Dell Inspiron 15 5566 Review: An Affordable But Heavy Laptop

Dell Inspiron 15 5566: At First Glance

The Dell Inspiron series was first introduced back in 1999. Since then, Dell has been keen to expand the series with affordable laptops aimed at the average consumer.

Thus, as a laptop in the Dell Inspiron series, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 happens to be quite affordable. To be more specific, this laptop costs only $479.00 in February 2022, when I wrote this review.

Being affordable doesn’t mean this laptop isn’t powerful or efficient. In fact, this laptop comes with lots of great features such as an optional touchscreen display, an Intel Core i7 processor, and two storage options.

However, it’s no news that a laptop this affordable comes with certain cutbacks. Therefore, read on as I walk you through the laptop’s cutbacks, features, and overall performance.

Dell Inspiron 15 5566: Design, Dimension, and Weight

Before diving deep into this design section, I would like to establish that the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 does not offer much in terms of looks. However, I assure you that there are a few design specs that you will love about this laptop.

That said, on the exterior, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 features a smooth plastic chassis. This plastic chassis comes with a matte-black finish including the laptop’s lid.

Speaking of the laptop’s lid, there is a “Dell” logo that seats beautifully in the center of the lid. This logo features a glossy finish that adds a little bit of elegance to the laptop’s plain black lid.

Moving on to the interior, the first thing you will notice as soon as you open this laptop’s lid is the display. To give more details, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 features a 15.6-inch display with a screen resolution of HD (1366 x 768).

Impressively, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 offers an optional touchscreen display. Hence, you can purchase the laptop with a 15.6-inch touchscreen display with an HD (1366 x 768) resolution.

However, this review is based on the non-touchscreen model of the Dell Inspiron 15 5566. Interestingly, this laptop’s display offers impressive color accuracy, unlike most HD displays.

Although this display can’t be compared with an FHD or 4K display, it offers decent picture quality for casual viewing and web browsing. However, like most Dell laptops I have reviewed, this Dell Inspiron 15 5566’s 15.6-inch display is surrounded by thick bezels.

At the top bezel, there is an HD webcam finely placed in the middle. Performance-wise, this webcam might not be best for taking pictures as it offers grainy and blurry images.

However, the webcam is very much ideal for casual skyping and video calls. Asides from this HD webcam on the top bezel, there is also a “Dell” logo on the bottom bezel.

This Dell logo has a mirror-like finish which makes it appealing to look at.

Moving on to the keyboard, like most Dell laptops, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 features the standard keyboard. This keyboard features black keys with white lettering on top.

Also, the keys of this keyboard appear adequately spaced and firm. Hence, the keyboard should be able to offer a decent typing experience.

Below this keyboard, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 features a smooth sizeable touchpad with a set of integrated click buttons. In a nutshell, this touchpad is quite accurate and very responsive, allowing for easy multitouch gestures.

In terms of ports, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 comes with a good number of ports. On the right side, there is a DVD drive, two USB Type-A ports, one USB Type-C port, and an audio jack.

Meanwhile, the left side of the laptop features an HDMI port as well as an Ethernet port.

Weighing a massive 2320 g and measuring 380 x 260 x 23.7 mm (W x D x H), the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 is far from lightweight. In fact, when compared to other laptops in its category, this laptop weighs significantly more.

For example, the ASUS VivoBook S15 measures 361.4 x 243.5 x 18 mm (W x D x H) and weighs 1800 g. Also, the Lenovo Ideapad S340 measures 358 x 245 x 17.9 mm (W x D x H) and weighs 1790 g.

Overall, due to its heavyweight, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 is not a laptop you can just throw in your backpack and go hiking. However, the laptop offers a decent design, a good display, a comfy keyboard, and a good number of ports.

Therefore, I will be rating the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 an eight out of ten in this design review section.

Dell Inspiron 15 5566: Processor (CPU) Performance

When it comes to the CPU, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 features an Intel Core i7-7500U processor. This processor offers a base frequency of 2.70 GHz and a maximum frequency of 3.5 GHz.

