General Analysis

Honestly, as cheap as the Dell Inspiron 15 3000 feels, I still actually like the system when equipped with an SSD. Sure, it's not going to be great for gaming with its Intel UHD Graphics 620, and yes, memory is limited to single channel because of one 8 GB DDR4 SODIMM, but so what? For a daily work system, you can certainly do a lot worse for $375. The plastic shell is quite sturdy, while the hinges feel nice and stiff, which means you won't be opening the lid with a single finger. While this has no bearing on hinge quality, the stiffness will leave the impression that whatever angle you set the display too, it is going to stay there. Still, let's not mince words: there is nothing premium anywhere on this unit. Granted, that should be expected; however, what it does offer is value.

For instance, the Intel Core i3-8130U 2c/4t processor is weak by today's desktop standards, but for a mobile system, it is a decent performer for Powerpoint, Excel, and general office work, especially with the SSD giving the system some extra zip. For home use, anyone watching Netflix, Youtube, or DVDs will have a decent experience as well with no stutter of hiccups. Overall, it is a very affordable laptop that proves itself to be a dependable daily driver with a single user upgrade. The 8 GB SODIMM allows for a large number of browser tabs even though it is obviously single channel, all while performing other tasks with little effort. Even light multi-tasking was no problem; this laptop has the battery life necessary to last the majority of a work/school day in those situations. For example, watching Ted looped, the system nearly reached 5 hours of run time. Doing a multitude of different tasks had the unit last a full 3 hours and 19 minutes. Further reducing display brightness, along with enabling more power saving options, would likely extend battery life by a healthy amount, into the 4–6 hour range depending on workload.

The display is an area in which Dell cut costs; it is a 1366x768 TN panel with average viewing angles, but has muted colors. Going into this review, I will admit I was expecting something far worse, but instead got a serviceable if bland display that gets the job done. Just don't expect to do any serious photo editing on this system. Even if you had no other alternative, I would search again. The display is excellent for office work, web browsing, etc., but content creation? Not even close! Out of the box, the display needed some manual tweaking to be somewhat presentable. Even now, the picture feels a bit washed out. You can also forget about using the laptop in bright sunlight; you will need to be inside to read anything on this screen unless you are somewhere extremely shady.

The other weak points of the system are the keyboard and trackpad. While both work just fine, the keyboard has some flex towards the middle and no backlighting. Meanwhile, the trackpad feels weak with both the bottom right and left corners having significant flex to where they will compress nearly twice as much when compared to clicking the buttons in the middle. All of this is a problem due to cost-cutting to maintain margins. However, it is still something users should be made aware of depending on how vital keyboard and trackpad quality are to them.

WiFi range was surprisingly good with no connectivity issues even with multiple walls and some 80 feet between the laptop and access point. Ethernet, on the other hand, is limited to 10/100 via the used Realtek chip. As for the 720p webcam, I would call it serviceable, but its quality leaves much to be desired. Your ancient smartphone you refuse to replace likely offers better image fidelity through snap chat. Then again, do people even use integrated webcams anymore? I can't remember the last time I ever actually needed one.


When it comes to bloatware, well, Dell has some installed, but it's not as bad as I feared. Only a few items had to be removed, including McAfee LiveSafe and Web Advisor. In today's world, we are spoiled for choice, and better free security alternatives are available, or you can go with the Windows built-in option as well, which makes trial software and inclusions like this worthless and just a method to pad the bottom line. Even so, the bloatware and unnecessary software are still minimal. The majority of what I would remove comes prepacked with Windows 10 by Microsoft and not Dell at this point.

If you're still reading, we now get to my biggest gripe with this unit. Suffice it to say that the BIOS this unit ships with did not have a Turbo setting, which resulted in erratic CPU clock speeds; sometimes, the i3-8130U would clock to 3.4 GHz, while it was stuck at 2.2 GHz in other tests. Worse yet, there was no real pattern. One day, it would run at 2.2 GHz as the maximum clock speed, and the next day, it would clock back up to its max turbo frequency with no issues. The built-in Dell software won't tell you that there is a BIOS update available unless you manually ask it to check for one. That was my experience with Dell's software anyway. That said, after a simple BIOS flash, which adds a Turbo option in said BIOS, performance was significantly improved. This is an example of something most consumers would miss, which would net them less performance than they paid for. In this case, the laptop shipped with the i3 8130U performing up to 35% slower than it should have. But again, this was corrected with a simple BIOS flash within Windows.