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But while the G5 feels “budget” in terms of design, I’ve no concerns about it becoming damaged or breaking. Slam your fist on the shell or hurl it onto the floor in a Call of Duty-inspired rage, and I’m betting the Dell G5 will come through unscathed. These flaws are forgivable, though, especially when you consider how cheap the Dell G5 is compared to rival machines that offer similar performance. I failed to find a AAA game that would bring this machine to its knees when played in Full HD with optimum graphics settings. Overall, we were pretty impressed with the Dell G5 15 SE's performance. It lags behind other AMD Ryzen 7 4800H systems - such as the Asus TUF A15 - in our general use benchmarks, but not by much. It beats out the Alienware m15 R2 on some tests, but where the Dell G5 15 SE seems to run into trouble is with its AMD Radeon RX 5600M GPU. Dell’s 512GB SSD copied 4.97GB of data in 12.4 seconds, translating to 410 megabytes per second, which is just under the 467-MBps mainstream gaming laptop average. The Legion Y545’s 128GB SSD hit a slow 189 MBps, whereas the 512GB SSD in the Omen 15 and the 1TB SSD in Zephyrus G14 nailed 728 MBps and 1,131 MBps, respectively. The Dell G5 15 SE finally took a victory, nailing 46 fps on Metro: Exodus benchmark (Ultra, 1080p), surpassing the average mainstream gaming laptop (40 fps) as well as the Zephyrus G14 (41 fps), Omen 15 (40 fps) and Legion Y545 (41 fps). It also slid by the 31-fps budget gaming average. Dell G5 15 SE (2020) performance
I used the Powermark software to test the Dell G5’s battery life, which loops 10 minutes of web browsing and 5 minutes of video until the laptop runs out of juice. The Dell G5 lasted an impressive 5hrs 39mins, which is a few hours more than the average battery life of a gaming laptop. Of course, load up an AAA game and that figure will half, but it’s still admirable. On the plus side, the Dell G5 15 SE's battery life is fantastic for a gaming laptop. While other gaming laptops are dying out before they even finish a movie on Netflix, this one will keep on keeping on for several hours of video or everyday, general use. You can even get a few hours of moderate gaming out of it if you keep your settings tuned for battery life or balance rather than going all-in on performance. You might be wondering how Dell has managed to cram in such impressive specs into this budget-friendly gaming laptop. Turns out, there’s no magic formula – there have simply been cuts in other areas, most significantly the screen. On a more positive note, the Dell G5 scored impressive results for the visual colour temperature, with a figure of 6492K just short of the 6500K sweet spot. This means that the G5’s colour temperature resembles that of natural daylight, rather than being overly warm or cool. The display's bezels aren't letterbox-sized, but they are noticeable, even if they are pretty easy to forget about. The built-in 720p webcam is positioned above the display where you'd expect and the laptops speakers are on the sides of the chassis toward the front.When testing the Ryzen 5, the G5 15 scored 22,707 on Geekbench 4.3, beating the 18,846 budget gaming average. On HandBrake, it nailed 8:44 versus the 12:09 budget gaming average. And finally, its 256GB SSD had a transfer rate of 419 MBps, just climbing over the 402 MBps budget gaming average. Dell G5 15 SE (2020) battery life The G5 15 SE comes with a one-year limited warranty. See how Dell performed on our tech support showdown, best and worst laptop brands and best and worst gaming laptop brands ranking. Bottom line CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 4800H (8-cores/16-threads, 12MB cache, 2.90GHz base frequency, boostable up to 4.29GHz) While this isn't the best we've ever seen, this is still great for a budget gaming laptop - especially when other gaming laptops we've tested have crapped out after two or three hours away from an outlet. You can feel reasonably confident that its battery will make it through a cross-country flight on a full charge or last through several classes without needing to top off every couple of hours. Software
That's not to say its all junk, though. The pre-installed Alienware Command Center software gives you the ability to customize the keyboard lighting, fine tune the system's performance for specific games, and look over various system statistics, which is genuinely useful. The port count is another highlight. With three USB A ports, a USB-C with Thunderbolt 3 port, HDMI, Mini DisplayPort, LAN and an SD card reader, you really do have all your bases covered. It’s also worth noting that most of these ports plus the power connector are at the rear of the chassis, ensuring a minimum of cable clutter. Specs appeal All other products will be delivered via the fastest available method (excluding bank holidays and weekends) and generally within 3-5 days, depending on customer location. On our casual heat test, the underside of the Dell G5 15 SE measured 106 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a little higher than our 95-degree comfort threshold, but thanks to the plastic, it only ever felt warm. The center of the keyboard and touchpad hit 100 and 82 degrees, respectively. The hottest the machine got was 110 degrees on the bottom left of the screen’s bezels. This puts it in the ballpark of the Gigabyte Aorus 5, though the Aorus still outperforms in two of our three 3DMark tests - and by quite a bit, too - and the best the G5 could do on Time Spy is fight the Aorus to a draw.I hit 72 words per minute on the 10fastfingers.com typing test, which is just above my 70-wpm average. If you’ve played around with a Dell Gaming laptop, then you probably know exactly how these keyboards feel: the keys are tiny and shallow, offering an overall mediocre experience.
