Dell Vostro 15 3535 review – AMD vs Intel? AMD wins.

Name: Dell Vostro 3535
Brand: Dell

LaptopMedia.com Reviews and Analysis Dell Vostro 15 3535 review - AMD vs Intel? AMD wins. Page 10

From: Nikolay Palaozov 04 September 2023 / 17:37 | 0

10. Verdict

9. Disassembly, Upgrade options, and Maintenance Previous page Next page

Verdict

Just like the Intel version, the Dell Vostro 15 3535 left us with mixed feelings. We got the plastic version of the laptop that has a grippy texture but the whole chassis is flexible. On the bright side, the device is light and the profile thickness is on the thinner side so portability looks good. The keyboard is nice – it has an optional backlight, it’s spill-resistant, and it has a NumberPad section. The long key travel and the clicky feedback of the keycaps make the board comfortable for typing but sadly the chassis suffers from a lot of flex during typing. The touchpad is smooth and accurate.

We are a bit amazed that the overall performance of the laptop is okay given the rater basic cooling solution. The CPU can maintain higher than the base clock frequencies and the same goes for the power limit. The temperatures under any kind of load are fine too.

We have tested better-performing laptops with the same CPU but the results of this machine aren’t bad considering that an 8-core Ryzen 7 7730U is tamed by a single fan and one heat pipe. Moreover, the machine isn’t loud during heavy CPU stress and the keyboard is getting a bit warm, but not hot. All this makes the device a comfortable notebook for office and home tasks. Once again, this shows us that the Zen 3 CPUs are still a great choice for a device like the one in front of us because they are efficient and don’t require significant cooling.

The upgradability of this machine is decent. There are two SODIMM slots for up to 16GB of DDR4-3200MHz RAM. The laptops configured with the AMD Athlon Gold 7220U, AMD Ryzen3 7320U, and AMD Ryzen5 7520U rely on 8 GB LPDDR5-5500 MHz memory. For storage, there is just one M.2 slot compatible with Gen 4 SSDs but the slot is also limited to Gen 3 speeds which is standard platform limitation.

The port selection is unpretentious – an HDMI 1.4 connector, a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, and a USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, an Audio jack, a LAN port, a USB 2.0 port, and an SD 3.0 card reader. The optional IPS panel (BOE W3MRC-NV15N4U (BOE0A8A)) has comfortable viewing angles and a high refresh rate of 120Hz. The sRGB color coverage is low which isn’t that important for a laptop like this one. The cons of the display are the not-so-great contrast ratio and the PWM usage that is not present only if you set the panel to maximum brightness. Still, our Health-Guard profile fixes this issue. The sound that is coming from the bottom-firing speakers is of a good quality. Also, all the tones are clear of deviations.

The battery life is longer compared to the Intel version and this is a result of the AMD platform that is more energy-efficient. At the end of the day, we can clearly say that the Dell Vostro 15 3535 is better than its Intel sibling – the Vostro 15 3530. The AMD machine is ahead when it comes to battery life, maintained CPU clock and thermals under load, and the AMD version is more comfortable during heavy stress. Nevertheless, the Acer Aspire 5 (A515-48M) is a serious threat to the Vostro 15 3535 because it offers better cooling and longer battery life.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/dell-vostro-15-3535-ddr4/