Dell G15 5530 Review: A viable Alienware alternative now with Raptor Lake-HX

[Redaktion]

The Dell G15 5530 now offers Intel Raptor Lake-HX options and positions itself as a capable upper mid-range gaming laptop. While the Core i7-13650HX and RTX 4060 combo augurs well for 1080p Ultra gaming, the G15 5530 has to contend with several compromises in order to keep the price competitive and distinguish itself from its premium Alienware brethren.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-G15-5530-Review-A-viable-Alienware-alternative-now-with-Raptor-Lake-HX.726585.0.html

[LL]

M.2 2242 SSD slot with relatively slow SSD

This is quite bizarre, does not that make the laptop more expensive than it should?

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Very good performance from 4060.

[Vaidyanathan]

M.2 2242 SSD slot with relatively slow SSD

This is quite bizarre, does not that make the laptop more expensive than it should?

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Very good performance from 4060.

Yeah, but it's difficult to say how much the SSD alone would contribute to the price or whether retail samples too would receive the same drive that we got in our review unit. Agreed that Dell could have definitely used a better performing drive, especially with the writes.

[NikoB]

Dell is increasingly destroying the G line.
Now the power button is inside the keyboard (which is already bad tactile).
A huge weight of 17.3 laptop for a 15.6" model, which is of no use now - the processor at the supposedly monstrous 190W produces a shameful speed against the background of 13980HX/7845HX-7945HX.

At the same time, the coolers are noisy even in an office load with a ridiculous 15-20W and a weight of 2.91kg (!), Although at this weight they should be disabled, as in the Dell G5 5587.

No TB4, and I even have TB3 in a cheap G5 5587.

The screen is morally obsolete in 2023, but if you believe the author's measurements, then at least in terms of contrast and response time it is much ahead of its competitors.

Also, despite the monstrous consumption of the processor, power optimization at rest is much better than that of competitors with the same solutions.

This model should be with 17.3-18" screen 4k@144Hz and 7940HS + 2 USB40 ports. Then it would be of interest. This is clearly not a portable laptop, and at home 15.6" is already ridiculous in 2023. 17.3-18" with 4k resolution and the same contrast is much more important than everything else put together.And of course a normal keyboard with a large key travel from 1.8mm and good, elastic tactile feedback, plus a separate power button and remote down arrows, like the Legion, although I generally don't claims to the numpad - it is full-fledged, although again the buttons are narrowed in width, as are the idiotically narrowed Esc, F1..F12 buttons in height, although there is plenty of space on the case for a full-fledged classic keyboard,

For whom is it made with such a monstrous weight, if there is neither silence in the office load and surfing, nor increased productivity with such monstrous consumption? What is the purpose of this line?

The picture of the catastrophe in the line is completed by ridiculous inadequate M.2 2242 slots, for which SSDs cannot be found in retail, and even more capacious ones. What were the developers smoking when they couldn't accommodate 2-3 M.2 2280 slots in such a huge and heavy case?

It is unfortunate that all manufacturers, for the sake of the greedy pursuit of additional profit, go to complete inadequacy in ergonomics, which automatically destroys all global sales.

[PHVM_BR]

The m.2 connectors are adjustable to fit from 2230 to 2280 SSDs:

www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/g-series-15-5530-laptop/dell-g15-5530-owners-manual/removing-the-solid-state-drive?guid=guid-63988140-558b-403e-b97c-a8f7e4c12a3f&lang=en-us

[NikoB]

The m.2 connectors are adjustable to fit from 2230 to 2280 SSDs:

This is a question for the author and the quality of his review.

Dell offers two M.2 2242 slots for storage drives instead of the more ubiquitous M.2 2280 variety.

[Vaidyanathan]

The m.2 connectors are adjustable to fit from 2230 to 2280 SSDs:

www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/g-series-15-5530-laptop/dell-g15-5530-owners-manual/removing-the-solid-state-drive?guid=guid-63988140-558b-403e-b97c-a8f7e4c12a3f&lang=en-us

Yes, but only the 2nd slot has standoffs to accommodate 2280 drives. The primary slot can only take a 2242. I'll have a word with Dell to confirm.

