Dell - Reliability Issues?

kaislinn

So, I’m in the market for a new laptop, with a budget of around €600, €700 at a push. Hoping for not less than: i5 processor, 4GB RAM, 15.6” screen, and decent battery life. Nice to have, but not totally essential, would be something that’s relatively light/thin.


I’ve found a Dell model that seems to have what I’m looking for here:
dell.com/ie/p/inspiron-15-7537/pd?ref=PD_OC


My first laptop (way back in 2005) was a Dell Latitude model, which I didn’t have a great experience with. It lasted three years (after repairs) and when the warranty ran out, I just went for something else instead of paying more for another fix. A lot can change in nearly 10 years though, so I’m wondering do people have experience with the newer Dell models? Are they reliable? I really like the build quality of this one, it looks really sturdy, but I’m a bit hesitant about Dell in general following on from last time.


Additionally, I’ve been using a Toshiba Satellite for the last 5/6 years with absolutely no problems at all. The battery gave up on me after about 3 years, but other than that it’s been fantastic. Given the choice, would ye go for a Toshiba model in the same price range over the Dell?

Any help would be much appreciated

boobar

I've had a dell laptop for almost 10 years...

Granted it's an old model, but it still works.

I was looking at other brands Lenovo, Asus, Acer until I came across this one.

http://www.dell.com/ie/p/inspiron-15-5547-laptop/pd?oc=cn54720&model_id=inspiron-15-5547-laptop

Seems to be a decent spec for €700 and I thought sure my current Dell has been good to me, so why not stick with the brand. But like you I'd like to hear the views of others pparticularly what they think of this spec for the money.

The_Honeybadger

My Inspiron is well into it's sixth year of heavy usage at this stage and still going strong having never caused me a moments trouble. Only thing I have ever done is put a new battery in it an upgrade to windows 7. I have heard quality has dropped off in recent years but I've no experience of this myself.

_Kaiser_

I have always been a big fan of DELL.. bought hundreds of them over the years for the job and they've always been solid reliable machines (Optiplex and Latitude machines mainly)

But I'm getting worried lately as to the quality of some of the newer kit..

- Had 3 XPS 12 (last gen and current gen) laptops suffer from screen-burn in. Tooks months to get it sorted

- An E6440 we have seems to have issues with virtual smart cards under WIn 8.1. Turns out these machines aren't officially supported with Win 8.x anyway because of some US requirement around fingerprint readers, EVEN THOUGH the previous E6430 works perfectly under 8.1. I'm hoping an E7440 will work if needed (my own E7240 does and in theory the only difference should be the screen size)

- I was considering an E6540 for myself as a good all-round workhorse and light gaming system but it seems that there's issues with the cooling system when gaming and it throttles back the performance as a result

The problem is though that HP systems are (in my experience) even worse - certainly the Elitebook range anyway and Lenovo's are overpriced and underspecced by comparison.

Not sure what to do at the moment. I'm in the market for a new laptop in the €800ish range myself but trying to get the spec I want (current gen i5/7, 8GB RAM and a dedicated graphics card rather than the Intel shyte they all seem to come with now) is tough going!