Dell - G5 15.6" Gaming Laptop - Intel Core i7 - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q - 1TB HDD + 256GB SSD - Deep Space Black

Overall this is a very powerful laptop for this price. I'd say it is great laptop to have at this price, and i'd love to recommend this laptop to you. The performance is great with 16GB RAM. Smooth and quick response time, even with many chrome tabs are opening. Because normally chrome is a "memory eater", it takes up a lot of your computing memory which eventually slow your laptop down. I used to have this "memory eating slow down" problem with my 8GB laptop. But with 16GB, this is not a problem anymore. In my opinion, even for work, or just normal browsing, 8GB RAM is not longer enough. I'm that kind of guy like to have many tabs opened for browsing. So RAM below 16GB is no longer enough for my taste. Especially, for those computing software like mathematica, python, Labview etc. 8GB is not enough to run them smoothly. You will expect some lag with 8GB RAM in running them. Plus, the graphic card of this laptop is super great, moderately high at the time when i bought it. I checked the performance and cost for this graphic card at https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/ From the website, you can tell the graphic card higher than average. I'm not a frequent gamer in this age, so with this great graphic card allows me to work with software which demands more computing power.

Although it’s fan can be quite noisy in class. It’s very robust and high performance Laptop that can fit any need of a programmer and engineer. When I have this laptop , I have some problems with the software license and slow behaviors when trying to create a new folder by right clicking. Other than that, the lap is very good so you should give it a try.

Pros Bright screen for class Solid feel Responsive keyboard Good battery life for class Fast GTX 1660Ti video card 16GB Dual Channel Memory Good middle performance SSD Larger traditional hard drive to store games Keyboard backlight with 2 levels Precision touchpad is very consistent and easy to use Subtle design means it can be used for work or play Cooling fans are mostly off during casual use after firmware update Large number of ports including USB and Thunderbolt Ports with larger cables are on the back, so they don’t block usage of a mouse Smart charger can be adjusted to improve performance or battery lifespan Keyboard backlight timeout adjustable for battery and plugged in separately Upgradable memory and hard drives Killer Network Card Cons 60Hz screen is unacceptable for a 2019 gaming laptop Keyboard travel ends hard with a thud Blue keyboard backlight makes keys harder to read Rough texture of touchpad provides too much resistance Cooling fans have noticeable bearing whine Matt black finish shows every fingerprint Generic styling Arrow keys are too cramped Center hinge for screen feels awkward No voltage adjustments No Windows Hello support Design The G5 has a very unassuming style being entirely matt black plastic, except one small strip of gloss plastic just above the keyboard. Regardless of whether the plastic is gloss or matt, you will see every fingerprint. Styling grooves and a bit of plastic chrome attempt to give it a small amount of flair but the overall design is very muted. Around the edges you will find a myriad of ports from USB 3.0, USB-C, Thunderbolt, HDMI, mini Displayport, Ethernet, SD card slot, and a mini stereo jack. Connections that would require bulky cables are pushed to the back. Internally is a PCI-NVME SSD and a traditional hard driver for larger storage. It allows storage of much larger games without a prohibitively expensive SSD but comes with a tradeoff of some battery life. General Usage The chiclet keyboard feels responsive with decent travel but gives a solid thump at the bottom. It’s hard to judge responsiveness but compared to a dedicated gaming keyboard it feels nearly as fast. Unless you require extreme responsiveness or deep travel in your keys, this keyboard should do just fine. The trackpad is surprisingly good. Windows reports it as a precision touchpad. Palm rejection is very good, gestures work reliably, and overall the experience is very good. If there was any gripe, it would be that the surface is textured and provides a too much resistance. The screen seems to have been improved from previous models as it gets bright for the class. You aren’t going to be getting much done with it outdoors but in brightly lit room it is still very usable. Without a tester it is hard to judge the actual color accuracy but for normal daily use and gaming there aren’t any odd color issues that stand out. One thing to note is out of the box the fans were rather obnoxious ramping up to high speeds even while watching movie. You will notice them too because they have a bearing whine as they ramp up to speed. The good thing is after a slew of updates, including firmware, the system settled down to mainly turning on the fans during heavy usage. Even though the fan stabilized after the updates other random problems occurred where the keyboard and mouse stopped working for about a minute before recovering 4 times, plugging in a mouse once caused a bluescreen, and several times Windows complained that it wasn’t activated which suggest Dell has some minor tweaks that need to be done. Digging deeper into using it for watching movies, the speakers get crazy loud at times. On full volume it’s hard for anyone to have a conversation in the room. Sound quality is harder to explain. It’s not bad but lacks any sort of bass and midrange is slim. It’s a bit surprising for such a thick laptop to have no bass. That said, they have a type of surround sound that when you