Dell Vostro 5590 review – the Empire strikes back

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. It is a pleasure to us to share with you, our somewhat professional thoughts, on a great looking device, which most surely doubles as a business notebook. Moreover, despite we are talking about Dell, there isn’t any expensive Latitude lying around in our office. The laptop of today’s review can boast with quite the opposite – a low price, especially for what it offers.

So what is exactly what it gives it the hype we are unintentionally trying to build. First of all – it is a brand new model, that came to the market no more than a couple of weeks ago. Secondly, it features the 10th Gen. Intel ULV processors, better known as Comet Lake. Additionally, it can be bought with a dedicated MX250, but what got us more is its design. If you look closely it looks very familiar to the XPS series. Stay with us to learn more!

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/dell-vostro-5590/

Contents


Specs Sheet

Dell Vostro 15 5590 - Specs

  • AUO AUO23ED (B156HW02 V.3)
  • Color accuracy  5.4  3.8
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 1000GB SSD + up to 1000GB HDD
  • RAM
  • up to 40GB
  • OS
  • Windows 10 Pro, No OS
  • Battery
  • 42Wh, 3-cell, 97Wh, 6-cell
  • Dimensions
  • 356.5 x 237.1 x 18.7 mm (14.04" x 9.33" x 0.74")
  • Weight
  • 1.82 kg (4 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 2x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 2.0
  • 1x USB Type-C
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps), DisplayPort
  • HDMI
  • 1.4b
  • Card reader
  • MicroSD
  • Ethernet LAN
  • 10, 100, 1000 Mbit/s
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ac
  • Bluetooth
  • 5.0
  • Audio jack
  • 3.5 mm combo
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • optional
  • Web camera
  • HD RGB
  • Backlit keyboard
  • optional
  • Microphone
  • Dual-Array Microphone
  • Speakers
  • 2x 2.5W Speakers
  • Optical drive
  • Security Lock slot

All Dell Vostro 15 5590 configurations

#CommissionsEarned

What’s in the box?

Inside the packaging, there is a 45W charging brick (expect a 65W unit if you own a dedicated graphics card-equipped laptop), the device itself, as well as some manuals, guides, and warranty paperwork.

Design and construction

Despite its close similarity to the XPS 15, in terms of design features, make no mistake – these laptops are the farthest than ever from each other. Perhaps, their similarity is driven by the silver outer shell and black inner panels of the notebook. It has aluminum on its lid cover, while the rest of it is plastic. Nevertheless, the plastic itself feels sturdy enough, and we would describe the Vostro 5590 as more robust, than not. In terms of measurements, the laptop weighs 1.82 kg and has an 18.7mm profile – pretty 2019-ish values.

Its lid can be opened with a single hand, although you have to be super focused and transfer a lot of qi energy in your fingers to do so. And despite its lid is susceptible to some bends, they are by no means too substantial to make it not strong enough. More interestingly, Dell has employed a hinge that uses the lid as a lever that lifts the base above the surface, the laptop is sitting on. This gives it increased airflow and a teeny tiny better typing experience for the users.

Actually, this system is very similar to the one that ASUS uses on their ZenBooks and VivoBooks (they call it ErgoLift by the way). However, the one on the Dell is far more subtle as the angle is almost half of the one on the ASUS.

Then, at the base, we saw a very simple layout. No fancy stickers, except the newly designed 10th Gen Intel one. At the same time, the keyboard feels clicky and has a decent travel, which makes it great for typing. In order to be more comfortable in a dark environment, Dell has put a backlight on it. It is good to see when manufacturers don’t cut all of the corners when they try to save on costs. Nevertheless, the material on the base is not the sturdiest on the market, as it bends noticeably when you press upon it. By the way, we almost missed the fingerprint reader, which is embedded into the power on/off button.

What made us a good impression is a click on the touchpad. Similarly to the MacBooks, this one could be clicked all around it, unlike most of the Windows laptops, which let you use the click mechanism only on the bottom half of the trackpad. However, we have some bad news. Since we couldn’t get the drivers for this trackpad to work in the limited amount of time we had with this device, we can’t really give you more information about it.

This device’s speakers are placed at the bottom side of the laptop, and they are firing to the left and to the right. Additionally, there is quite a big ventilation grill at the bottom, while the hot air comes out from in between the base and the lid.

