Dell Inspiron 13 7000

DELL THROWS OUT THE BATTERY BABY WITH THE BATHWATER.

THE INSPIRON 13 7000 features an intel core i7-8250U CPU and an excessive 16GB RAM allocation, but the design choices of this convertable are far less inspiring than the components. Yes, the Inspiron 13 7000 is for the most part wrapped metal, but it has chunky hinges that don’t look particularly attractive and the trackpad feels coarse to touch and sticky in use. For all intents and purposes, the keyboard does the job, but the keys are small, have very little depth and offer an unpleasant rubbery resistance. The 13.3-inch 1,920 x 1,080 pixel display is actually rather vibrant against bigger 15-inch FHD competitors, however, and the bezels are narrow enough to hold up to modern standards.

While the Inspiron 13 7373 that we tested wasn’t the perfect expression of the i7-8550U CPU, it was close to level with the highest performing units in general work and home tasks, and actually topped the Lenovo Yoga 920 and the HP Spectre X360 in raw Multi-CPU compute scores on Cinebench R15. This comes at a thermal cost however, since we noticed that three of the four CPU cores managed to hit their thermal threshold of 100°C in benchmarking, a factor that’ll reduce the overall lifespan of the device.

The Dell Inspiron 13 7000 has a smaller 38Wh battery by design (the model we tested only came with 28.6Wh at full-charge capacity), so don’t expect much in the way of longevity, you won’t even be able to watch a standard length movie without being plugged in.

If you can get it on sale, you can save a bit on a premium convertible, but it cuts a few too many corners for our liking.