Okay, so your laptop is groaning, creaking and clattering in an alarming fashion, huffing and puffing when you have the outrageous cheek to expect it to open emails before the kettle has boiled.
Your child has clattered the keys to death Minecrafting, and your hard drive is bursting at the seams with your photo library – which you can’t ever look at because the bitter groaning and wheezing begins in earnest when you even think about trying.
yes, I can see now how much it needs a dust…
There comes a point when you know the frustration while you wait for Netflix to show you the last half of Orange is the New Black is going to cause physical damage to various smashy things if you don’t get yourself to a new laptop soon.
But of course, that means spending a load of dosh – only for your child to start hammering it with Minecraft again.So when Dell asked if we wanted to give the Inspiron 15 a spin, I was happy to accept the challenge – but really didn’t expect much of it. I mean, it’s a bargain basement price at under £250. Only a fool would expect bells and whistles for that end of the budget.
But. But but but.
The Dell Inspiron 15 Laptop it turns out is amazing value for money. It isn’t perfect, but overall – it’s genuinely good value.
The model I was given to play with came in a sleek black colour, with a nicely textured and grippy lid. The overall design of the Laptop is nothing particularly special; the whole ethos of this model is function over form. Which does mean you will get a plastic-filled experience, no metal finish anywhere on the product from what I could tell. But actually, this is what I like most about this laptop – Dell have saved money on the pretties to allow the important internal workings some proper “oomph”
Minecraft whilst Skyping her bestie best friend in the world. Everything an 8yr old needs.
The screen is a good looking 15.6 inch display which boasts a nice high resolution, allowing all you Netflix lovers to continue your addiction. Actually, for the price of this laptop, the screen is exceptional. And that carries on – for its very modest price you get an exceptional Intel® Pentium® Processor (Quad Core) that runs at 2.4GHz (plenty of Minecraft processing power). It comes stocked with a perfectly roomy 500GB Hard Drive, and it is preloaded with Win 8.1.
So far, so impressive. Properly respectable specs for such a low price! But wait – there are some areas naturally lacking for you to consider. The laptop has has no Ethernet port – you have to use WiFi. Fine for most, but having gone to the trouble of sorting wired ethernet to Bear’s room as she has poor wifi connection, it was disappointing to not be able to use it.
Another factor is that the audio ports do not include a microphone port, which means headphones with a built-in mic that don’t use a split cable are fine, but (in the case of everyone in our family), those with headsets for Skype or recording require a split connection, Mic and Audio – another no go.
Overall this laptop is a brilliant bargain. It’s a machine that will see most households through their usual daily needs of email, Facebook, Netflix, Skype, shopping and Minecraft. Bloggers – it handles WordPress beautifully, and I see no reason why it won’t handle the Blogger interface just as well. Dell has very cleverly skimped on some of the excess design features to give you a more powerful machine; think almost like a race model of a car – you won’t have a stereo, but the engine will be faster. I like this laptop – and if you don’t have the cash lying around for a more powerful one, this is the perfect laptop to be sat in the kitchen for all the family to dip in and out of.
You can but the Dell Inspiron 15 direct form Dell for just £249 (there’s even a dual core version for £207, but if you can squeeze the extra £40 I’d strongly recommend you do so).
