Dell Vostro 15 7510 review – for the gamers in the office

Like Lenovo and ASUS showed us, there is no issue in making a business-centric device gaming-capable. Dell is the next manufacturer that enables ray-tracing abilities on such laptops, which in this case is the Vostro 15 7510.

We were as surprised we were happy to see that Dell went for Tiger Lake-H45 processors for this device. This leads us to think that it has something interesting going on with the cooling solution. We will learn more about that later in the review.

How about the graphics cards? Well, the most powerful option here is the RTX 3050 Ti, which is not exactly the cream of the graphics industry. Our unit was equipped with the slightly slower RTX 3050, which has a 65W TGP. We are pretty positive, that the Ti version also has the same power limit, but we’re not completely sure.

In addition to the somewhat powerful hardware, you get a pretty resistant chassis, which is made out of aluminum. Now let’s take the laptop out of the box, and see what we got.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/dell-vostro-15-7510/

Contents

Specs Sheet

What’s in the box?

Inside the package, you will find the mandatory paperwork, as well as a 130W power adapter.

Design and construction

As we said, the laptop is entirely made out of aluminum. It has a really nice cool-to-the-touch feeling and has a good flex resistance. Ultimately, it looks super sleek, as it sports sharp chrome-like edges. We find the contrast to the dark gray-ish color to be quite beautiful. In terms of dimensions, the laptop weighs 1.90 kilos and has a profile of 16.7-19mm. By the way, Dell states that their device has passed 15 MIL-STD-810H durability tests.

Its lid cannot be opened with a single hand. However, it reveals narrow bezels around the matte display, with the top one housing an HD Web camera with a privacy shutter placed above it. Dell was also smart enough to introduce a base-lifting mechanism, which proves to be quite efficient. It provides more air to the fans while improving your comfort while typing.

Speaking of typing, the keyboard here has a backlight and features a NumberPad section. The power button is placed in the top right corner, and it doubles as a fingerprint reader in some configurations. Don’t be fooled by the grill above the function keys, though, as it is meant for ventilation and no sound output.

By the way, the keyboard is pretty comfortable for typing, with the key travel being rather long, while the feedback is both tactile, and quiet. And below it, you will find the touchpad, which is pretty big, offers nice gliding, and has accurate tracking.

Turn the laptop upside down, and you will see the speaker cutouts in the bottom two corners, as well as the ventilation grill. Hot air, respectively, gets out of the machine through a total of four vents – two on the back, and one on each side.

Ports

On the left side, you will find the power plug, an HDMI 2.0 port, a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, and a Thunderbolt 4 connector. On the right side, there is an SD card slot, a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, and an audio jack.

Disassembly, upgrade options and maintenance

To take this laptop apart, you need to undo a total of 9 Phillips-head screws. The two in the top corners are captive, and lift the bottom panel from the base, easing the prying process. After you are done, remove the panel from the chassis.

Here, we see a 56Wh battery pack. It is the smaller of two options. Nevertheless, it lasted us for more than 6 hours of Web browsing, or nearly 7 hours of video playback. If you need to remove the battery, first, unplug the connector from the motherboard. Then, undo all 5 Phillips-head screws. Now, you will be able to lift the unit away from the chassis.

Memory-wise, there are two SODIMM slots. They work in dual-channel mode, and according to Dell, support up to 32GB of RAM in total. Interestingly, you get two M.2 slots for storage upgrades. The one on the left houses 30mm drives, while the other can fit up to 80mm SSDs. Additionally, it supports Gen 4 drives.

Looking at the cooling, we see a total of three heat pipes. Two of them are shared between the CPU and the GPU, while the third one is reserved for the graphics card only. It’s impressive to see that they connect to four heat sinks, while two fans blow the heat away from the device.

Display quality

Dell Vostro 15 7510 has an IPS panel, model number LG 447CX-156WFH (LGD06A6). Its diagonal is 15.6″ (39.62 cm), and the resolution – 1920 х 1080 pixels. The screen ratio is 16:9, and we are looking at a pixel density of – 142 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 60cm (24″) (from this distance one’s eye stops differentiating the separate pixels, and it is normal for looking at a laptop).

It has comfortable viewing angles. We offer images at 45° to evaluate image quality.

Also, a video with locked focus and exposure.

The measured maximum brightness of 336 nits in the middle of the screen and 322 nits as an average for the whole area, with a maximum deviation of 13%.
The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen is 6210K – slightly warmer and almost matching the optimal for 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 – 850:1.

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 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 Vostro 15 7510’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers 91% 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 15 7510 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 = 31 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 15 7510’s screen doesn’t flicker at any brightness level. Thankfully, this enables you to work for extended periods of time, without the risk of further damaging your eyes and brain.

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.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Dell Vostro 15 7510 configurations with 15.6″ FHD IPS LG 447CX-156WFH (LGD06A6).

*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.

Sound

Dell Vostro 15 7510’s speakers produce a sound of good quality. Its low, mid, and high tones are clear of deviations.

Drivers

All drivers and utilities for this notebook can be found here: https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/vostro-15-7510-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. This laptop’s 56Wh battery delivers 6 hours and 15 minutes of Web browsing, or 6 hours and 48 minutes of video playback.

