Solid Dell Inspiron 15 5000 lacks wow factor

THERE is not much to separate it from many similar offerings.

DELL’S Inspiron 15 5000 is a well-built notebook with enough oomph for work and play, but like many models in the workhorse stable it is solid and lacking in wow factor.

It is no secret that notebook sales have declined as tablet sales have boomed. Globally, tablets now outsell notebooks.

Tablets in their various guises have become the media consumption gadget of choice as well as being used for light duty compute work and snacking on games.

In response, notebook-makers and Intel cooked up the ultrabook marketing play, which after a confusing start is now producing a line of light, skinny, usually touchscreen devices that can work, ­travel and play.

But where does this leave the less glamorous, larger-screen notebook segment, where I can’t help but feel notebook-makers have dozed off in the innovation department.

Take Dell’s Inspiron 15 5000, for example, although just about any name-brand 15-inch screen plus notebook will serve as an ­example of very vanilla design.

The Inspiron 5000 series is Dell’s mid-market line and sits below the snazzier Dell XPS range.

To do it justice, the review ­Inspiron was well made with a ­robust case, pretty good ergonomics, no nasty creaks in the hinge between base and screen and enough grunt to justify its $1700 price tag.

But other than small differ­ences in speeds and feeds there’s nothing to separate the Dell from a bunch of similar machines from other makers. The only sweetener that I could find was the one year’s supply of 20G of Dropbox space that’s bundled in.

I reckon it’s time for some big ideas in the large-screen notebook arena. I’m not sure what it is — gesture control and super-smart voice recognition by building in a version of Microsoft’s Kinect sensor array or built-in hologram projectors — but somebody needs to lift the game beyond just packaging screens, processor, storage and ports.

That said, there is nothing ­really wrong with the Dell, which should serve for many years as a higher-spec home or office notebook.

The review unit was top-of- range (a Core i5 version starts at $999) and came with plenty of urge in the engine room via a quad core, Intel Core i7 4510U proces­sor rated at 2.00GHz to 2.60GHz coupled to a generous 16GB of ­system memory.

While it didn’t have a speedy SSD drive for storage, the one tera­byte spinning disk was one of the new hybrid drives that incorporate a flash cache.

Over time, the hybrid drive learns to keep much-used files in its 8GB flash memory, which perks up responsiveness. But, having got used to the superior system response from running SSD drives on my desktop and notebook PCs, I’d rather have an SSD for my operating system and apps and a spinning disk for mass storage.

The Inspiron’s 15.6-inch screen is a very respectable 1920 by 1080 pixel touchscreen number that while not as tack sharp as the ­latest quad resolution jobs, was pleasing enough for games and productivity apps and allowed a wide range of viewing angles.

Battery life was OK. I got about four hours of life while looping a video with screen brightness on full, all the performance settings at maximum and WiFi on. For more range, you are better off with the less thirsty Core i5 version.

The chiclet-style keyboard was OK, but could have used larger keys with more travel, while the generous touchpad was positive.

Gamers will like the AMD Radeon R7 graphics that play older games with most of the eye candy switched on and newer ones with much of it switched off.

There’s a few nasties in the ports department. The Inspiron had 10/100 rather than gigabit ethernet, which was odd on a ­machine costing the wrong side of $1500 and, while it has three USB ports, only two of them are the ­latest USB 3.0. There’s HDMI out for TV and projectors, an SD card slot and a 720p camera for video conferencing.

There’s no DVD or Blu-ray drive, which keeps the weight down to 2.6kg and the thickness at 22mm.

The top spec Inspiron 15 5000 is a solid large-screen notebook in search of a hint of personality.