Top 5 reasons to BUY or NOT to buy the Dell Precision 15 3561

Dell is making a pretty ballsy move delivering a laptop with these dimensions and this level of hardware. Most of the time, devices like this come with ULV-series chips, mostly due to cooling concerns.

The Dell Precision 15 3561 gives you Tiger Lake H45 processors and NVIDIA professional-grade graphics. All of this is in a package that weighs around 1.80 kg. What this needs to be a complete workstation is a good cooling setup.

Today we are presenting you with LaptopMedia’s top 5 picks about the Dell Precision 15 3561.

Dell Precision 15 3561: Full Specs / In-depth Review


4 reasons to BUY the Dell Precision 15 3561

1. Upgradeability

The laptop has ample upgradeability options, with there being two SODIMM RAM slots, which can handle up to 64GB of DDR4 memory running in dual-channel mode. There are also two M.2 PCIe x4 drives for future storage expansion.

Here is our detailed teardown video, which shows how to access both the RAM and SSD slots.


2. Display quality

The laptop comes with a 15.6-inch Full HD IPS display, which has comfortable viewing angles, 413 nits in the middle of the screen, 392 nits as an average for the whole area, and a maximum deviation of 10%. Furthermore, it shows now PWM usage, along with a pretty good contrast ratio of 1430:1. In terms of color coverage, the panel covers 97% of the sRGB color gamut.

The color accuracy is decent with the stock settings (left), but the panel truly shines once we apply our Design and Gaming profile (right). Here are the results of our test.


Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Dell Precision 15 3561 configurations with 15.6″ FHD IPS BOE V3NPM-NV15N6B (BOE093E).

*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


3. Battery life

The laptop packs a huge 97Wh battery which can put some gaming notebooks to shame. It delivers 11 hours and 54 minutes of Web browsing, and 10 hours and 42 minutes of video playback. 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.


4. I/O

As this device strives to be a workstation, it needs proper I/O coverage. Thankfully, the Precision 15 3561 delivers, coming with a total of two Thunderbolt 4 ports, two USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) ports, an HDMI connector, a MicroSD card reader, an RJ-45 port, and a 3.5 mm audio jack.


1 reason NOT to buy the Dell Precision 15 3561

1. Cooling

As we mentioned above, good cooling will be key to the success of the laptop. Sadly, the one featured here isn’t capable to keep the Core i9-11950H within reasonable temperatures without the CPU throttling. The cooling solution here has two heat pipes that connect to a heat sink and a single fan.


Max CPU load

Intel Core i9-11950H (45W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Dell Precision 15 35612.86 GHz @ 94°C3.28 GHz @ 99°C2.82 GHz @ 94°C

The CPU reaches a temperature close to 100°C in the second stage of our stress test. In the end, it dips to 94°C, while the clock speed is pretty far from the 5.00GHz boost clock speed that Intel advertises.

Real-life gaming

NVIDIA Quadro T500GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)
Dell Precision 15 35611333 MHz @ 71°C1338 MHz @ 70°C

The GPU fared much better, being cool while keeping its clock speed near the minimum.

Comfort during combined load

Despite the CPU cooking itself, the outside remained relatively cool, with the hotspot of the keyboard reaching 41.6°C.


All Dell Precision 15 3561 configurations:

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Tibor
Tibor
1 year ago

There is one more reason to not to buy. In case you actually want to carry around you should be aware that the top shell is really weak and flexible, which can easily cause screen damage (crack). I only closed the top lid with holding the screen at one corner and the result was a rather expensive screen replacement.