPUs are not only more efficient but also there is a dGPU in today’s laptop.

We won’t leave anything to the hypothesis, though. Let’s unbox the device, and see what it looks like and if it’s going to prove skeptics wrong.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/dell-vostro-16-5620/

Contents


Specs Sheet

Dell Vostro 16 5620 - Specs

  • LG FNPN5-160WU1 (LGD0701)
  • Color accuracy  5.9  4.1
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 2000GB SSD
  • RAM
  • up to 64GB
  • OS
  • Windows 10 Pro, Windows 11 Home, Windows 11 Pro
  • Battery
  • 54Wh, 4-cell , 54Wh, 4-cell, 41Wh, 3-cell
  • Body material
  • Aluminum
  • Dimensions
  • 356.78 x 251.90 x 15.67 - 17.95 mm (14.05" x 9.92" x 0.62")
  • Weight
  • 1.91 kg (4.2 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 2x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-C
  • 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps), Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort
  • HDMI
  • 1.4
  • Card reader
  • SD, SDHC, SDXC
  • Ethernet LAN
  • 10/100/1000 Mbit/s
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ax
  • Bluetooth
  • 5.2
  • Audio jack
  • 3.5mm Combo Jack
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • optional
  • Web camera
  • FHD
  • Backlit keyboard
  • optional
  • Microphone
  • Digital Array Microphones in camera assembly
  • Speakers
  • 2x 2W Stereo Speakers
  • Optical drive
  • optional
  • Security Lock slot

What’s in the box?

Inside the package, we see some paperwork and a 65W power adapter – nothing too fancy.


Design and construction

One thing that immediately gets attention is the metal body panels of this device. This results in a cool-to-the-touch feeling, which is fantastic. Usually, using aluminum for the build of laptop results in it getting an improved resistance to flex.

While this is true for the lid, the base shows flex even with the slightest of twists. This might be because of the thin profile (15.7-18mm), but we are pretty sure the reason behind that is the lack of internal support of the chassis. In terms of weight, the laptop sits at a minimum of 1.91 kilos, which is pretty good.

The lid cannot be opened with a single hand. However, it has thin bezels, a Full HD Web camera, and a privacy shutter above it. In addition, there is a lever system, which lifts the backside of the base, once you open the lid past a certain angle.

Surprisingly, the keyboard is pretty comfortable for typing. It has decent key travel, clicky feedback, and a backlight. The NumPad section will provide all of the number crunchers with extra comfort.

You also get an option for a fingerprint reader, which will be found on top of the power button. Having it there means that it won’t take space on the touchpad. Speaking of which, it has a smooth surface and decent size, but it is a bit bendy towards the bottom two corners.

Turn the laptop upside down, and you will see two speaker cutouts as well as a rather large ventilation grill. The hot air is being exhausted through a vent on the back of the base. Essentially, it is aimed at the bottom of the screen, which is not ideal in the long term.

Ports

On the left side, you will find the charging plug, an HDMI 1.4 connector, a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, and a USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2) port with DisplayPort and Power Delivery capabilities. Then, on the right, there is a security lock slot, an Audio jack, a LAN port, a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, and an SD card reader.


Disassembly, upgrade options, and maintenance

This notebook’s bottom panel is held in place by 9 Phillips-head screws. The two in the top two corners are captive and gently detach the panel from the chassis. This shows you where to start the prying process from.

Our unit is equipped with the larger 54Wh battery pack. It lasts for 10 hours of Web browsing, or more than 7 hours of video playback. To take it out, unplug the battery connector from the motherboard. Then, undo all 5 Phillips-head screws keeping the package in place.

There are two SODIMM slots, which work with DDR4 RAM in dual-channel mode. Storage-wise, the laptop that comes with the bigger battery features one M.2 PCIe x4 slot with support of Gen 4 drives.

Unsurprisingly, the cooling system here is the same as that of the AMD model. It has two heat pipes, a single heat sink, and some heat spreaders for the graphics memory and the VRMs.


Display quality

Dell Vostro 16 5620 in our configuration is equipped with a WUXGA IPS panel with a model number LG FNPN5-160WU1 (LGD0701). Its diagonal is 16″ (40.6 cm), and the resolution is 1920 х 1200 pixels. The screen ratio is 16:10, and we are looking at a pixel density of – 141 ppi, and a pitch of 0.18 х 0.18 mm. The screen turns into Retina when viewed at distance equal to or greater than 61cm (24″) (from this distance one’s eye stops differentiating the separate pixels, and it is normal for looking at a laptop).

Viewing angles are excellent. We offer images at 45° to evaluate image quality.

Also, a video with locked focus and exposure.

The measured maximum brightness of 268 nits in the middle of the screen and 245 nits as an average for the whole area, with a maximum deviation of 13%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen is 6830K – slightly colder than the sRGB standard of 6500K.

In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. In other words, the leakage of light from the light source.

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. The contrast ratio is good – 1200:1.

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 on HDTV and 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 Vostro 16 5620’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers 54% 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 Vostro 16 5620 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 = 22 ms.

