The Inspiron series from Dell is targeted at the casual user. This series focuses on delivering value for money rather than premium features offered by the more expensive XPS series. While The Inspiron 15z does have an entry-level version priced at Rs40,990, you can add features that can raise the price to as much as Rs68,490. It is a pricing strategy that is fraught with dangers — a laptop priced close to Rs70,000 is essentially competing with the premium Ultrabook range.
I was curious to know how the Inspiron 15z would fare when I received this premium version of the device.
The Inspiron 15z is certainly the sleekest Inspiron laptop I have seen. The brushed aluminum finish, and the rounded corners make it pleasing to look. With a thickness of 21cm, it is also very thin compared to earlier Inspiron series.
Open the lid, and a matching colour scheme greets you. What caught my eye though was the backlit chiclet keyboard. This is interesting because backlit keyboards are generally reserved for the more expensive range of laptops. It is good to see that Dell has included this feature in the entry-level version of the 15z.
The display, though, is nothing to boast about. It’s not that it is bad, but it’s not out of this world brilliant in terms of colour reproduction and resolution. Again, it needn’t be that good at the Rs40,000 price point. But at the Rs68,490 price point this is a minus for the device. The important difference though is that the latter is touch-enabled.
Coming to the performance, the test device was the fully loaded one. It feature an Intel core i7 processor with 8GB RAM. The device had a 500GB hard disk along with 32GB SSD drive, which enables faster startups. The high-end specs were enough to ensure that the device ran smoothly for most day-to-day tasks.
The battery lasts around five hours on a single charge. The Insprion 15z is also endowed with good number of ports - there are four USB ports, apart from a card reader, HDMI out, and Ethernet port. There’s also a DVD drive, which some Ultrabooks tend to leave out in a bid to remain thin.
To come back to the main question — is the higher-end version of the Insprion 15z worth the roughly Rs68,000 you spend on it. It certainly is a powerful unit. It also is touch-enabled, which makes sense to have with Windows 8. But I don’t feel that it really delivers the right value for money. The are other products in the same price range — such as the Lenovo Ideapad U series, and even Dell’s own XPS 14 — which offer a better build quality and display.
But the lower and mid range of the Inspiron 15z series offer a great bang for the buck. Now, that’s the Inspiron I’d have no problem recommending.
@raokrishna
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