Ports

On the left side, you are going to find the power plug, an HDMI connector, two USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1) ports and a USB Type-C 3.1 (Gen. 1) port with DisplayPort and PowerDelivery capabilities. Then, on the right, are located the RJ-45 connector, a USB Type-A 2.0 port, an Audio Jack and a MicroSD card reader.


Disassembly, upgrade options and maintenance

Like most of the laptops that come to the market lately, the Vostro 5590 doesn’t feature a service lid compartment. Hence, you need to remove the entire back panel in order to access its internals. Nevertheless, you can easily do so with a simple Phillips screwdriver and a plastic pry tool. After you remove all 9 of the screws and pry the bottom panel up, you can easily lift it and remove it from sight.

First, let’s talk about the cooling solution. It features a single, but rather bulky heat pipe that leads to a rather short heat spreader. If you trace the route of the heat pipe, you can notice where the dedicated GPU should sit. Perhaps, the cooling setup would be quite different, if there was a GeForce MX250 present on this machine.

In terms of memory, this notebook comes with either 4GB or 8GB soldered to the motherboard. Additionally, there is one RAM DIMM for upgrades. It can fit a maximum of 16GB, which depending on the configuration you pick may result in a maximum of 20GB or 24GB of DDR4 memory, working at 2666 MHz. When it comes to storage, there is the standard 2.5″ SATA drive slot and an M.2 PCIe x4 slot. You can put up to 2TB of 5400rpm HDDs, 1TB of 7200rpm HDDs, 512GB of M.2 2232 drives, 1TB of M.2 2280 drives and 512GB of Intel Neptune Harbor SSDs.

Lastly, there is the battery pack. While its capacity of 42Wh is kind of disappointing, we are looking forward to seeing how Dell has built its optimizations.


Display quality

Dell Vostro 5590 has a Full HD IPS panel with a model number AUO AUO23ED (the same as Dell G5 5590). 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).

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

We measured a maximum brightness of 241 nits in the middle of the screen and 233 nits as an average for the whole area, with a maximum deviation of 8%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen is 6440K – almost matching the optimal for the sRGB standard of 6500K, which is not bad at all. The average color temperature through the grey scale before profiling is even warmer – 6300K.
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 great – 1300:1.

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 in 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 5590’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers only 52% 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 5590 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.


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 5590’s display doesn’t use PWM to adjust its brightness levels. This makes it comfortable for long periods of use, without harming your eyes 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.

Conclusion

Dell Vostro 5590 has an IPS panel with a Full HD resolution, comfortable viewing angles, good contrast ratio, and non-flickering backlight. Its disadvantage is the modest color coverage.

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 5590 configurations with 15.6″ FHD IPS AUO AUO23ED.

*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


Sound

Dell Vostro 5590 has a relatively good sound quality. Its low, mid and high tones do have some deviations.


Drivers

All of the drivers and utilities for this laptop can be downloaded from here: https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/vostro-15-5590-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. As we mentioned, this notebook features a rather small 42Wh unit.

Despite that, the Vostro 5590 achieved a very strong battery life score. During Web browsing, it was able to go through almost 12 hours on battery power, while playing videos will set you back at around 11 hours, which is a great result.

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.


CPU options

This device is sold with one of the following – Core i3-10110U with two cores and four threads, Core i5-10210U or Core i7-10510U with four cores and eight threads.


GPU options

GPU-wise you can either go for the integrated Intel UHD Graphics or pick an option with the GeForce MX230 or MX250, for some freedom in the world of games and 3D manipulation.


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 i5-10210U (15W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Dell Vostro 55903.50 GHz (B+119%) @ 94°C2.68 GHz (B+68%) @ 97°C2.36 GHz (B+48%) @ 79°C
Lenovo Yoga C740 (14)3.09 GHz (B+93%) @ 96°C2.66 GHz (B+66%) @ 97°C1.96 GHz (B+23%) @ 71°C

Obviously, Dell prefers high performance to longevity with this notebook, as it tries to maximize the power output of the Core i5-10210U. This results in very respectable clock speed at the beginning of the tets, as well as the end, when most of the laptops struggle to maintain 2.00 GHz.

