Dell's Inspiron range is made up of the company's entry-level consumer notebooks. Dell's Inspiron 15R N5010 is a 15in notebook with an appealing design and a well rounded configuration.  With a large 15.6-inch screen and a second generation Core i5 processor - and wireless display - it promises much, at a budget price. 





Dell Inspiron 15R (N5110)


Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
Intel Core i5-2410M processor (2.3GHz, 3MB cache, 2.9GHz Turbo Boost)
6GB DDR3 memory (1333MHz)
500GB 5400rpm HDD
15.6-inch 1366x768 display with LED backlighting
10/100 Ethernet, 802.11n wireless, and Bluetooth
6-cell Li-ion 48WHr battery and 9-cell 90WHr battery
Weight: 5.84lbs


The new Inspiron 15R is built around Intel's Core i5 processors, with a handful of upgrades available for hard drives and basic discrete graphics.  It's powerful enough to handle most demanding tasks for some time to come. The integrated HD graphics supports GPU acceleration, so you'll get good performance with Internet Explorer 9 and the latest generation of tools like Photoshop.The new 15R (N5010) uses a hinge-forward LCD lid design that Dell first used in the premium Adamo series.  The chassis has a slightly tapered design that makes it a bit thinner on the front lip, but fairly chunky at the rear.

Dell uses a 15.6 inch sized display with LED backlight in the Inspiron 15R. The display has a resolution of 1366x768 pixels and includes a glossy surface.   It sits about two centimetres in from the spine, which gives the notebook good balance and a slightly different look to the norm. It's good for video and for gaming, and with 720p resolution makes an excellent platform for editing HD video content. 


At first glance, the Dell Inspiron 15R's keyboard looks good with its single key layout (chiclet style). The keys are of the flat-topped, closely packed variety, and the wider 15.6-inch body allows for a number pad to sit to the right of the keyboard. The keyboard features healthy-size keys, including a huge right Shift key, but the four arrow keys are a bit on the small side. The Function keys are reversed and this allows you to change brightness, volume and other tasks without having to first press the Fn button. A large touchpad allows you to perform various gestures with two fingers: it supports two-finger scrolling, pinching and rotating. 

Although the Inspiron's weight of 2.6kg means it's unlikely to be taken on the road regularly, its battery lasted just under three and a half hours.  The Inspiron 15R N5010 has a 48 Watt-hour battery installed on its spine and it lasted 2hr 20min in our video rundown test.


The Inspiron 15R is a well-rounded laptop, thanks to its great performance and features for a reasonable price. For the money, the Dell Inspiron 15R is a great laptop. 

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