CPU options

You can get this device either with the Core i5-11400H, or the Core i7-11800H. Both of them are 45W CPUs with the first one having 6 cores and 12 threads, and the second – 8 cores and 16 threads.

GPU options

This laptop can be paired with the GTX 1650, RTX 3050, or the RTX 3050 Ti. Our unit is equipped with the RTX 3050, which has a 65W TGP.

Gaming tests

Metro Exodus	Full HD, Low (Check settings)	Full HD, High (Check settings)	Full HD, Extreme (Check settings)
Average FPS	96 fps	43 fps	20 fps

Borderlands 3	Full HD, Medium (Check settings)	Full HD, High (Check settings)	Full HD, Badass (Check settings)
Average fps	85 fps	57 fps	43 fps

Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018)	Full HD, Lowest (Check settings)	Full HD, Medium (Check settings)	Full HD, High (Check settings)
Average	126 fps	78 fps	71 fps

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands	Full HD, Medium (Check settings)	Full HD, High (Check settings)	Full HD, Very High (Check settings)
Average fps	78 fps	72 fps	62 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 frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

Intel Core i5-11400H (45W TDP)	0:02 – 0:10 sec	0:15 – 0:30 sec	10:00 – 15:00 min
Dell Vostro 15 7510	3.41 GHz (B+55%) @ 98°C @ 64W	3.26 GHz (B+48%) @ 98°C @ 57W	3.05 GHz (B+39%) @ 91°C @ 45W
Lenovo ThinkPad P15v Gen 2	2.90 GHz (B+32%) @ 99°C @ 42W	2.75 GHz (B+25%) @ 99°C @ 39W	2.58 GHz (B+17%) @ 99°C @ 33W
MSI Katana GF66	3.30 GHz (B+50%) @ 95°C @ 52W	3.14 GHz (B+43%) @ 94°C @ 48W	3.23 GHz (B+47%) @ 95°C @ 47W

Here, you can see that the Vostro 15 7510 sits very close to the MSI Katana GF66 in terms of sustained clock speeds for long periods of time. This is not that much of good news, since the Katana GF66 is not really known to have a good cooling solution.

Real-life gaming

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050	GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)	GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)	GPU frequency/ Core temp (Max Fan)
Dell Vostro 15 7510	1729 MHz @ 74°C @ 64W	1710 MHz @ 78°C @ 65W	–
ASUS VivoBook Pro 16X OLED (N7600)	1576 MHz @ 68°C @ 50W	1571 MHz @ 69°C @ 50W	–
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (16″)	1651 MHz @ 72°C @ 55W	1636 MHz @ 75°C @ 55W	–
HP Victus 16 (16-e0000)	1824 MHz @ 73°C @ 75W	1814 MHz @ 73°C @ 75W	1822 MHz @ 73°C @ 75W
MSI Katana GF66	1675 MHz @ 73°C @ 60W	1660 MHz @ 78°C @ 60W	1699 MHz @ 67°C @ 60W

Despite its rather high temperature, the RTX 3050 manages to maintain its 65W TGP and actually posted pretty respectable clock speeds, getting ahead of both the VivoBook Pro 16X OLED and the IdeaPad 5 Pro (16″).

Gaming comfort

However, everything comes at a price. The noise levels are pretty high during gaming, and the external temperature is pretty hot too. It even exceeds 50°C in the middle of the keyboard, which is not ideal.

Verdict

Frankly, we think that there should be more devices like this one. Such, that are not afraid to combine a sleek business look with powerful internals. The aluminum body is sturdy and looks stunning, but what is really concerning here is the insulation of the hardware from the rest of the chassis. In particular – the keyboard. If you are planning to do some heavy stuff on the Vostro 15 7510, you should keep in mind the fact that the middle of the keyboard becomes really warm. Thankfully, in more forgiving scenarios we had no issue, whatsoever.

On the bright side, the upgrade options on the device are pretty enviable. You get two SODIMM slots for memory expansion, as well as two M.2 PCIe x4 slots for storage. One of them even supports the latest Gen 4 drives.

In addition, the external port selection is good as well. You get a Thunderbolt 4 connector, two USB Type-As, an HDMI port, and an SD card reader – pretty much all of the essentials in 2022.

Unfortunately, battery life is nothing to write home about. We got about 6 hours of Web browsing or almost 7 hours of video playback. It’s worth noting though, that our unit was equipped with the smaller 56Wh battery, and we expect the larger 86Wh unit to show far better results.

Dell Vostro 15 7510’s IPS panel (LG 447CX-156WFH (LGD06A6)) has a Full HD resolution, comfortable viewing angles, and a decent contrast ratio. Thankfully, its backlight doesn’t use PWM for brightness adjustment, which makes it safe for long periods of exposure in this aspect. When it comes to color reproduction, it covers 91% of the sRGB color gamut, which results in a pretty vivid image. Additionally, our Gaming and Web design profile helps it achieve high color accuracy.

Do you know what else is impressive? The speakers! It was a bit of a surprise to get such good results from two 2W runners, but it appears that Dell has done a good job tuning them.

At the end of the day, the Vostro 15 7510 is a pretty solid device. We didn’t get any weird issues like with the IdeaPad 5 Pro (16″), yet it offers good performance, provided you are ready to get your fingers toasted. So if you want a powerful laptop, while it still looks like a respectable business machine, this is a very good alternative.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/dell-vostro-15-7510/