An EXCELLENT Laptop for $799.99...if you are in the market

[JrClocker]

I bought this for my daughter for Christmas:

Dell Inspiron i7559-763BLK

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015PYYDMQ?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00

I actually got it cheaper than the current $799.99.

I turned it on last night to make sure it was good...and WOW this is a nice machine...especially for the price.

Processor: Intel i5-6300HQ
- Quad core, no hyperthreading
- Ran at 3.2 GHZ while plugged in
- The processor is very responsive

Graphics:
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
- Has it's own dedicated 4 GB of GDDR5 RAM

Display:
- 1920x1080
- Nice sharp and crisp colors
- Responsive
- A little bit of light bleed through on the bottom when turned up to max brightness (for "black" colors), but you have to really look for it

RAM:
- 8 GB

Storage:
- 256 GB SSD
- It's an M.2 drive
- Read at 550 MB/sec, Write at 350 MB/sec
- Not the best, but it's an SSD...I don't understand why laptop manufacturers are putting in hard drives...especially the 5400 RPM ones

Wireless:
- I was getting transfer speeds in excess of 300 Mb/sec through my wireless network

Ports:
- 3 USB 3.0
- 1 HDMI (no VGA connector)
- SD card slot
- Network cable plug

Other:
- Backlit keyboard (and the keyboard is nice)
- No CD/DVD drive (bought her an external one for $25)
- 74 Watt hour battery
- Comes with 135 W power supply
- There is room in the laptop for an extra stick of RAM (Can go to 16 GB max)
- There is room in the laptop for another 2.5" drive!

I bought an additional 256 GB SSD to go in the spare drive bay. Getting into this area is VERY simple...one screw to remove (yes one!)...and you pop off the back to have access to the memory slot, the hard drive slot, and the M.2 slot.

I ran the Heaven benchark at Ultra with Extreme Tesselation, 1920x1080 resolution, and this gave me 30 FPS. The fans spin up a bit at this level, but the temperature in the keyboard/trackpad area was cool.

An excellent machine...especially for sub $800.

 

[Woomack]

I was looking for about the same config for about 2 weeks and couple of days ago I got ASUS GL552VW which has similar specs but in Poland was much cheaper than Dell/Lenovo/MSI and what's more important, was available in stores.
For some reason ASUS cost more on Amazon ( near $1k ) than I paid in Poland with 23% tax.

Great price for that Dell. It's really hard to find anything in this specs on Skylake CPU and good graphics. For some reason many manufacturers are still releasing laptops on 4-5 gen Intels as new series. Barely anyone is selling 6 gen or you can see them only in $1.5k+ laptops.
I was also considering MSI but later I found out they are using warranty stickers so you can't really change components on your own without losing warranty while I already had 500GB M.2 SSD and better RAM.

 

[Brutal-Force]

I bought my daughter a laptop for Christmas as well. But she is nine and its going to be he first one. So I bought her a refurbished Dell E6510. It is a 2010 era Laptop but with Professional Build Quality and Windows 7 Pro (I will upgrade it to 10 Pro). It has a 1st gen i7 720 QM, 15.6” Display (1366 x 768), 4GB of RAM and 320GB HDD for $199. It looks brand new and runs brand new. Throw on a purple wolf Background and Laptop skin, and she will be tickled pink.

My recent laptop purchase was for a Dell XPS 13, I was also looking at a laptop with the specs you listed, but in the end I was drawn to the sleek, thin and light build.

At any rate, I am sure your daughter will love that laptop and yes, the build quality on those are excellent.

 

[grumperfish]

I bought my daughter a laptop for Christmas as well. But she is nine and its going to be he first one. So I bought her a refurbished Dell E6510. It is a 2010 era Laptop but with Professional Build Quality and Windows 7 Pro (I will upgrade it to 10 Pro). It has a 1st gen i7 720 QM, 15.6” Display (1366 x 768), 4GB of RAM and 320GB HDD for $199. It looks brand new and runs brand new. Throw on a purple wolf Background and Laptop skin, and she will be tickled pink.

Cool thing about the E-series dells is that they're really easy to upgrade. Throw in a SSD at some point and she can probably use it forever.

 

[Brutal-Force]

Yeah, while I was shopping around for laptops I kept looking at cheapo Chromebooks. I didn't want to get her something expensive ($500+) but wanted enough power to last her for four years or so. While processors have come a long way in power consumption, Laptop CPU speeds are marginally faster from 1st Generation to 5th Generation. The i7 720QM according to benchmarks is only about 15% slower than the i5 5200U in my XPS. Sure, they i7 is power hungry and will probably never live off of a power cord, but for my girls first laptop, it is a beast. Its a shame that more people don't pick up these refurbished unit. The one I got looks brand new.

 

[Woomack]

Actually power consumption is one thing and battery life is other. While new CPUs and graphics are using less power and batteries in theory can last much longer then laptop manufacturers are using smaller batteries so at the end, time on battery is about the same as on older laptops. There are of course exceptions but I see that batteries are generally smaller in new series. Average laptop still can last about 3-4h tops on battery even though components are using less power than older generations.
If graphics cards were easily replaceable then I bet that many gamers would buy older laptops and new graphics. Except that you can't see so big difference.

