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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. 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.
The 3DMark: Fire Strike benchmark results show that the Dell G5 is much more competitive with its GPU performance. A 9569 score isn’t significantly behind the Asus ROG Strix GL504 Hero II’s result of 10,115. This isn’t too surprising: this Dell G5 houses Nvidia’s GTX 1060 GPU. The palmrests and touchpad are cooler than skin temperature with a maximum of 28.8 °C / 83.8 F and are therefore cool to the touch.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. IDC Whitepaper: “Optimizing Performance with Frequent Server Replacements for Enterprises” commissioned by Dell Technologies and Intel, March 2021. Results are based on interviews with 18 IT practitioners and decision makers at midsize and large enterprises and a web survey of 707 IT practitioners and decision makers at midsize and larger enterprises using Dell Technologies server solutions across 7 industries. See full whitepaper: https://www.delltechnologies.com/resources/en-us/asset/white-papers/products/servers/server-infrastructure-resiliency-enterprise-whitepaper.pdf
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. Add an impressive battery life to the mix, and you’ve got a no-thrills gaming laptop that gets the job done to a satisfying standard. If you’re not fussed about RGB lights and skinny bezels, and just want a laptop that can play your entire Steam library in Full HD, then you’ll struggle to find a better value gaming laptop than the Dell G5. Verdict The RGB lighting consists of four zones, including the numpad. You can configure the lighting in the FX tab of the Alienware Command Center app with effects like Rainbow Wave, Breathing and Spectrum. While I wish the individual keys were RGB-lit, the lighting is pleasantly bright. Meanwhile, read and write speeds are a little sluggish, coming in at 549MB/sec and 260MB/sec respectively. This means that the Dell G5 might be slow reading data compared to other gaming laptops – but for the price, you can’t feel too hard done by. The 128GB SSD and 1TB SATA storage at least mean you’ll be able to install a generous number of games before having to go on a Steam cull.
Energy management - Very long-lasting
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
This is also the first gaming laptop to feature AMD's SmartShift technology, which helps the laptop manage the power distribution between the CPU and the GPU to get more power to where the need is greater at any given moment. 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. inch, FHD, 1920 x 1080, 120 Hz, anti-glare, non-touch, 45% NTSC, 250 nits, wide-viewing angle (WVA) And don't forget about the Windows 10 bloatware, such as Candy Crush Friends, Disney Magic Kingdoms and Farm Heroes Saga.
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. 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. Gaming laptops aren't known for their battery life, so we were pleasantly surprised with the G5 15 SE's battery performance. In our PCMark 10 battery test, it lasted an average 7 hours and 3 minutes on a full charge and in our movie test, it went for 5 hours and 45 minutes, blowing way past the Aorus 5 which didn't even finish a single playthrough. 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 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.
inch, FHD, 1920 x 1080, 165 Hz, anti-glare, non-touch, 100% sRGB, 300 nits, wide-viewing angle (WVA)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. 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 Dell G5 should be able to play almost any game in Full HD with settings cranked up to maximum. Unlike the G3, I never suffered a system crash with the G5, despite playing ultra-intensive titles such as Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Ghost Recon: Wildlands. Overall, the Dell G5 15 SE has a lot of power and puts in a competent performance when it comes to gaming on the higher end, even if it's not going to win the race. It might not need to though - performance doesn't exist in a vacuum, after all. Cinebench R15 | Cinebench R10 | Cinebench R20 | Geekbench 3 | Geekbench 4.4 | Mozilla Kraken 1.1 | Octane V2 | JetStream 1.1 Cinebench R15
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