are the right distance away does a decent job of simulating some depth. It seems a bit gimmicky, but at the very least you can experience some surround sound. Gameplay The largest blemish is the 60Hz screen. For daily usage the 60Hz panel does just fine but putting a 60Hz panel in a gaming laptop in 2019 just defies logic. If you have ever gamed on a 144Hz panel or faster the ghosting will be almost impossible to miss on this screen. It’s a good thing Dell decided to have USB-C and Thunderbolt, so you have options to connect to better screens. The integrated keyboard works well for gaming and includes highlights for WASD and even has a nub on the S key to help you locate the center quickly. The medium travel keyboard means that you might find the thud at the bottom of travel a little off-putting, but if you can get used to it, it doesn’t affect responsiveness. Key spacing is good as to prevent accidental weapon changes from mashing two keys but if the keys were slightly dished this could be improved further. What does affect gameplay is the cramped direction keys. If you play driving games, like Asphalt, and use the directional keys instead of a gamepad you will run into issues. The keys are all half height making accurate key presses difficult. If Dell had maybe put a notch in the keyboard design to let the direction keys come down a little farther and allow full sized keys this would be perfect. Performance This is where things get interesting. The SSD Peaks at a decent 1241MB/s Read and 694MB/s write. Not the top of the pack but right in the middle, the same as the entire system. Windows runs quick as well as games once they are loaded off the traditional hard drive. Games still take their time to load but once a game loads the difference is noticeable. If you install steam on the SSD it only takes 3 seconds to launch. Assuming like most, you put your Steam library on your mechanical hard drive you can expect launch times, for example, just shy of 37 seconds for CSGO. Epic launched similarly launched in 3 seconds while Fortnite took a hefty 53 seconds to load. Having a Core i7 and 16GB of dual channel ram is nice but the real star is the GTX 1660Ti. Even coming from a GTX 1050 the performance boost is noticeable. Older titles, such as COD or Borderlands 2, can run smoothly with all settings maxed out at full HD. Fan noise is noticeable during gameplay but the speakers do a good job of drowning it out and they do provide special awareness of the direction of sounds helping you target better where sounds are coming from. That said, a good set of headphones will easily outperform and could provide some of that missing bass to improve the experience. Alienware Command Center is included to allow further tweaking of settings per game. Keep in mind, this is a paired down version of what is included on Alienware computers. It doesn’t include all features and you are reminded of this on launch with a warning that no supported hardware is found. Strangely it prompts to install an update which fails saying you need to uninstall the old version first instead of just removing or upgrading it for you. Once you get Alienware Command Center up to date you have the option to tweak certain system settings per game. Nvidia Control Panel allows you to change GPU settings per game like you are used to, but Command Center adds features that let you tweak hardware profiles for thermal performance, audio profile, CPU performance, and Audio Recon spatial audio. This can really come in handy if you have some more casual games for use on battery that you don’t want to use the GPU. You can set them to use the Intel graphics and silent profile meaning you can extend battery life and keep heat down so you can use it in your lap. Regarding heat, the base of the system can get uncomfortable warm during GPU heavy game play. Most of the time that isn’t much of an issue but if you decide you want to play something like Forza using WASD be prepared for some uncomfortable heat if you want to sit back with it in your lap and play. Benchmarks show performance well above normal gaming laptops in 3D Mark with a score of 5787 versus an average of 3879 for gaming laptops. Overall, this puts it comfortably into the range of supporting Oculus and Vive and nearly to a 4K desktop gaming rig which is impressive. UserBenchmark testing pulls in an equally impressive score of 82% and rates it as an Aircraft Carrier. In real world examples, CSGO pulled in nearly 300fps with all settings maxed out! Frame rates would dip into the mid-100s off and on but never below 100fps with the overall average just below 200fps. With all settings maxed on Forza 4, framerates held just over 30fps with flickering. After a new update to the GeForce drivers was applied the framerate jumped up to 35-45fps with no flickering, but it couldn’t quite muster a stable 60fps. The system does include a Killer Gigabit Ethernet adapter but with an internet connection of over 1Gbps and overall latency of less than 13ms it is impossible see any perceivable difference. Conclusion Competition the past few years for affordable gaming laptops is paying dividends for the customer. Overall the G5 is a solid gaming rig that can also do double duty as a work or school computer. Once all system updates and firmware updates are applied there is little to fault except the monitor, which can be avoided if you have the extra cash to purchase the G5 with the 144Hz monitor. You could maybe even configure it with the better screen and less storage since the hard drives and storage can be changed later. If you need to save the money or don’t care about higher refresh rates this could still do the job well. Overall the G5 lineup is very competitive for 2019.

