Dell Inspiron 15-5570 15.6in FHD Touchscreen Laptop PC

Dell Inspiron 15-5570 15.6in FHD Touchscreen Laptop PC

Dell Inspiron 15-5570 15.6in FHD Touchscreen Laptop PC

With the new rise of Intel’s new generation of CPUs, OEMs are quick to launch their refreshed lineups with Dell being one of the first to adopt these chips. Sporting a clean and simplistic case, the Inspiron 15 5570 also packs a good punch thanks to its Core i7-8550U processor but fails to impress with the discrete AMD Radeon 530 GPU.

There are also some significant trade-offs that need to be considered here and the display quality is the most important one. Featuring a TN panel, while most of its direct competitors shine with cool IPS displays, the Inspiron 15 5570 also raises a question of how well will it fare against similarly-priced GeForce MX150 or even 940MX systems on the market like the Acer Aspire 5, for example. In fact, the Aspire 5 is even cheaper and also introduces a crisp IPS display and Intel’s new 8th Generation processors. So what does the Inspiron 15 5570 has to offer that the rest of the competition doesn’t and who will benefit from such system? We find out in the thorough review below.
Retail package

The laptop comes in a standard package with the usual user manuals, AC adapter and the power cord.

Design and construction

The Inspiron 15 5570 takes a more conservative approach with clean lines, no decorations or ornaments and entirely black (or gray, depending on your color of choice) chassis, which will probably appeal to a broader audience, including users looking for a business-oriented laptop. Measuring at just below 20 mm (19.9 mm to be exact) and tipping the scale at 2.12 kg, the Inspiron 15 5570 falls into the “fairly portable 15-inch” category.

Matte plastic is used for the entire lid giving the laptop a more simplistic look. Unfortunately, though, the surface is a fingerprint magnet and the material isn’t really resistant to torsion and bending – the center of the lid bounces back quite visibly even when small pressure is applied. The single hinge design, on the other hand, does its job pretty well holding the screen in place but requires both hands to be used when opening the machine. As for the bottom, it uses slightly roughened hard plastic with a small vent opening for cool air intake and two smaller grills for the loudspeakers towards the front lip.

The sides come with the usual set of connectors that are typical for the price point – USB-C 3.1 (Gen 1), HDMI, RJ-45 for LAN, two USB 3.0 and a 3.5 mm audio jack on the left while the right side comes with the optical drive, USB 2.0 and an SD card reader. The port distribution is nice, although it might become a bit overcrowded on the left with cables.

The interior is where things are done differently. In contrast to the exterior, the surface around the keyboard and the touchpad is made of brushed aluminum. Once again, a big fingerprint magnet but stability is rather good. The only weak spot is right above the keyboard near the hinge – pressing it results in visible deformation although, it shouldn’t be a big concern to you. The big disappointment, however, is the input devices. The keyboard feels more like a budget type of keyboard with a bit mushy and undistinctive keystrokes at times. The same applies to the clickpad – mouse clicks are spongy, the surface isn’t optimal for gliding but to Dell’s credit, it’s reasonably responsive. Also, there’s no keyboard LED backlight, which has become a standard in the industry even for less expensive laptops.

In any case, the overall build quality is satisfactory with just small issues that need to be fixed in the next generation but we really can’t overlook the fact that the keyboard and the touchpad are somehow suboptimal for the asking price, at very least.
Disassembly, maintenance and upgrade options

The laptop doesn’t require any sophisticated disassembly and gives access to all of the internals pretty easily. Just make sure you’ve removed all the screws on the bottom and the optical drive as well.

Storage upgrades – 2.5-inch HDD/SSD, M.2 SSD

Of course, since the notebook is in the 15-inch class, it has a standard 2.5-inch HDD/SSD bay and an M.2 SSD slot. The first one is taken by a Seagate 1TB HDD while the M.2 SSD slot is occupied by a SanDisk X400 128GB stick working on the SATA interface but you can always stick a PCIe NVMe SSD inside if you need to.

