Dell G5 15
A mid-range gaming laptop with plenty of G-force.
The Dell G5 15 isn’t going to be changing anyone’s expectations on what a gaming laptop should be, but it is an incremental improvement for a good value gaming laptop. As a budget conscious gaming rig, it isn’t the sleekest PC we’ve seen, but the horizontal front and back edge grills look like the radiators, vents and rear windows on a 1980s Ferrari or DeLorean — which is a nice touch. The full size keyboard and trackpad are a little too shallow and coarse, for our liking and the 15.6-inch IPS display is a little dull, but they all get the job done.
The i5 model was definitely better value at the time of writing (Dell’s online store had a 15% sale on the entry level device), but both were priced around what we’d expect from their spec sheet (with a 10% new device price bump). The model we tested came with a powerful Intel Core i7-8750H CPU, 16GB of RAM, a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (Max-Q) GPU and a 256GB SSD/1TB HDD storage combo. This is a well balanced configuration for an entry level gaming PC so it’s not surprising that it hit respectable scores somewhere in the middle of the pack on Cinebench’s CPU tests and PCMark 8’s Home and Work benchmarks. When it comes to gaming the device was able to get playable average frame rates of 35.9fps on Ultra 1080p settings in modern titles like Ghost Recon Wildlands. The G5 15 is a solid gaming device, but you can find similar specced rigs for 10% less pretty easily.