There is also other thing which is laptop config. Till Skylake based laptops, all i3 and i5 and most of the i7 were 2 core+ht. If I'm right then 6300HQ is first i5 with 4 real cores while there are still 2 core i7 which you can find in more expensive series.
I also don't know why there are even existing low series of additional graphics which are barely faster than IGP. There should be soldered dedicated 2GB RAM for graphics and would be about the same as lowest nvidia or amd.
I wanted laptop for about ~$500 but I ended up with one for ~$850 just because everything cheaper had bad specs or something that I didn't like. I also think I will keep it for 4 years+ so it's worth to pay some more for better specs.

 

[JrClocker]

There is also other thing which is laptop config. Till Skylake based laptops, all i3 and i5 and most of the i7 were 2 core+ht. If I'm right then 6300HQ is first i5 with 4 real cores while there are still 2 core i7 which you can find in more expensive series.
I also don't know why there are even existing low series of additional graphics which are barely faster than IGP. There should be soldered dedicated 2GB RAM for graphics and would be about the same as lowest nvidia or amd.
I wanted laptop for about ~$500 but I ended up with one for ~$850 just because everything cheaper had bad specs or something that I didn't like. I also think I will keep it for 4 years+ so it's worth to pay some more for better specs.

+1 agreed

I did research on this one too. The 6300HQ has 4 real cores.

My laptop at work is a I5-4200U. 2 core + hyperthread (4 logical processor). If I open too many web pages, it slows to a crawl.

The processor on this Dell was very snappy and responsive. Even while doing updates and surfing the web.

This machine is replacing her laptop (a quad core + hyperthread), but runs at 1.7 GHz. I think she'll be very happy with the one!

 

[Brutal-Force]

+1 agreed

I did research on this one too. The 6300HQ has 4 real cores.

My laptop at work is a I5-4200U. 2 core + hyperthread (4 logical processor). If I open too many web pages, it slows to a crawl.

The processor on this Dell was very snappy and responsive. Even while doing updates and surfing the web.

This machine is replacing her laptop (a quad core + hyperthread), but runs at 1.7 GHz. I think she'll be very happy with the one!

Woomack, as always, is point on. Today there are so many processor/graphics options, it is hard to tell them apart. Four cores vs. Two cores in laptops, I assume, has always been for power consumption. Likewise, I think the lower end graphics were also for power reasons. What good is a laptop that has to stay plugged in to get more than 2 hours of use.

That all being said, for me personally, I went with an ultra book. ATMINSIDE persuaded me. Since I will only use it for work, it does MORE than enough. Its light enough to carry instead of a professional notebook. Its the most I have EVER spent on a single computer component but it was worth every penny.

For my daughter, I know she won't be carrying it (nor do I want her to). If anything we should be able to take it with us from room to room and on the occasional trips. But I wanted her to have enough power to not always be waiting for programs to load.

It definitely boils down to what/how you will be using your computer (for). Everyone is different. Hell, I know people (my son) who wouldn't look twice at a refurb. I think your daughter will be very happy and at the rate that computers are now improving, that thing should last her for 6-8 years barring any REAL improvements. Also a little Jelly of the 1080p, but TBH I don't think my daughter will be able to tell the difference till she is at least 16.

 

[grumperfish]

Yeah, while I was shopping around for laptops I kept looking at cheapo Chromebooks. I didn't want to get her something expensive ($500+) but wanted enough power to last her for four years or so. While processors have come a long way in power consumption, Laptop CPU speeds are marginally faster from 1st Generation to 5th Generation. The i7 720QM according to benchmarks is only about 15% slower than the i5 5200U in my XPS. Sure, they i7 is power hungry and will probably never live off of a power cord, but for my girls first laptop, it is a beast. Its a shame that more people don't pick up these refurbished unit. The one I got looks brand new.

I hadn't actually looked at that series but I'll probably pick one up at some point soon to replace my D630 now. Can't really go wrong for ~$150 since I don't really have high requirements for my laptops and tablets. I have the shell of a X220 Tablet with an i7, but the rest of the components (LCD/battery/cable) aren't really worth it since I'd end up spending around $200 just to get it set up, and unfortunately Lenovo decided on using a soldered CPU so I can't even pull it. Going to end up having to sell it off since it's no good to me.

With the D630 I get pretty decent battery life (for the era) with a Samsung SSD so hopefully a "new" dell will run longer if I simply swap the drive to it.

 

[Woomack]

I could live with average i3, basic SSD, 14" display but better graphics card. I think there would be more users who could use setup like that but for some reason good graphics cards are only in high end and really expensive series while quality of laptops isn't always the best.
i3 is good enough for most games at 1080p while laptop graphics cards are too slow to run at higher screen resolution anyway. Most manufacturers are using GT920M or something similar in less expensive series. 940/945M are about the same chips with higher clock. These chips are too slow to play games so I'm not sure why are they even existing. IGP offers not much worse performance in everything else. AMD chips from lower series are even slower than Nvidia ( Lenovo is using AMD in many series ).

Simply if you want to run any newer game from time to time then you have to spend at least ~$800 even though ~$400 laptop with better graphics could handle it without issues.

Almost all CPUs are now soldered so you can't count to upgrade it in some time. Intel has changed that over a year ago and made all mobile chips BGA. Some desktop chips too. In some years I expect to see most desktops on BGA too. Only enthusiast and server line will be socketed.
Couple of years ago you could pick low CPU and focus on better graphics card while now you simply have to pick good specs or later won't be chance on any upgrade.
I also can't get why some manufacturers are putting warranty stickers on laptops. I mean I really wanted MSI but I saw info that they are using warranty stickers on memory/hdd cover and there is no local MSI support to add or replace any components. Most available MSI are with standard HDD and 1 memory stick but still cost ~$1k ( here it's +23% tax ).