Dell Inspiron 15 5000 5547 Mainstream 15.6″ Laptop

UPDATE: There’s a newer version available now. It’s the Dell Inspiron 5548.

The Dell Inspiron 15 5000 5547 is a mainstream laptop for consumers in the purest sense. It has common specifications and feature set packed in a sleek 0.9″ thin chassis. The display has 15.6-inch diagonal. Screen resolution is either 1366×768 or 1920×1080 pixels, depending on users’ preferences and budget. Touchscreen is optional. The keyboard sports isle-style keys and numeric pad. It is backlit or non-backlit, but always spill-resistant. The area around the keyboard and seamless touchpad is made of plastics, while the lid is fashioned out of silver brushed aluminum.

Dell has squeezed in the chassis some decent components. Processor choices are Intel Core “Haswell” U-series i5-4210U and i7-4510U, both with dual cores. They’re absolutely fast enough to provide completion of daily tasks fluidly, with no lags. Plus, they can be utilized for professional photo editing and creation of 1080p videos, although in these tasks they still noticeably lag behind the full-blown M-series Core chips, especially quad-core i7. The Intel HD 4400 integrated graphics processors which are embedded into the “Haswell” CPUs can be used for some modest AAA gaming, with details and resolution dialed down. Another graphics choice of Dell’s 5547 is the AMD Radeon R7 M265 2GB DDR3 video card. It’s better than the HD 4400, but sill belongs to the non-gaming mainstream GPU class.

The notebook has two SODIMM RAM memory slots, so it can support up to 16GB of system memory. At the time of this writing, the Dell 5547 is available only with a 1-Terabyte hard drive. The laptop supports the classic laptop-use 2.5″ HDD and solid state drives. It’s good to know the bottom of the chassis is easily removable. It’s kept in place only by two screws, so you can access RAM and storage bay for easy upgrades. The battery is kept under the bottom cover, so it can’t be removed without opening up the laptop. Optical drive isn’t included.

The feature set is well-rounded and includes all necessary stuff the most of users might need. There are 2×2-Watt stereo speakers, webcam, three USB ports, HDMI output, media card reader, Wi-Fi, Ethernet LAN, and Bluetooth. Dell also notes the Inspiron 15 5000 5547 is optionally available with Intel’s Wireless Display technology, but that perk isn’t available at the time of this writing.

The notebook is available with either 3‑cell 43.50 WHr or 4‑cell 58 WHr battery. The later reportedly delivers a battery life of “up to 7:33 hours”.

The whole system starts at 4.8 pounds, which is a remarkable starting weight of a 15.6-inch laptop.

There are many alternatives to the Dell Inspiron 15 5000 5547. You can check them out here. If you are however a loyal Dell customer but want a cheaper laptop, you can take a look at the 15 3000 3542 series with all plastic chassis, no Full HD display option, and with a built-in DVD drive.