Users who don't want to spend a fortune on a high-end can opt for Dell's budget Inspiron series. The Inspiron 17 3780 is a low-end 17.3-inch offering for those who just need a basic laptop for browsing and video streaming.SKUs range from $480 USD with an AMD with Vega 6 graphics or Intel with UHD Graphics 620 up to $800 USD with the Core i7-8565U and discrete Radeon 520 graphics. All configurations come standard with a 1080p IPS display.Direct competitors in this space include other 17.3-inch entry-level multimedia laptops like the, and the. We recommend checking out our existing review on the as the Inspiron 17 3780 shares the same chassis design.More Dell Inspiron reviews:. Our chassis comments on the apply here on the Inspiron 17 3780. The heavy plastic base is firm and resistant to twists while the lid is free of any teetering issues while typing.
Weak points include the center of the keyboard and outer lid where surfaces are more susceptible to warping when applying pressure. These drawbacks are noticeable for a cheap impression, but they don't impact everyday usability.Construction quality is excellent from top to bottom with no unintended defects or uneven gaps between materials. While the outer matte gray surfaces hide fingerprints quite well, expect grease to accumulate quickly on the black keycaps and trackpad. The inexpensive plastic materials here contrast the magnesium and carbon fiber makeup of Dell's pricier.
KeyboardKey feedback is identical to the Inspiron 15 5770. We find the main QWERTY and Space keys to be short in travel with moderate clatter and satisfactory pressure akin to many Ultrabooks. They are slightly louder than the keys of the XPS 15 but thankfully not noticeably softer.Perhaps the worst aspect of the keyboard is that both the individual NumPad keys and Arrow keys are smaller than the main QWERTY keys.
These keys are spongier as a result and so users who rely on them for number-crunching or Excel work may be disappointed by the softer tactile feedback. We're hopeful that future models will increase the size of these keys especially since the 17.3-inch form factor is wide enough to support it. The trackpad (10.5 x 8 cm) is slightly smaller than the trackpad on the (10.5 x 8.5 cm) despite the fact that the Inspiron 17 chassis is much larger. Cursor control is smooth with no jumping even if gliding slowly across the smooth surface.
Good Morning. When I try to turn on my laptop, it will power up, but it won't display. I have cooling fans hooked up and they power up, but nothing at all.
There is some minor sticking if moving slowly across the trackpad surface, but we don't find this to be impactful to everyday use.The integrated mouse keys are very shallow in travel with weak and quiet feedback when pressed. A firmer and more clicky feel would have made the clickpad easier to use. Perhaps a set of dedicated mouse keys would have been better given the ample space available on the large chassis. The system ships with the same AU Optronics B173HAN01.3 IPS panel as found on a number of other 17.3-inch Dell laptops including the.
Thus, these laptops share similar qualities including the respectable contrast ratio and color space. Other aspects like response times and backlight brightness are merely average for the budget category. A notable disadvantage of the matte display display is its graininess and so image quality is not as crisp as a glossy panel.Our test unit suffers from heavy backlight bleeding as shown by our image below. While not noticeble when browsing the web or word processing, it becomes painfully obvious during video playback or during the initial BIOS boot up screen. CPU performance is only within a few percentage points from the last generation. Thus, users will get almost no performance benefits from the newer Whiskey Lake-U processor on this particular laptop model. Even the in the smaller is able to outperform our Core i7-8565U by 20 percent according to CineBench R15 due to the very short-lived Turbo Boost performance on the Inspiron 17 3780.
By running CineBench R15 Multi-Thread in a loop, we can see that performance hits a thermal wall after just the first loop.Users who upgrade from the base SKU with the Core i3-7020U will still see a substantial 150 percent increase in multi-thread performance. Upgrading from the two-generations old or will get a 60 percent performance boost.See our dedicated page on the for more technical information and benchmark comparisons. Internal storage options include a 2.5-inch SATA III bay and an M.2 2280 slot.
Our test unit is equipped with a 2 TB Seagate ST2000LM007 HDD and an uncommon M.2 2230 256 GB SK Hynix BC501 NVMe SSD. Sequential read and write rates from this budget SSD show are two to three times slower than the pricier Samsung PM961 as found on the. Even so, average sequential read rate is still two times faster than a standard SATA III SSD.HD Tune reveals an average transfer rate of 106 MB/s from the 5400 RPM Seagate HDD which is actually comparable to many 7200 RPM drives.See our for more benchmark comparisons.
The cooling solution consists of just one 40 mm fan and a short heat pipe across both the CPU and GPU. The system fan is always active no matter the onscreen load at 31.8 dB(A) against a silent background of 28.1 dB(A). Disabling the spinning HDD when it's not needed will reduce the idling fan noise. In a typical home or office environment, however, this low of a fan noise is easy to ignore and never bothersome.Running higher loads like gaming will steadily bump fan noise to 38.7 dB(A) up to 48.5 dB(A) if on maximum load. This is louder than the even though the latter sports a more powerful GPU.
Like all other laptops with optical drives, the Inspiron 17 3780 will always be warmer on one side than the other for an asymmetric temperature development. In this case, the left side of the keyboard can become as warm as 49 C when under high loads compared to just 25 C on the NumPad as shown by our temperature maps below. The warm keys are noticeable when typing but we don't find them to be uncomfortable.
The competing 17.3-inch Lenovo V320 is much cooler at 37 C when subjected to the same stressful loads albeit it is limited to slower integrated UHD Graphics. We stress the system with synthetic loads to identify for any potential throttling or stability issues. When running Prime95, the CPU can be observed running at up to 3.9 GHz for the first few seconds until reaching 97 C. Thereafter, clock rates steadily drop to stabilize at 2.5 GHz for a cooler and more manageable core temperature of 78 C. The stable Turbo Boost clock rate is a respectable 700 MHz faster than the base clock rate of the Core i7-8565U.
When running both Prime95 and FurMark simultaneously, CPU and GPU temperatures plateau at 87 C and 81 C, respectively.Running on battery power will limit GPU performance. A 3DMark 11 run on batteries returns Physics and Graphics of 7233 and 867 points, respectively, compared to 7280 and 2156 points when on mains.