SlotUnitUpgrade price
M.2 SSD 2280 slot 1 SanDisk X400 128GB M.2 SATA SSD Buy from Amazon.com
2.5-inch HDD/SSD slot 1TB Seagate HDD Buy from Amazon.com

RAM

The notebooks allow up to 32GB of DDR4-2400 memory using dual-channel setup of two 16GB DDR4-2400 sticks but our unit came with just a single Kingston 8GB DDR-2400 RAM chip.

SlotUnitUpgrade price
Slot 1 8GB Kingston DDR4-2400 Buy from Amazon.com
Slot 2 Free Buy from Amazon.com

Other components

The Wi-Fi card can be found right above the two RAM slots.

The battery unit is located under the wrist rest area and it’s rated at just 42Wh.

Cooling system

The cooling solution isn’t anything out of the ordinary – just a single heatpipe connecting the CPU and GPU heatsinks. A small fan pushes the hot air out through the vents placed on the back of the machine.

Display quality

The Inspiron 5570 comes with a Full HD (1920×1080) TN panel manufactured by BOE with model number 4561N-NT15N41. With a 15.6-inch diagonal, the display scores 142 ppi and 0.18 x 0.18 mm pixel pitch. It can be considered as “Retina” at least from 60 cm.

We’ve recorded a peak brightness of just 194 cd/m2 in the center of the screen and 192 cd/m2 as average across the surface with just 5% maximum deviation. The correlated color temperature at maximum brightness is a bit colder than it should be – 7350K and shoots up to 16000K when going along the grayscale, which means that colors will appear noticeably blue-ish. You can see how these values change at 140 cd/m2 (72% brightness) in the image below.

The maximum color deviation dE2000 compared to the center of the screen should be no more than 4.0 and if you are planning to do color-sensitive work, it should be lower than 2.0. But in this case, since the laptop is going to be used mostly for office work and web browsing, a deviation of 3.6 in the lower right corner isn’t problematic. The contrast ratio is exceptionally low – 325:1 before calibration and 290:1 after calibration.
Color reproduction

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction of the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

As expected, the display covers just 50% of the sRGB color gamut so half of the web-based colors are missing.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle and the surrounding light conditions.
Response time

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and reverse.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 13 ms.
PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

According to our equipment, the display uses PWM only at certain levels of brightness while in other cases it’s practically non-existent. This makes the screen relatively safe to use in this regard but users with sensitive eyes will still feel some of the effects from PWM.
Blue light emissions

Installing of our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

You can see the levels of emitted blue light on the spectral power distribution (SPD) graph.
Conclusion

Unfortunately, we don’t have anything good to say about the display. Even in this price range, there are plenty of other options with better IPS panels. The Inspiron 5570 in its current configuration offers a screen with exceptionally low maximum brightness, extremely low contrast, poor viewing angles, narrow sRGB coverage, unacceptable calibration out of the box and uses PWM at certain levels of brightness, although the latter will probably affect only users with sensitive eyes.

Dell Inspiron 15-5570 15.6in FHD Touchscreen Laptop PC

OUR VERDICT

The Dell Inspiron 15 5000 has solid 8th Gen Core performance, but this laptop is hindered by a terrible display and short battery life.

FORSolid performance
Affordable

AGAINSTPoor display
Bland design
Paltry battery life

Bluetooth	Bluetooth 4.1
Brand	Dell
CPU	Intel Core i5-8250U CPU
Card Slots	SD memory reader
Company Website	http://www.dell.com/
Display Size	15.6
Graphics Card	Intel UHD Graphics 620
Hard Drive Size	1 TB
Hard Drive Speed	5,400rpm
Highest Available Resolution	1920 x 1080
Native Resolution	1920x1080
Operating System	Windows 10 Home
Optical Drive	CD Burner/DVD Combo Drive
Ports (excluding USB)	USB 3.0, Ethernet, Combo Headphone/Mic Jack, HDMI
RAM	8GB
Size	15 x 10.2 x 0.9 inches
Touchpad Size	4.1 x 3.1 inches
USB Ports	3
Warranty/Support	1-year warranty
Weight	4.9 pounds
Wi-Fi	802.11ac
Wi-Fi Model	802.11ac + Bluetooth 4.1, Dual Band 2.4&5 GHz, 1x1