The Dell Inspiron 17 7000 is their interpretation of a high end 17″ laptop that’s meant to do it all! Let’s dig in to find out if it’s any good!
Our test unit configured with:
- 16GB RAM
- i7 11th Gen CPU
- 512GB NVMe SSD
- MX350 Graphics
Display
Bright, crisp and colorful! 17.3″ QHD+ 2560 x 1600 screen. It’s a beautiful screen to look at, however Dell neglected to put any anti-glare coating on it and this bad boy SHINES. If you work under heavy direct lights or outside sunlight or by a window, this laptop will be a challenge. But if you work in an office or fairly normal environment, the screen is fantastic.
Keyboard
An excellent keyboard halfway ruined by silver key caps. The keys are soft, tactical, accurate, responsive, and placed well. Heavy typers will be able to crack out huge WPM with fine accuracy. It’s backlit for those dark rooms, and full size for those popping out tons of data entry. But why do manufacturers insist on using silver key caps?! It ruins what is almost a perfect keyboard because you can’t see the lettering on the keys!
Trackpad
Phenomenal. Big, precise, and little to no ghosting. Multi gesture support and the cursor goes exactly where you tell it to. What more can you want?
Speakers
Disappointing! No bass or character to speak of. They are tinny and maybe only good for vocals / podcasts. They get loud and for the most part don’t distort but speakers on a notebook in this price range are unacceptable. They aren’t just bad by comparison, they are bad.
Features
Windows Hello Finger Print Reader, Webcam (not Win Hello), Bluetooth, Wifi 6, Intel Optane
Battery
For a 17″ machine it will be able to knock out nearly a full days work. It doesn’t have the battery endurance of an LG Gram but will be able to handle a strong workload throughout the day so long as you’re not running CPU at max.
Overall
It’s a premium laptop made of premium materials though does have a few draw curiosities. It has features many will not take advantage of. E.g. Dell should have forgone the 2-in-1 tablet (which doesn’t offer pen support) and sprung for better speaker design. They also should use black key caps instead of silver. It’s a fine machine and we’d have no problem recommending it to people, it’s one of the few 17″ machines that are still around much less decent.
Who is it not for?
- Heavy gamers
- Travelers
- Non-profits needing cheap productivity machine
Who is it for?
- Accountants needing a high end laptop
- Those who require a big screen and a decent amount of horsepower, such as mobile audio studio or video editors (you’ll want headphones)