After that, we test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “Gray-to-Gray” method from 50% White to 80% White and vice versa between 10% and 90% of the amplitude.


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 Vostro 16 5620’s backlight doesn’t flicker at any brightness level, making the laptop comfortable and safe in this aspect.

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.

Gloss level measurement

Glossy-coated displays are sometimes inconvenient in high ambient light conditions. We show the level of reflection on the screen for the respective laptop when the display is turned off and the measurement angle is 60° (in this case, the result is 50.1 GU).


Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Dell Vostro 16 5620 configurations with 16″ IPS LG FNPN5-160WU1 (LGD0701).

*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


Drivers

All drivers and utilities for this notebook can be found here: https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/vostro-16-5620-laptop/drivers

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with the 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. Our device has a 54Wh battery, which lasts for 10 hours and 10 minutes of Web browsing, or 7 hours and 24 minutes of video playback.


CPU options

You can choose between two Alder Lake-U processors (Core i5-1235U or Core i7-1255U), and two Alder Lake-P CPUs (Core i5-1240P or Core i7-1260P).


GPU options

Besides the integrated graphics cards, you can get the NVIDIA GeForce MX570 (30W) with 2GB of GDDR6 VRAM


Gaming tests


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 P-core frequency; Average E-core frequency; CPU temp.; Package Power

Intel Core i7-1260P (28W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Dell Vostro 16 56202.55 GHz @ 2.14 GHz @ 73°C @ 41W2.54 GHz @ 2.12 GHz @ 82°C @ 40W1.97 GHz @ 1.61 GHz @ 74°C @ 28W
Lenovo ThinkPad T16 Gen 12.66 GHz @ 2.29 GHz @ 72°C @ 47W1.21 GHz @ 1.53 GHz @ 63°C @ 20W1.26 GHz @ 1.54 GHz @ 64°C @ 20W

In contrast to the ThinkPad T16 Gen 1, the Vostro 16 5620 is able to maintain the 28W TDP limit of the Core i7-1260P for the entirety of the test.

Real-life gaming

NVIDIA GeForce MX570GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)
Dell Vostro 16 56201268 MHz @ 79°C @ 30W1253 MHz @ 81°C @ 30W

As you can see, the MX570 is able to maintain its 30W TDP limit, but at what cost? 81°C on the core is a bit too much for this kind of graphics card.

Gaming comfort

Not only that but the high temperature on the inside transfers to the middle of the keyboard, where we see it raise to around 56°C. Thankfully, the single fan can’t make that much noise, no matter how hard it’s trying.


Verdict

Do you remember how we said that the Vostro 16 5625 is cool? Well, the same can’t be said about the Intel version – Vostro 16 5620. And that’s probably going to be the only reason we would advise against getting this laptop. Yes, it offers a reasonable amount of performance, especially on the GPU side. The fact that it can maintain the 30W TGP limit is fascinating.

You can even enjoy titles like The Witcher 3 with 40 fps on Ultra, and Cyberpunk 2077 with 30 fps on Medium. What is more interesting, is that the main bottleneck for this particular GPU is its small memory buffer of 2GB. In fact, graphics cards with less than 4GB of memory should be banned by the law.

Anyways, Dell Vostro 16 5620’s IPS panel has a WUXGA (1920×1200) resolution, comfortable viewing angles, and a good contrast ratio. Its backlight doesn’t flicker, which means you will be safe to work for long periods of time in this aspect. On the other hand, the display covers only 54% of the sRGB color gamut. This results in a quite dull image to look at.

But hey, this is the base display option. There is one that can replicate roughly 100% of the sRGB color gamut, and one that has a “3K” resolution. It’s good to have a choice, isn’t it?

The upgrade options are also pretty nice. You get two SODIMM slots for DDR4 memory. According to Dell, the maximum amount you can fit is 32GB, but we are pretty sure you can go 64GB without an issue.

Storage-wise, there is one M.2 PCIe x4 slot, which supports Gen 4 drives. But this is when you get the larger 54Wh battery option. Should you get the smaller one (41Wh), you will receive an additional M.2 2230 PCIe x4 slot.

Speaking of battery, the results here were not stellar. Yes, single tab Web browsing will drain the battery for more than 10 hours, but watching videos locally is quite more taxing – 7 hours and a half on a single charge.

Although we wouldn’t recommend this laptop because of its thermal inefficiency, we want to praise it for having a Full HD Web camera as standard, a privacy shutter, and an optional fingerprint reader. And even though it lacks a Thunderbolt 4 connector, the USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2) port supports both DisplayPort output and Power Delivery.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/dell-vostro-16-5620/

Pros

  • Aluminum body
  • Wide I/O with SD card reader
  • Wi-Fi 6 support plus an optional fingerprint reader
  • 1x M.2 PCIe x4 Gen 4 + 2x SODIMM slots
  • No PWM (LG FNPN5-160WU1 (LGD0701))


Cons

  • 54% sRGB coverage (LG FNPN5-160WU1 (LGD0701))
  • Keyboard gets really hot after long periods of gaming
  • Not the best cooling

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