[Gastredner]

What I like about the Dell G15:

+ Chassis thickness (not too thin but not too thick either)
+ Weight (3 kg show that they focussed on cooling more than on looking good on marketing papers. Highly appreciated!)
+ Relatively big fans
+ Vapor chamber is AWESOME on a midrange gaming laptop.
+ Decent performance (4060 + i7-13650hx seem to be an appropriate yet not too expensive combination)
+ Fan noise under load (47db is still a tad too loud for me. Much better though than many competitors who reach over 50db. Can you adjust the fan curve to top out at around 43 to 44 db?)

What I dislike:
- Design (the bulky blue back and the orange heatsinks and keyboard lettering look pretty cheap to me)
- The huge and ugly power brick is pure trolling to me, especially on a laptop with a 4060! For me this would be a reason to not buy the laptop. The Alienware M16 has a beautiful, sleek power adaptor.
- Inverted motherboard (makes repasting more or less impossible, but I don't know if this is still required and recommended with their conductive(?) element 31 thermal paste)
- Panel brightness (300 nits are too low for using the laptop on the outside. More and more competitors go for 500 nits or more)

Personally I would go for the Alienware M16 due to the more quality chassis design and even better cooling with 3 fans (+ 1 tiny toy fan) if it had a 500 nits display.

[Chirag]

Th le RAM ony 5530 doesn't run at advertised 4800MHz. During benchmark too it ran at around 2400MHz Max.

[NikoB]

Don't buy Dell G, their keyboards fall apart due to a deliberate artificial aging scheme. There is plenty of evidence of this on the forums. I personally encountered this this fall after 5 years of using the Dell G5 5587. And although I hardly used its disgusting flat keyboard with extremely short key travel and very little tactile feedback (it almost feels like you are tapping your fingers not on the keyboard, but on the table or touchscreen), but mainly an external keyboard - it itself, almost new, failed after exactly 5 years. I have never had a single laptop whose keyboard failed even after 10 years, and I have several from different manufacturers...

The only advantage of the G series is the very increased threshold for turning on coolers (72-75C in 5587), unlike, for example, the Lenovo Legion series (50-60C), so this series, in office work and at loads up to 35-40%, almost silent, the coolers simply don't turn on for hours (I haven't serviced mine for more than 4 years, but when I changed the SSD, the coolers were pristinely clean, like from the factory, because at my load (<50%), I never played on it, they They just don't turn on all day long) - it was precisely for this property and weight of 2.83 kg that I chose it in 2018. But this series had no other advantages.

Also, the weak point of all Dells is their extremely low-quality batteries, which can randomly turn off the laptop even when the charge is more than 75%. And often coolers begin to crack after just 1-2 months. These are also common problems on forums.

In general, think 10 times before contacting Dell...

Consider also the unfortunate fact that the Alienware series was also completely destroyed a few years ago when they changed the keyboard there from a gorgeous one to the same crap as in the G series. If you need a good keyboard for performance and good tactile feedback, it is better to avoid Dell products in the gaming sector.

[A]

NikoB, isn't it kinda embarrassing to admit you've bought such a bad laptop after you've spent so much effort trying to convince everyone you know a thing or two about them in this forum.

Was it the one with 800:1 screen and 60% sRGB? ) And "5 years" from 2018 is 2023, so most of your silly opuses about "shameful screens" here you've written using that? )

[Neenyah]

😁

[Neenyah]

Th le RAM ony 5530 doesn't run at advertised 4800MHz. During benchmark too it ran at around 2400MHz Max.

2400 x2 = 4800

[RobertJasiek]

isn't it kinda embarrassing to admit you've bought such a bad laptop

It is a bad idea to discourage people from reporting actually experienced problems. We can all profit from such reports.

[RobertJasiek]

Consider also the unfortunate fact that the Alienware series was also completely destroyed a few years ago when they changed the keyboard there from a gorgeous one to the same crap as in the G series.

Do you say the same about Alienware's mechanical keyboards (so far only available with US layout)?