Dell Inspiron 17 5000 5748 Large-Size Mainstream Laptop

The 17.3-inch Dell Inspiron 17 5000 5748 mainstream laptop is a bigger brother of the more popular 15.6-inch Inspiron 15 5000 5547. Except the bigger screen size, overall dimensions, and presence of a DVD drive on the 17.3-incher, these two don’t have big differences between them. They’re backed by Intel’s processors and Intel HD 4400-series integrated graphics with optionally available dedicated video cards, as well as hard drive based storage.

The main component – the processor – can be either an entry-level Intel Pentium 3558U, mid-range Intel Core i3-4030U and i5-4210U, and higher-end Core i7-4510U, all with dual cores. The Pentium is suitable for those who will do only non-demanding home and office tasks on their laptops. The i3 and i5 are also optimized for home and office work, but can additionally serve for some heavier stuff such as multimedia creation or professional photography editing. The i7 is recommended for those who mostly do these heavy tasks. However, you should keep in mind that the i7-4510U dual-core still greatly lags behind the quad-core i7 series, which is the best choice for hardware-demanding work.

Gaming-wise, the Pentium 3558U comes with the Intel HD series integrated graphics, whereas the i3-4030U, i5-4210U, and i7-4510U have the faster Intel HD 4400 series. Neither of these are intended for gaming, but the later can provide some playable frame rates in the latest 3D games if you dial down game graphics settings. You’ll get better results with the optional Nvidia GeForce GT 820M or 840M 2GB dedicated video cards, but these are entry level GPUs, too.

Advanced users requiring large amounts of RAM might find disappointing the fact that such a big laptop houses only one RAM slot. Therefore, it is available only with either 4GB or 8GB of system memory. Thankfully, the memory slots are user accessible for easy upgrades, as same as the hard drive bay, and the battery is user-removable. Dell ships the Inspiron 17 5000 5748 with either 500GB or 1-Terabyte hard drive.

The notebook has a display resolution 1600×900 or 1920×1080 pixels. Touchscreen is optionally available. The keyboard sports backlit chiclet keys and numeric pad. It’s resistant to minor liquid spills. The touchpad is a single-piece one, with buttons integrated in the surface. The keyboard deck keyboard is done up in plastics, while the lid is covered with brushed aluminum in silver color.

Dell’s Inspiron 5748 has dual 2×2-Watt speakers and 1280×720-pixel web camera. There are three USB ports, HDMI video output, multi-format media card reader. Online communication is supported by Wi-Fi wireless and wired Ethernet LAN. Bluetooth is present by default, while Intel Wireless Display technology is optional.

Battery choices are 4-cell 40Whr and 6-cell 65Whr. Info on battery life isn’t available, but keep in mind that the big-screen laptops usually don’t last long on a single charge.

The weight starts at 6.6 pounds with no touch-screen option selected and 7.3 lbs with it, co clearly it is not intended to be carried around much. It’s rather a desktop replacement notebook. Thickness of the Dell Inspiron 17 5000 5748 is 1.1″.