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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. As for specs, the number of options can be bewildering. However, most configs including our review rig come with an Intel six-core Core i7-8750H CPU. It’s an 8th rather than 9th gen chip, but that’s of zero consequence. It’s all the CPU you’re ever going to need in a laptop. 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. CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 4800H (8-cores/16-threads, 12MB cache, 2.90GHz base frequency, boostable up to 4.29GHz)
On the Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark (Highest, 1080p), the Dell G5 15 SE averaged 45 fps, falling short of the 47-fps mainstream gaming laptop average (beating the 42-fps budget gaming average). It matched the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti in the Omen 15 (45 fps), while the RTX 2060 GPU in Zephyrus G14 nailed 49 fps and the Legion Y545’s own GTX 1660 Ti got 50 fps.The G5 churned out even worse results for photography colour gamuts, proving that this isn’t a multi-talented machine – although I didn’t expect so given the G5’s (relatively) low price. As I stealthily approached the Militarized Temple of Megara in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, I was surrounded by lush shrubbery accompanied by bright yellow flowers that popped on the display. When crawling my way through a Leader House in the dead of night, I spotted the telltale gear of a Captain in the distance. And when cranking down the game to its lowest settings, I experienced the silky smooth 144Hz refresh rate in action as I cut down my enemies.
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 The Dell laptop does what it's supposed to do: It runs all the games that are found in our database smoothly. The combination of the Core i7-8750Hprocessor and the GeForce RTX 2060 graphics unit will make sure of this for the next years coming. Should the GPU no longer be able to meet the requirements, the possibility of using an external GPU through the Thunderbolt 3 port is available. 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 John (He/Him) is the Components Editor here at TechRadar and he is also a programmer, gamer, activist, and Brooklyn College alum currently living in Brooklyn, NY. At 301 nits of brightness, the Dell G5 15 SE’s screen surpassed the 290-nit category average. It just barely beat the 300 nits from the Legion Y545, but wasn’t bright enough to match the Zephyrus G14 and the Omen 15, which hit 323 nits and 320 nits, respectively. Conversely, the Dell G5 15 SE’s baseline 60Hz panel dropped to 231 nits of brightness, which is dimmer than the 268-nit budget gaming laptop average. Dell G5 15 SE (2020) keyboard and touchpad
Emissions - No peculiarities
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.
We didn't see any GPU performance gains thanks to SmartShift, so there might still be a few kinks AMD needs to work out, but we can't know that until we see other laptops with the technology. The touchpad, meanwhile, is fine. There’s plenty of room here, no matter how low you’ve set the sensitivity for your favourite first-person shooter. However, the surface isn’t quite as smooth and responsive as you’d find on more premium devices. inch gaming laptop built for style and performance. Featuring the latest Intel® Core™ Processors and NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ Laptop GPUs.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%). Battery life on gaming laptops is always considerably shorter than the average portable computer since its running such intense power. This isn’t a major issue, as you’ll most often have the device plugged in for the best gaming performance. Of course, it’s always nice to have a gaming laptop that doesn’t conk-out after a couple of hours for when you’re away from the mains. 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.
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. This also makes the Dell G5 a decent laptop for watching Netflix on the go – as long as you’re happy to lug around the 2.61kg lump, of course. 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 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. 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.
Display - IPS, but dim
One of the other more noticeable performance issues is the laptop's thermal performance. The laptop gets noticeably hot under strain, both on the underside and on hot spots around the keyboard. This isn't a problem unique to Dell - most budget laptops struggle with this issue - but just because all the other laptops are melting in your lap doesn't give the Dell G5 15 SE a pass.
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