Comfort under full load

Interestingly, the fan was not spinning that fast. This results in a low overall noise coming from the machine. Temperature-wise the laptop can become quite warm under heavy load.


Verdict

Taking into consideration everything we just said, we can put the Dell Vostro 5590 above the average notebook value for this price point. When its stylish design is combined with the 10th Generation Intel ULV processors, the result doesn’t disappoint.

Speaking of the CPUs, the Vostro 5590 has a rather good CPU performance, but to be honest, they don’t differ from the Whiskey Lake line-up that much. In fact, the integrated GPU is basically the same as the Intel UHD Graphics 620. With that said, we would clearly recommend the MX250 version if you are into playing low-demanding titles or need an extra push in video editing for instance.

One more good thing about this device is its battery life. Despite its rather small capacity of 42Wh, it will most surely last you through the workday, without needing to top it up. If you mostly browse the Web, you could expect around 12 hours of battery life, whereas if you are the movie geek type of person, you may get just over 11 hours.

However, there are a couple of things that we didn’t like. For example, we had some trouble getting the touchpad to work, hence we weren’t able to use it for the time being. By the way, we have to note that we really liked the keyboard of this machine. Then there is the base of the laptop that is not the sturdiest out there as it slightly bends when you are typing. However, there is almost no laptop you can find on the market for this price point that doesn’t have such an issue, whatsoever.

Its display is actually a budget IPS panel (AUO AUO23ED) that covers only 52% sRGB. On the bright side, it has decent viewing angles, good contrast ratio and it’s light doesn’t flicker at any level.

On the bright side, though, there are the upgradability options, which are quite vast. First, there is a 2.5″ SATA drive slot, that is more frequently excluded, rather than kept (See the Aspire 7 (A715-73G)), as well as an M.2 slot that supports PCIe x4 drives. In terms of the memory, there is only one RAM DIMM, however, depending on the configuration you choose, there are going to be either 4GB or 8GB of DDR4 memory soldered to the motherboard.

So guys, if you are interested in this notebook, it is actually worth buying it. However, you can still check the ASUS VivoBook S15 S532, as well as Lenovo Ideapad S540 (15).

Pros

  • Stylish outlook
  • 10th Gen Intel CPUs
  • Good battery life
  • Supports PCIe x4 SSDs
  • Comfortable keyboard
  • Doesn’t use PWM to adjust its brightness (AUO AUO23ED)


Cons

  • Covers only 52% of sRGB (AUO AUO23ED)
  • We couldn’t get the touchpad to work (driver issues)
  • Not the sturdiest of materials on the base

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/dell-vostro-5590/

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Alex
Alex
4 years ago

you’re an ****. How did you plug a SATA SSD into PCIe. What are you showing people? Deer! Get out!

Alex
Alex
4 years ago
Reply to  Alex Iliev

That is, you say that you received the device in this form? Did he open before that? Or is this so from the factory?

02nz
02nz
4 years ago

I’ve seen the touchpad issue on other Dells – IIRC loading the Intel Serial IO driver from the Dell website resolved it.

VaidasZ
VaidasZ
4 years ago

Hello, need your help. I have damaged board and need one chip name. This IC burned and have hole in the middle. IC located at left side of LCD connector 8 pins. The chip near is 7408. Thank You in advance.

Janer
Janer
3 years ago

How is this model in comparison to Lenovo Ideapad 5 4500U?

Joseph Carelli
Joseph Carelli
3 years ago

I’ve had many Dell products over the past 20 years and they have all been great. That’s why I was so surprised that the Vostro is such a bad product. When running any graphical software like SketchUp, the unit heats up and the fan emits a high pitch scream that’s unbearable. To remain in the same room with the unit, it’s necessary to reduce the performance settings so it doesn’t heat up. So, I paid for an I7 with 16MB of RAM and an Nvidea board, but it runs like a Kindle. And then there’s the monitor. It had such… Read more »

Augustin C
Augustin C
3 years ago

Hello, thanks for the review. Regarding the audio, what did you test: speakers or jack ? Can you tell us a bit more about your way of testing it ? I am not sure, on the graph, what does the y-axis stands for; I understand it is expressed in relative db level, but relative to what ? Is it neutral in relation the sounds you used for the benchmark ?
Thanks!