I got a refurbished gaming computer which still has the original warranty and like the first two or three months you can have free Dell support as well. I don't game but I like have a computer for business that I can multitask with many things at once and have no lag. This definitely fits the bill! I love Dell laptops and look at others every time and come back to Dell.

Be advised that this is not a 2 in 1 so screen does not wrap around to create a “tablet”. Nor does it support touch screen or pen usage. So, if that’s what you are looking for this is not the unit for you. Hard to believe that at this price this unit is considered an entry or maybe intermediate gaming rig. That aside, for me, it pretty much has everything you could want in a laptop or desktop for that matter – gaming or otherwise. The more I use it the more I like it. It is very solidly built but be warned it is a tad heavy weighing in at over 6 lbs. Its 3DMARK score (a test for gaming performance/processing) of 5791 is right in the middle for gaming machines. Its PC Mark 10 score of 5109 (more general everyday processing test) - is the highest of any computer I have tested. It has run everything I have thrown at it so far. Frame rates are very good for games (averaging around 50fps) but are lower if on battery of course. This unit has the following specs; Intel 9th gen I7-9750H processor 16GB DDR4 2666Mhz SODIMM memory (2 slots) Ports; 1 HDMI 2.0 connection 3 SuperSpeed USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A including 1 with PowerShare (charge USB devices if connected even if laptop is off) 1 2-in-1 SD / MicroMedia Card slot 1 Wedge lock slot 1 Headphone/Mic jack Windows 10 home 256GB BC501 M.2 PCIe NVMe SK Hynix SSD – boot. CrystalDisk score of 1622 Mb/s read and 811.9 Mb/s write. Pretty much maxed out for this drive’s specs. 1TB Toshiba MQ04ABF100 5400 rpm 2.5" SATA III 6Gbp/s Hard Drive – storage. CrysalDisck score of 152.9 Mb/s read and 129.1 Mb/s write – slow. Intel UHD 630 graphics or NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1660 Ti with Turing architecture, 6GB DDR6 memory with 288.05 Gbps, 1536 CUDA cores, 192 bit interface and graphics boost of 1590 MHz with laptop screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 60MHz. I connected to a 4K TV using HDMI connection (directly connected to card) and was able to set resolution at 4096 x 2160 60 MHz resolution (and it looked great with no stuttering watching a movie or playing a game). Built in speakers I found to have the best sound of any laptop I have used. Has nahimic 3D Audio as well. ISP LED screen has built in camera and microphones at the top and a nice matte finish reducing glare nicely and good viewing angles. Keyboard is a good size as you would expect given its 15.6-inch size. I found the keys to have a nice tactile feel with blue backlight which has grown on me after initial surprise of the color. You are supposed to be able to change backlight colors - W/R/B/G – but could not get it to work. Changing brightness or turn on/off (using keys or Dell Bios), I did get to work. Keypad is large with good feel but is offset to the left of center. Internet connect options are Intel AC 9560 Dual Band Wireless, Bluetooth. Has hard wire ethernet connection too. 60 Whr, 4 cell lithium-ion battery. Power and HDMI attachments are at the back which makes it nice/neat and sleek on the desk. Exact dimensions are Height: 0.95", Width: 14.3" and Depth: 10.8" and weight of my unit a little over 6 lbs. 1-year warranty. This is the link to Dells website for more info on this unit. https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/gaming-and-games/dell-g5-15-gaming-laptop/spd/g-series-15-5590-laptop/gnvca5cr1000s Positives; It was fairly easy to setup. Plug it in, start it up and Cortana (NOT a fan) will walk you thru the setup process. I was up and running within 10 minutes. It is very nice looking with flat black case. With a sort of inverted steps (pyramid) for the base. Heavy duty hinges. Has Dell SupportAssist – given your view on such things may be a plus or a minus. I ran it initially to verify everything was up-to-date and no issues. It takes a while if you run all of the options and seems to sometimes “fight” with Intel or Windows updates. No real “bloat” software to get rid of. Boots fast – thank you SSD - but I disable any software not really necessary during startup using Task Manager. It is very fast processing pretty much anything. Apps open quickly and having multiple windows open is no problem for this laptop. 