The cheapest gaming laptop

It is hard to find good cheap devices, that is just the nature of the market, companies try to sell you some expensive stuff that you do not really need because they want that money.

The cheapest gaming laptop

It is hard to find good cheap devices, that is just the nature of the market, companies try to sell you some expensive stuff that you do not really need because they want that money.

This is something different this is the dell g5 SE, and this is a device that I think is going to be the cheapest high-performance gaming laptop for the whole year. I think this is going to be the king 4 value, in order to achieve this price point of 899$, in order to hit this price point they had to do two things one really good thing and one less good thing, the good thing is that it's running an AMD CPU of course because that's the best way to get value and also an AMD GPU this is actually the world's first gaming laptop that's running both the combination.

 

CPU and GPU

 

It's not just the fact that it's running them individually right AMD CPUs are great AMD's new GPUs are also great, but the combination of the two allows them to do something pretty interesting something called smart shift we'll get into that but that is what makes the performance on this thing so good.

The second thing that they've done which is not as good is that they have the build on this machine is not my favorite it's not just like the aesthetic I don't love the aesthetic but it's also the material choices itself we'll get into it.

 

Performance

 

Let's talk about performance first because that's the most important thing my unit is running the 8 core 4800 h from AMD a very capable processor it's good for games it's great for any kind of application that can make use of lots of cores this thing pushes out really good numbers for a CPU, the base model runs the 4600 h it's a similar type of architecture it was the same architecture but it's got 6 cores instead of 8, that six-core chip is going to be just as good as an eight-core for the vast majority of games but they both share the same GPU this and the base model have the 5600 m from AMD a very capable graphics chip and there's actually the first laptop of reviewed with that chip inside it and it really surprised me as to how good it is.

It's similar to an art 626 emacs q slightly better in many cases but not as good as let's say at 2070 max q the numbers we're seeing here are incredibly good for an 899$ laptop and remember it's dell this is a company that puts their stuff on sale really often like summer sales back-to-school stuff black Friday stuff holiday stuff, I wouldn't be surprised we can pick up the base model for like 700 bucks sometime in the fall.

 

Thermal performance

 

The thermal performance is pretty good it hits like 85 degrees at peak so it's reasonably well managed but you do need to have the fans cranked to hit that there's like a g button (f7) which enables game shift and it's just faster fans for the system you get the best possible performance when that's enabled but the fans are relatively loud.

This system because it's running an AMD CPU and an AMD GPU it uses this tech from AMD called smart shift it's unique to a mean you can only use this stuff when you're running the combo and it redistributes power to whatever you're doing if you're playing a game and it's more GPU dependent it'll pump more wattage to the GPU to give you the best possible performance in that particular scenario but, let's say you're doing video editing a more CPU dependent thing it'll pump more wattage to the CPU it's free performance it's not huge, I’d estimate it to be like five-ten percent based on what AMD is said but it is a bonus to the system, that's the good stuff performance is great.

 

Then not so good stuff build let's talk about that this is a laptop that looks cheap it's not a super expensive gaming laptop but there's something about the design language and the color choices and the material choices that they have on this thing that just exaggerated the cheapness of it.

 

Display

 

Again this is coming from someone who cares about aesthetics not everyone does but there is one thing I would say but the build that would probably concern everyone it's the hinge of the screen it's a design where the hinge is closer to the center of the laptop so, every time you open and close the display it kind of torques the screen and torques the hinge in a weird way I don't like seeing it just because older devices have had issues, not dell devices but I’ve seen older devices from Lenovo where the hands just busted from repeated opening and closing.

I do think that the interior of this device is well done it's like a simple plain black and you have a pretty solid screen so my units running the upgraded 144-hertz panel it's fast it's pretty bright reasonably color accurate I like it, especially for the price now the base model has a 60-hertz screen right now which isn't great for gaming but if I’m not mistaken that panel supposed to be upgraded to a 120-hertz panel sometime in the summer without changing that starting price so if you're someone who's going to pick it up right now I would either pick up this display like the upgraded versions or hold off a little bit to wait for that 120 hertz supply to come into place because you just don't want to be paying for a gaming laptop of this caliber with a 60-hertz screen.

 

Keyboard

 

Let's talk about the keyboard it's a pretty good keyboard I like it but it's a little cramped because of the number pad some people always want number pads and their devices I see it all the time or comments I personally never use these things but if you want one this system has one but for the people that don't use the number pads and they're just using the keyboard it does feel a little bit tight not the layout like the layout is spacious enough it's just on the left side where your hand is for the WASD keys there's very little space left on this device for you to place your wrist on while you're playing games.

The keys themselves are fine like it is like a very comfortable typing experience the keystroke is pretty responsive could be a little bit faster, but I think most people will enjoy this keyboard. The touchpad is plastic, but it does the job and it is got windows precision drivers which is always a win.

The port selection is quite good and this device has got an ethernet jack it's got 3 display outputs so it's got an HDMI and we need a display port that comes out of USB-c it also has three USB and an SD card slot that is stacked it's a pretty solid port selection it does not support thumb ball three though it's not a huge deal I feel like in this day and age thunderbolt 3 has become less valuable especially on a gaming device like this.

 

Inside

 

Inside you have access to your two ram slots you are a wi-fi card it's a killer card so you can replace that if you would like it's got a 68 Wh battery, I think this is the bigger battery this got me five and a half hours of battery life which is respectable right considering everything that's going on in there it's got two NVme drives and you can also see the thermal system with the three heat pipes and then on the left and right you have the speakers they don't sound great they sound exactly how you would expect an 899$ gaming laptop to sound like.

 

That is the dell g5 SE a very powerful device for the money I think this is going to be a very difficult device for other competitors to beat in terms of that price to performance ratio it's just really good when you combine the AMD CPU and GPU together but it's got some quirks right for one I don't love the design to the hinge and if you do pick up one of the base models which is pretty good I would wait a little bit until you can get the better screens like that and once when you heard screens.

 

What's Your Reaction?

like
0
dislike
0
love
0
funny
0
angry
0
sad
0
wow
0