I’ve been struggling with this review for a while now. I know it is a bit late but the Dell Inspiron i7559-2512BLK 15.6-Inch Gaming Notebook is even in its base configuration a bit out of the price brackets I usually review here. I decided it needs a full review after doing some more research into it. It is proving to be a very affordable and very good gaming laptop.
The Exterior
When I first came across the Dell Inspiron i7559-2512BLK 15.6-Inch Gaming Notebook I taught at first that this was another one quick paint-job on a regular laptop, then brand it as “gaming notebook”. It seems I was actually wrong. If you’ve read my guide on gaming laptops you would know that I give very big points for well designed cooling and the Dell Inspiron i7559-2512BLK comes with a dual-fan setup. So let’s see what else Dell did to make this laptop a gaming laptop.
Dell went with very discrete design queues for the Inspiron i7559-2512BLK. The laptop body is finished in matte black with thin red accents here and there. The top cover gets the typical round Dell logo completely in red that I think contrasts nicely with the matte black finish. From the front it looks like any other Dell laptop sharing this design. The FullHD 1080p LED display is surrounded by a matte black border and surprisingly gets a white Dell logo on the bottom. The top border contained the built-in webcam right in the middle and the dual microphones on each side.
The palmrest continues with the very discreet and professional design. There is a fine red mesh above the keyboard that hides the built in speakers. The touchpad contour is highlighted with a thin red strip. The fan inlet port on the left side of the body also gets the red accent treatment. This Dell features a full sized keyboard with numpad and is backlit in white.
You know that wants this laptop to be seriously considered by gamers because they decided that you can open the back of it with only one screw. You get access to all the most important user upgradable components.
Overall the laptop is in keeping with Dell’s sober and professional designs in recent years. It features a few red accents here and there to let you know that it’s something special and you can see that they did spend some time on it to make everything work right.
The connectivity
The connectivity on the Dell Inspiron i7559-2512BLK 15.6-Inch gaming laptop is pretty standard. You get the power port, 2 USB 3.0-Ports and the Headset-jack on the left side of the body. The right side features the remaining SD Cardreader, another USB 3.0 Port, a HDMI-out, an Ethernet LAN port and the all important Kensington Lock-port.
On the inside you get dual band Wireless WiFi 802.11 AC and Bluetooth 4.0. TIt features the latest in connectivity standards.
The performance
We now come to the party peace of the Dell Inspiron i7559-2512BLK 15.6-inch gaming laptop. In this configuration it comes with a top of the line 6th Gen. Intel Core i7-6700HQ running at 2.6GHz, 8GB of easily upgradable DDR3L RAM and a nVidia GTX960M graphics card. Where you can see that Dell maintained a budget is on the storage side. It features a 1TB 5400rpm HDD assisted by a 8GB cache SSD. This storage solution hasn’t been in used in gaming laptops for some time now. The laptop also features a 6-cell 74WHr battery pack. Dell claim up to 10 hours of battery life. With some basic math I can say that it can’t do that. With a HDD I would say a far more achievable value is 5-hours. If you upgrade to a SSD that would probably go up some more.
With that said, the performance is still more than enough to run any of the latest titles. Here’s a video of GTA 5 sunning on this laptop:
Thankfully though Dell made it very easy for you to upgrade your HDD and RAM at a lated time. It also features an empty M.2 slot for fast SSDs. This is turning out to be a very good starting platform for later upgrades.