Furthermore, this Intel Core i7 processor is a dual-core processor with 4 MB cache memory. Due to this processor’s high clock speed of 3.5 GHz, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 should be able to carry out intensive tasks swiftly without lagging.

Basically, this laptop should be able to edit photos and videos on Adobe Photoshop without issues. In fact, with this processor, multitasking should be very easy for this laptop.

To further ascertain the performance of the laptop with this processor, I will now be discussing the laptop’s Cinebench R10 benchmark test result. In case you are wondering, Cinebench R10 is a benchmark tool that measures the overall processing power of a computer.

It does this by evaluating the cores of the laptop’s processor. Therefore, Cinebench R10 offers two results – the single-core test result and the multi-core test result.

Before mentioning the laptop’s scores, it is important to note that a high score on this test represents a good performance. Thus, according to the Cinebench R10 test results, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 recorded 5624 points on the single-core test.

Meanwhile, on the multi-core test, this Dell laptop recorded 12161 points. In comparison, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 performed better than most, if not all, of the laptop in its category.

A perfect example is the Lenovo ThinkPad 13 which uses an Intel Core i7-7500U processor. To give more details, this laptop recorded 4835 points in the Cinebench R10 single-core test and 11109 points in the multi-core test.

In conclusion, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 offers a powerful and efficient processor that is capable of handling most computing tasks. Moreover, this laptop performed better than most of its competitors on a CPU benchmark test.

Hence, I will be rating the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 a nine out of ten in this processor review section.

Dell Inspiron 15 5566: Memory (RAM) Performance

For memory, Dell equipped the Inspiron 15 5566 with a standard memory of 4 GB DDR4. Moreover, this laptop offers two RAM slots and it supports a maximum memory capacity of 8 GB.

In my opinion, even though the laptop offers two RAM slots, a maximum memory capacity of 8 GB is quite limited. However, who are we to complain when the laptop costs a little over $400.

Nevertheless, I believe with the help of its powerful CPU, even the standard memory of 4 GB is enough for the Inspiron 15 5566. Thus, with 4 GB memory, this laptop should be able to perform most computing tasks including multitasking.

Speaking of which, with 4 GB RAM, the Inspiron 15 5566 should be able to run a dozen Chrome tabs smoothly while streaming a video on YouTube. Moreover, switching between these tabs should be easy for this laptop.

To better understand the performance of the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 with 4 GB, I will briefly highlight the laptop’s result on a PCMark 10 benchmark test. PCMark 10 is a benchmark tool that measures the memory performance of a computer by simulating day-to-day productivity tasks.

These tasks include web browsing, video conferencing, word processing, and other basic computing tasks. Furthermore, on this kind of benchmark test, the higher the score, the better the performance of the computer.

Therefore, according to the PCMark 10 test results, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 recorded 3656 points. This score is quite high considering the fact that it beats the category average of 2500 points.

In fact, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566’s score is better than the 3024 points achieved by Lenovo ThinkPad 13 on the PCMark 10 test.

All things considered, I will rate the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 a seven out of ten in this memory performance review section.

Dell Inspiron 15 5566: Storage Option and Performance

In terms of storage, Dell offers two storage options for the Dell Inspiron 15 5566. Hence, you can purchase this Dell laptop with either a SATA AHCI HDD storage type or a SATA SSD storage type.

To give more details, the HDD storage option offers a maximum storage capacity of 2 TB. The SSD option, on the other hand, offers only 512 GB maximum storage capacity.

Therefore, I suggest that if you are a storage-hungry user, you should purchase the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 with an HDD. However, due to the fact that SSDs are quite fast, you should purchase this laptop with an SSD if you value speed over storage space.

Notwithstanding, either storage option you chose, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 comes with an SD card slot for storage expansion. Before proceeding, it is crucial to mention that this review is based on the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 with 2 TB GB HDD storage.