1080P screen resolution/color is great for me with nice viewing angle. As far as battery length I set it up to continuously run a 1080P movie (24fps) with screen at 75% and speakers at 25% and it ran for a little over 5 hours straight before hitting 10% battery. I did have wi-fi on as well but blue-tooth off. Didn’t have time to try gaming for 5 hours straight. You can set the fan to quiet, normal or high performance (loud) – but settings can impact performance. I left mine on normal. The USB ports are fast – especially if you have a USB-C device. Power cord is about 6 feet in length and is 2 pieces with no power block to deal with at plug in. Nit-picky negatives; Windows 10 was not activated. I had to run troubleshoot option and it activated. Not sure why? When gaming fan goes to performance mode (which is good) but it is a tad loud (not so good). Power cord has large inline block. Screen is not edgeless. Case seems to smudge easily No built-in high-performance power option that I could find SSD is only 256GB SATA drive is only 5400 rpm. With costs going down, down, down for SSD’s – why not put one in here? I guess Dell had a price point to hit and they had to “fudge” somewhere? Overall a nicely designed entry gaming unit that I hope will last years!

Like a lot of people, I use my primary laptop for a lot of things: web, email, messaging, office, photo editing, 3D rendering and gaming are all at the top of that list. Dell must have been listening to me complain that I hadn't found a really solid laptop for a reasonable price that has a professional look and can still keep up with the games I enjoy playing. I don't feel comfortable bringing a glowing rainbow-colored child's toy into a conference room but I still want to be able to play a frustration-free game from this decade at home in the evening. The Dell G5 5590 is understated, powerful and yet offers few compromises - which is fairly impressive at this price. Gaming: First and foremost, this is a laptop designed for gaming, even with its professional looks. With an Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti GPU, 16GB of RAM and a 9th-Gen Intel i7-9750H, this laptop has desktop-class specs on paper. To test how it really keeps up, I started with a suite of common benchmark tests and compared the G5's scores with the average for those components. Laptop designs can make compromises on clock speeds, power and cooling to fit higher-end chips in little boxes. Impressively, my G5's scores were above average against other machines (including desktops) sporting the same chips. Overall, this laptop out-performed 97% of other tested systems with ANY specs across CPU, 2D/3D, memory and disk benchmarks if that gives you any idea what kind of power the G5 is packing. In real-world tests, my G5 was able to reliably keep every game I play at ~60 FPS (ARK: Survival Evolved is a demanding game, for example, but played smoothly). Some less-demanding games with V-Sync off easily hit 300+ FPS. It should be noted that this model G5's display is limited to 60Hz, so anything above 60 FPS is generally academic unless you're plugging into a gaming monitor or you just get a warm fuzzy turning off V-Sync and seeing high numbers in the corner of your screen. There are other models of the G5 that pack faster display refresh rates and an RTX 2060 under the hood which is nice, but you're also going to pay for the privilege. This model also sports a Mini DisplayPort and a USB-C port if VR gaming is your thing. Input devices: The chicklet keyboard on the G5 has a very nice feel and I like the understated blue glow coming from the backlight. It's both helpful for late night use and pleasant on the eyes. The trackpad is very responsive. The only issue that I have is that the texture of the trackpad is just a bit too coarse and therefore has just a bit too much drag. Time will tell if this becomes less of an issue as things break in, but I'm using a mouse 99% of the time anyway, so it's not a deal-breaker for me. Display: The 1920x1080 60Hz display is pleasant to look at and the bezels are thin but present. I find the built-in display vibrant if not fussily color-accurate but I don't have any tools to measure color accuracy right now other