Dell Inspiron 16 Plus (7620) Review. (2023)

Last year we presented the Editor's Choice AwardDell Inspiron 16 Plus (7610)for its value and large screen featureslaptop. The new Inspiron 16 Plus model 7620 ($1,599.99 as tested) improves upon and builds on its predecessor, adding a new 12th-generation Intel processor and carrying an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti GPU. (Also availablelike a convertibleas well as the cover shown here). With impressive battery life, a sharp 1080p webcam and good overall performance, it's a superior successor with few flaws. The Inspiron 16 Plus loses some of its value proposition (and this time it loses an Editors' Choice award) due to its higher price and lower build quality than some competitors in this price range. However, it offers many advantages as a general desktop replacement for productive work or moderately demanding creative workloads.

16 inches for all work processes

The build and visual design of the Inspiron is relatively simple: a clean, minimalist style with a hint of muted colors, despite the pretty powerful components inside. This style has created a lot of success for Apple's MacBooks and Dell's XPS series, although the 7620's design and materials fall a little short of that premium feel. Of course, keeping things simple has the benefit of keeping the price down, but the Inspiron 16 Plus feels more like a regular laptop than the pretty powerful and somewhat expensive machine it is.

(Courtesy: Kyle Cobián)

The new Inspiron 16 Plus is quite similar to last year's, but not identical. At 0.75 by 14.1 by 9.9 inches (HWD) and 4.51 pounds, the Dell is pretty thin (it tapers to an even slimmer 0.67 inches at the front edge), though the 16-inch display and its integrated components prevent it from being extremely light. . However, it is quite portable for a laptop with a large screen.

(Courtesy: Kyle Cobián)

Speaking of the display, our test unit offers what Dell calls 3K resolution: 3072 x 1920 pixels with an aspect ratio of 16:10. The IPS panel is quite large with relatively thin bezels, although the colors and brightness (rated at 300 nits) don't impress me. This is especially true when compared to the incredibleOLEDdisplays we've seen, but the Inspiron's display doesn't stand out even compared to other consumer laptops.

The rest of the build is good, but unremarkable. The keyboard provides comfortable typing with decent travel and feedback, although the keys are a bit smaller than you'd expect on a laptop of this size (especially since it lacks a numeric keypad).

(Courtesy: Kyle Cobián)

The buttonless trackpad is also useful, but its carved structure is interesting: the edges of the board define three grooves on the left, right and bottom, joined at the top like a wide springboard. Of course, there is not so much spring, but the clicks feel good despite the rather unusual way of applying the pads. (The previous Inspiron 16 Plus had a traditional touchpad.)

(Courtesy: Kyle Cobián)

Rounding out the feature set is powerful all-in-one connectivity. The left side has a USB 3.1 Type A port, a USB-C port withair 4support and HDMI video output. On the right side, you'll find a headphone jack, an SD card slot, and another USB-A port. Laptop is also supportedWiFi 6Ey Bluetooth.

(Courtesy: Kyle Cobián)

Another standout feature is the webcam that offers 1080p instead of the usual 720p resolution. This makes a big difference to the end user, with much sharper than average video quality that you'll appreciate in an all-in-one laptop that you'll definitely be making some video calls on.

Inspiron 16 Plus review: A capable all-rounder

Our review unit is an entry-level model, aimed at creatives and professionals, so the base is high: Core i7-12700H.processor(six Performance cores, eight Efficient cores, 20 threads), 16 GB of memory, a 512 GB SSD drive and a GeForce RTX 3050 Ti GPU. It is priced at $1,599.99.

(Courtesy: Kyle Cobián)

If you're up for upgrades, RAM is up to 32GB and storage up to 1TB. Gamers can boost the GPU up to RTX 3060 for a noticeable improvement in graphics performance. For our benchmarks, we compare the 7620 to various competitors shown in the table below.

The components of these laptops and (with a few exceptions) the prices are largely comparable, although they cover many different categories: if the system is good value for money and can perform the tasks you need it to, don't worry about this theoretical purpose! HeDell XPS 15 OLEDis a worthy replacement for a desktop computer, whileHP Spectre x360 16It's a 2-in-1 convertible.Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Gen 7it's mid-range gaming gear. After all,Microsoft Surface Laptop studyit's a versatile option for creatives that need touch input, but it comes at a high price.

productivity test

UL's flagship PCMark 10 benchmark simulates various real-world productivity and content creation workflows, measuring overall performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheets, web browsing, and video conferencing. We also ran the entire PCMark system drive storage benchmark to test the system's boot drive performance.

Three benchmarks target the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to assess a computer's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses the company's Cinema 4D engine to render complex scenes, while Primate Labs' Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular applications ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we used the open source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K resolution to 1080p (slower times are better).

Our final productivity test is PugetBench for Photoshop from workstation maker Puget Systems, which uses Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe's popular image editor to assess the PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that performs a variety of GPU-accelerated and general Photoshop tasks, from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.

The Inspiron 16 Plus performed well in this round, proving to be one of the best in this very capable group. Dell is notmobile workstationwith Core i9 or AMD Ryzen 9 to handle massive data sets, but it's more than ready for any productivity task.

Graphics and gaming tests

We tested the Windows PC graphics with two UL 3DMark DirectX 12 game emulations: Night Raid (more moderate, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming platforms with a discrete GPU). We also tested two OpenGL benchmarks from the cross-platform GFXBench, which run off-screen to accommodate different screen resolutions.

The GeForce RTX 3050 Ti isn't one of Nvidia's best gaming GPUs (see the 3070 Ti's results), but it's a big step up from thatintegrated graphicsI can. As with the CPU, you'll want more powerful silicon if your work is graphics-intensive, but the Inspiron should suffice for anything but serious CGI rendering.

Battery and display tests

We tested the laptops' battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file at 50% screen brightness and 100% volume until the system shut down. We made sure the battery was fully charged before testing, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlight turned off.

We also used the Datacolor SpyderX Elite display calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure the laptop's display's color saturation (what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamut the display can display) and the 50-plus . brightness in nits (candles per square meter).

Good news! Battery life is one of the strong points of the Inspiron 16 Plus, with more than 15 hours of battery life in our video review. As with most desktop replacements, you'll probably want to plug it in for maximum performance while working on demanding tasks, but since that's not always possible, it's reassuring to know you can look forward to working all day on the go (or the couch your). . As I said before, the screen is impressive, with average color coverage and relatively average brightness.

A little bit of everything

The Dell Inspiron 16 Plus is an attractive laptop in many ways. It's reasonably priced, relatively portable and generally well-designed, with solid performance and battery life. The display is its biggest flaw, though more disappointing than outright bad. Otherwise, it checks most boxes for general users and can handle moderate workloads for creative professionals.

(Courtesy: Kyle Cobián)

While capable across the board, the Inspiron doesn't stand out. This is a slight negative, mainly focused on the display and build which is less premium than some competitors in the same price range. But if functionality is your priority, especially with the combination of a large screen and good battery life, this is a capable large-screen option for general use.