Hard drive retention: Hard drive retention is not available on models with a soldered hard drive, including XPS 9315 2in1, Chromebooks or Venue tablets, except the Venue 11 Pro. Graphics wise, we’re talking Nvidia RTX 2060, which is the entry-level GPU in Nvidia’s latest ray-tracing capable Turing generation of graphics chips, but very powerful in outright terms. It’s paired with a 15.6-inch 1080p display based on IPS panel technology. Dell optionally offers 144Hz refresh support, but our review rig is limited to 60Hz. The Dell G5 15 SE hit 83 fps on the Hitman benchmark (Ultra, 1080p), once again landing below the 85-fps category average (it passed the 65-fps budget gaming average). It did manage to slide past the Omen 15 (78 fps), but not the Zephyrus G14 (87 fps) or the Legion Y545 (95 fps). And don't forget about the Windows 10 bloatware, such as Candy Crush Friends, Disney Magic Kingdoms and Farm Heroes Saga. The laptop gets 45fps on average during our Total War: Three Kingdoms battlefield benchmark on ultra settings, which isn't awful, but its not great either. Meanwhile, the GPU pushes out 42fps on average during our Metro: Exodus benchmark on ultra settings.The Dell G5 15 SE transcoded a 4K video to 1080p in 6 minutes and 43 seconds on our HandBrake benchmark, sailing past the category average (10:35). It not only surpassed the Omen 15 (12:34) and Legion Y545 (8:51), but also topped the Zephyrus G14 (6:59).
The Dell G5 15 SE has some of the longest battery life we’ve seen in a gaming laptop. Surprise, surprise, it’s all thanks to AMD. After it continuously surfed the web over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness, the G5 15's battery lasted 7 hours and 14 minutes, which crushed the 4:50 mainstream gaming laptop average. The Omen 15 (3:05) and Legion Y545 (3:38) were basically dead on arrival, while the only competitor left standing was the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (11:32), which can also thank AMD. Dell G5 15 SE (2020) webcam The plastic on the chassis's base feels a lot more solid than the lid, which gives the impression that the lids plastic casing might pop clean off if you dropped it at just the right angle.The results on the 3D Mark benchmark are normal for the GPU in place. Graphics performance drops significantly on battery power since the GPU only runs at its base speed (300 MHz) here. The options aimed at managing temperature that are provided by Dell Power Manager have no effect on graphics performance. The Dell G5 15 SE (2020) is a great mainstream gaming laptop thanks to its wild CPU performance, awesome battery life and bright 15.6-inch display. However, its GPU could certainly have been stronger, and no one wants a chunky chassis or shrill speakers. According to our colorimeter, the Dell G5 15 SE’s display nailed 108% of the sRGB color gamut, sliding past the 106% mainstream gaming laptop average. It also beat the HP Omen 15’s 102% and the Legion Y545’s 99%, but couldn’t quite keep up with the 117% from the Zephyrus G14. Meanwhile, Dell G5 15 SE’s baseline 60Hz panel covered 63% of the sRGB color gamut, which is duller than the budget gaming laptop average (72%). On the Geekbench 4.3 overall performance test, the Dell G5 15 SE nailed 29,253, which soared over the 21,322 mainstream gaming laptop average. It crushed the Intel Core i7-9750H in the Omen 15 (19,956) and Legion Y545 (23,868), but the Ryzen 9 4900HS in the Zephyrus G14 (30,181) killed the G5 15. I played Assassin’s Creed Odyssey for 15 minutes and the machine never felt hot thanks to the fans going full blast. Dell G5 15 SE (2020) software and warranty
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