than an external monitor that I have been able to calibrate on another system in the past. My G5's display is a little over-saturated in comparison but certainly accurate enough for everything that doesn't require professional-level color work. Heat: So, under stress this laptop gets really warm. I expected this, and I use a lap desk with cooling fans built in. I found after a nice long gaming session pushing the G5 to the limit, my G5 was toasty but at least not finger-roasting hot. The little blue cooling bars you can see through the bottom grates can only do so much with the power needs of the components here. Under normal loads (web surfing, office, etc.) it's a perfectly well-behaved laptop. Also note that, when the fans kick in under heavy load, you'll definitely hear them but I did not find the fan noise excessive. I really like my Dell G5 and it is going to be my daily driver for quite some time. The dual 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD are speedy and spacious respectively. I finally found a do-it all gaming laptop I could afford and I can carry into a meeting without embarrassment.

I love this laptop, looks very sleek and professional. Pulls off double duty (work/play) very easily. This is a gaming laptop and dose gaming very well. And it is also more than you need for things like e-mails, surfing the web, YouTube, Netflix, Office 360 and so much more. Unboxing you will find just the laptop, power cord and user manual. Powering up windows will walk you through the initial set up, It's fast and easy. The keyboard is back lite with a blue light. And has three setting low/high/off. The keyboard it self is very sturdy with almost no flex when pushing down hard in the middle of it. It just feels good when using it. I do wish the arrow keys were a little bigger. The touch-pad was very responsive and worked great. This laptop performed with well on the 3DMark benchmark test. Thanks to the GeFore GTX 1660 TI,16GM of ram and the 9th gen core i7-9750H CPU @ 2.6GHz. For the most part the fans only kicked on in high with intense gaming and running the benchmark test. You can definitely hear them but not so loud as to distract you. And the fans pull air from the bottom and two sides pushing hot air out the back away from you. Has plenty of ports to met your needs. If your like me and like to use multiple monitors there is an HDMI out just for this. You will also find 3 USB A,1 Type C and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Has lots of room for all your games with a 1TB hard drive and a 256GB solid state drive for fast start up times. And comes with all of the other stuff most laptops have like wireless networking AC,ethernet card 10/100/100,Bluetooth, Webcam & speakers. All in all if your looking for a powerful gaming laptop you have found one here! Just grab your favorite head set and gaming mouse and you're all set.

The performance of this laptop is impressive and a great value at this price point. With the SSD, startup is like turning on your TV and with the 1TB Hard Drive you ample storage. Its very stylish in black with the bright blue backlit keyboard (picture of keyboard included). It is a bit heavy, but lets face it, you aren't buying this laptop to carry it around like a notebook, you want it to get your work done and play advanced games. I have been playing Battlefield V on it the last few days and its flawless. The graphics on the full 1920 x 1080 60hz setting in the game are awesome and very smooth with the hardware of this laptop. (Note I tested unplugging the power cord while playing and as expected it could not handle these settings on battery) I have also used the HDMI port to connect to my 27" 4K monitor and utilized one of the several USB ports to connect my Xbox controller for game play. The dual fan system does run constant while gaming, throwing out a lot of air and can be noisy, but understandable with the high end performance. Once you go back to using just windows things are very quiet and the fan is either off or running very low. So in a nutshell, this is a very powerful laptop that can serve your free time with current PC games, while plugged into the wall, but it can unplug to be mobile and do work wherever you need to go giving you 5 hours of productivity on a charge. I'm very happy with this laptop and would recommend to anyone looking for a dual purpose laptop.