Dell Inspiron 24 7000
“The Inspiron 24 7000 is striking. The 23.8-inch Full HD display catches the eye from the minute you open the box, offering a true widescreen experience – although there are some seriously large bezels here.” A solid all-in-one PC for your home or workpla
The Inspiron 24 7000 is Dell’s attempt to challenge the likes of the Microsoft Surface Studio and Apple’s premium iMacs in the growing all-in-one PC market, which combines everything you’d want in a PC into a single model.
This machine is striking. The 23.8-inch Full HD display catches the eye from the minute you open the box, offering a true widescreen experience — although there are some seriously large bezels here. The PC is also super thin, at just 27mm, and thanks to its movable hinge, the display can be tilted right down to lying flat on its back. This flexibility means that the display isn’t able to rise up too high, however, meaning you might need to invest in a screen stand.
All the main components are contained within the base of the display, which packs in the hardware, as well as a surprisingly powerful speaker. With its metal and black plastic design, it’s hardly the most attractive unit, but the angle of the screen means that you won’t really notice it in use.
The base model, on test here, offers a decent set of specs, including a quad-core Intel Core i5-6300HQ (Skylake) processor with 6MB cache, integrated Intel HD graphics and 12GB of 2,133MHz DDR4 RAM. Other goodies include a 1TB 5,400rpm hard drive, plus 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 wireless connectivity. As far as wired connections go, it comes equipped with four USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports, plus Ethernet and HDMI, as well as a memory card reader. Inside, there’s Windows 10 Home, making it ideal for home and office working.
These specs put the Inspiron 24 7000 a little behind the lowest-priced iMac offerings, although the equivalent Apple device — the 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display — will set you back $2,699, far more than the Dell. As for Microsoft’s Surface Studio, the equivalent model — equipped with similar hardware to the Dell — costs $4,699, meaning that if you’re strapped for cash, Dell’s much cheaper device could be everything you’re looking for.
The Inspiron offers fairly decent power, given its price range, and was able to take on some of its more powerful competitors, outscoring the Surface Studio in our GeekBench tests — 3,809 on the single core test; 10,649 on the Multi Core test and a decent 16,588 on the Compute OpenCL test.
The version we used came with an Intel Core i5-6300HQ processor, but the device is also available with a more powerful Intel Core i7. This boosted version also comes with embedded Nvidia graphics, instead of Intel hardware, 16GB of RAM, plus a 32GB SSD as well as HDD storage. The standard edition is more than enough to handle the vast majority of everyday work tasks.
Dell is obviously targeting the creative industries; however, this is by no means a portable device, with the unit weighing a hefty 9.46kg. But with its 24-inch display, the Dell Inspiron 24 7000 is a valuable addition to any home or office, provided you have the room for it in your workspace.
Although it lacks the high street appeal of Surface Studio, or the sophistication and build quality of an iMac, for the price on offer, the Dell is a good all-rounder.
Featuring a great blend of value, power and usability, Dell has made solid progress with its all-in-one PCs.