Thus, to validate the performance of the laptop’s storage, we will now discuss the laptop’s results on a CrystalDiskMark test. Briefly, CrystalDiskMark is a benchmark tool that evaluates the read and writes speeds of a computer’s storage drive.

For clarity, read speed simply means the amount of time that it takes a storage device to open a file. Write speed, however, is the amount of time that it takes the storage device to save a file.

It is also important to mention that for this benchmark test the higher the MBps value, the faster the storage speed of a laptop. This means that with a higher MBps value, the laptop copies files faster.

Therefore, based on the CrystalDiskMark test, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 has a sequential read speed of 499 MBps. Also, this laptop has a sequential write speed of 428 MBps.

Comparatively, this Dell Inspiron laptop has a faster read and write speed than the Lenovo ThinkPad 13. To be more precise, the Lenovo ThinkPad 13 has a sequential read and write speed of 461.7 MBps and 297.8 MBps respectively.

In conclusion, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 offers multiple storage options, which is quite impressive. Also, this laptop beats one of its closest competitors on a storage benchmark test.

Hence, I will rate the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 a nine out of ten in this storage review section.

Dell Inspiron 15 5566: Graphics Card Performance

The Dell Inspiron 15 5566 comes with an Intel HD Graphics 620 graphics card. In terms of speed, this laptop’s GPU offers a base frequency of 300 MHz and a maximum frequency of 1050 MHz.

Furthermore, the Intel HD Graphics 620 is an integrated graphics card that is built into the laptop’s processor. Hence, the GPU shares memory with the processor to perform graphics-related tasks.

As a result, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 might not be able to smoothly run graphics-intensive applications or games. However, the laptop should be able to run most games under low graphics settings.

For example, when playing FIFA 19 under low graphics settings, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 should deliver a frame rate of around 50.3 fps. This is quite impressive for a non-gaming laptop.

To further prove the performance of this laptop with its integrated GPU, I will briefly discuss the laptop’s 3DMark benchmark test results. 3DMark is a benchmark test that determines the 2D and 3D graphics rendering capabilities of a computer.

Moreover, according to this graphics test, a high score means a better graphics performance. So, based on the 3DMark test, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 scored 7234 points.

Impressively, when compared to the Lenovo ThinkPad 13 that uses the same GPU, this Dell Inspiron laptop performed better. To give more details, the Lenovo ThinkPad 13 was only able to achieve a score of 5854 points on the 3DMark test.

In conclusion, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 delivered a decent performance for a laptop with an integrated graphics card. Hence, I believe Dell Inspiron 15 5566 deserves an eight out of ten rating in this graphics review section.

Dell Inspiron 15 5566: Battery Life and Performance

In terms of battery, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 employs a 4-cell 40 Wh Lithium-Ion battery. Dell claims that this battery can last up to 8 hours.

To prove Dell’s claim, I will highlight the laptop’s result on a web browsing battery rundown test. This rundown test involves continuously surfing the internet on the laptop via a WIFI connection until the laptop dies.

At the end of this test, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 delivered a battery life of 6 hours. Although this battery life is decent, it is 2 hours less than Dell’s initial claim.

Comparatively, the Dell Inspiron 15 5566’s battery life is almost on par with the Lenovo ThinkPad 13′. To give more details, according to the battery rundown test, the Lenovo ThinkPad 13 has a battery life of 6 hours and 12 minutes.

After thorough consideration, I will rate the Dell Inspiron 15 5566 an eight out of ten in this battery review section.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

The Dell Inspiron 15 5566 is a budget-friendly laptop that offers reasonable performance. Specifically, this laptop comes with a powerful and efficient CPU that is capable of handling most computing tasks.

Also, this laptop features a comfortable keyboard and also offers an optional touchscreen display. However, despite all these features, this laptop is somewhat heavy.

In addition to its heavyweight, this Dell laptop supports a maximum memory of just 8 GB. Notwithstanding, for a little over $400, I believe this laptop is more than adequate.

Hence, if you desire a budget laptop with decent performance, you should consider the Dell Inspiron 15 5566.

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