Dell Inspiron 16 review 2024: affordable 16-inch laptop for students

When we looked at the first version of Dell’s Inspiron 16 Plus about 18 months ago, it was one of the first 16-inch, 16:10 Windows laptops we’d seen, and we gave it have a award for its roomy screen, clean design, strong performance, and long battery life.

The latest version of the Inspiron 16 has better performance and a longer battery life. It also has a few design changes, but they don’t fix our biggest complaints, which are that the keyboard deck bends and you can’t upgrade the screen. The fact that the starting price of the Inspiron 16 Plus has gone up makes these things stand out even more.

It used to start at less than $1,000, but now a system with a 16-inch, 300-nit screen with a 3K resolution, an Intel Core i7-12700H processor, and RTX 3050 Ti graphics starts at $1,600. At this price, the Inspiron 16 Plus falls somewhere between a midrange and a high-end laptop, so it’s not too much to ask for a stronger aluminium chassis and the option of an OLED screen

Dell Inspiron 16 specifications

Dell Inspiron 16 review: Design

The Dell Inspiron 16 has a very stylish look. The dark green colour with metallic flecks gives it a clean, modern, minimalist look with a touch of colour. On the back of the Inspiron 16’s lid, there is a black Dell logo. It’s cool and gives the look a little something extra.

At the back of the laptop are holes for heat to escape. Dell’s XPS series has done well with this design, and it doesn’t hurt the Inspiron at all. But the 16 Plus doesn’t stand out, and maybe that’s on purpose. Like everything Dell makes, its simplicity is the result of a lot of thought.

When you open the laptop, you see a big screen that draws your eyes in. Hidden in the small bezel is a webcam with a manual privacy shutter that is barely visible. If you look down towards the keyboard deck, you’ll see a simple speaker grill, followed by a large keyboard that fits well in the large deck and gives your wrists plenty of room. You can buy this laptop from its official website.

Dell Inspiron 16 review: Display

During the time I used the system, the display brightness was always at its highest level, even when I was inside on a grey winter day with soft artificial light. A 350- or 400-nit screen isn’t too much to ask for on a $1,600 laptop, especially if it has RTX graphics, which could attract content creators.

Even better, the Acer Swift Edge shows that graphics professionals and enthusiasts can get an OLED panel for this price. The 60Hz refresh rate will disappoint gamers who want a laptop that can do everything and can also be used for gaming. It’s too bad that Dell didn’t pair the RTX 3050 Ti graphics with a 120Hz or 144Hz panel or at least give you the option to upgrade to a faster screen.

Dell Inspiron 16 review: Keyboard and touchpad

You get a big trackpad made of plastic and a full-sized keyboard with a number pad. The keys on the keyboard are a little soft, and the bed is a little too springy. Overall, though, this is a very reliable portable. It’s also pretty well made, with two fans, three heat pipes, and a lot of venting on the bottom and sides of the chassis to keep it cool.

The USB-C port is near the front of the left side of the chassis, which is not our favourite design choice. If you want to use the USB-C port to connect to a monitor often, that’s not the best place for it. It gets in the way a lot and would work much better farther back on the chassis.

Dell Inspiron 16 review: Features

The most important part of the Dell Inspiron 16 Plus (2022) is its 16-inch IPS display with a 16:10 aspect ratio, which is a bit taller than the 16:9 displays most other laptops have. It also stands out because it has a native 3K resolution. You get 3,072 by 1,920 pixels, to be exact.

That actually makes a lot of sense, as it gives you a bit more vertical space to play with and view web pages and documents, while the 3K resolution gives you a high DPI experience and crisp fonts without the cost and higher battery drain of a full 4K panel, which would be overkill on a 16-inch screen.

If that’s true for all models of the Inspiron 16 Plus, then our review laptop has an 11th Gen Intel Core i7-11800H CPU. Even though it’s from the last generation, that chip is still a 10nm, eight-core beast. We’re talking about an Nvidia RTX 3050 graphics card with 4GB of video memory.

Dell Inspiron 16 review: Battery Life

It has a great battery life, a sharp 1080p webcam, and good performance all around. It’s a great follow-up with few problems. The Inspiron 16 Plus loses some of its value because it costs more and isn’t as well made as some of its competitors in this price range. This is why it didn’t get an award this time. But it has a lot going for it as a general desktop replacement for productivity tasks or creative tasks that aren’t too hard.

Final Words

The huge screen of the Inspiron 16 Plus 7610 results in a bulky and heavy laptop. Despite its size and weight, though, this model has a lot going for it, including a solid display, a battery life that lasts all day, and an abundance of ports and connectors. If you don’t require a touch screen and don’t have very high expectations for the quality of the speakers, this might be a worthwhile investment for power users and producers.

FAQs

Is Dell Inspiron 16 a good laptop?

Verdict. The Dell Inspiron 16 Plus is one of the more reasonably priced 16-inch laptops now available, and it even has the capability of being upgraded with a discrete graphics processing unit (GPU) to improve its graphics performance. Even though it has a clunky design, this laptop is an excellent choice for anyone searching for a productivity laptop that won’t blow their budget.

Is Dell Inspiron 16 AMD or Intel?

The performance and the hardware. This Inspiron 16 model is powered by an octa-core AMD Ryzen 7 5825U processor with a maximum Turbo frequency of around 4.5 GHz.

Is Dell Inspiron old?

The American corporation Dell produces a line of portable computing devices known as the Inspiron series of laptops. Before 1999, Dell released the very first model of their popular Inspiron laptop line.