Dell G3 15 3500 laptop in review: Robust gaming notebook with 144 Hz screen

Dell manufactures the G3 15 from a very robust plastic. This does not give way even under strong pressure and gives the gaming notebook an extremely robust impression. Although small decorative stripes here and there provide an eye-catcher, the G3 15 looks rather classic overall. The screen is also very torsion-resistant and can be opened with one hand without distorting it. The maximum opening angle is around 140°.

With a weight of approximately 2.3 kilograms, the G3 15 is not a light notebook and is also the heaviest from the range of similar tested devices. The same applies to the dimensions, with Dell's laptop surpassing its 15-inch competitors, especially in terms of thickness and width.

The Dell G3 15 offers a good choice of ports. It is especially noticeable that numerous monitors can be connected to the gaming notebook. Not only is there an HDMI and a mini-display port available for this purpose but display devices can also be connected via the Thunderbolt 3 connector.

The Dell G3 15's memory card reader does not fully accept SD cards, causing them to protrude approximately 1.5 cm beyond the edge. In addition, our reference memory card Toshiba Exceria Pro SDXC 64GB UHS-II achieves slow speeds of 23.8 MB/s when copying and 27.1 MB/s when reading data.

Dell G3 15 users can connect via a LAN port, Bluetooth 5.0 and Wi-Fi 6. In combination with our reference router Netgear Nighthawk AX12, the gaming laptop achieves very good values of an average of 1,417 Mb/s for receiving and 1,337 Mb/s for transmitting data.

The Dell G3 15's webcam records images at a low 0.9 MP. Our test shots therefore show noticeable blurring and pale colours even under very good lighting conditions. Nowadays, this is the case with most current laptops.

The Dell G3 15 only comes with the notebook itself and a suitable power supply unit. However, Dell offers numerous general and gaming-related accessories, which range from external input devices to carrying cases and monitors.

Dell offers a 12-month warranty to buyers of the G3 15, which can be extended for an additional charge.

Keyboard

The keys on Dell's gaming laptop allow your fingertips to stay firmly in place and respond to input with a distinct pressure point. Frequent writers will also get along well with the keyboard, whereby the somewhat small Enter key takes some getting used to. The arrow keys are also narrower, but the free space around them prevents any mistakes.

Under poor lighting conditions, the two-stage white backlighting makes it easier to read the key labelling.

The Dell G3 15 is aimed at gamers and offers the corresponding hardware equipment. Besides the configuration tested here, models with Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1650 Ti and GeForce GTX 1660 Ti are also available. Additionally, an Intel Core i5-10300H is available as an alternative processor. In each variant Full HD gaming should be possible even with slightly higher graphics settings.

The Intel Core i7-10750H used here is a processor with six cores that can process up to 12 threads simultaneously. The clock rates lie between 2.6 and 5 GHz, whereby the cooling system is largely responsible for how long high clock rates can be maintained. In our Cinebench R15 continuous load test, performance remains at a constant level at the beginning and drops by about 8% after a few runs.

In the individual CPU performance tests, the Dell G3 15 achieved average results. In comparison to comparable competition, it shows that other laptops with Intel Core i7-10750H tested by us are able to make better use of their processor.

The Dell G3 15 achieved a good overall result in the PCMark 10 system performance test. It was able to assert itself against our range of tested devices, especially in the discipline "Digital Content Creation", and it also achieved a good "Productivity" value. The gaming laptop ran smoothly at all times in everyday testing and showed neither micro stutters nor unnecessary loading times.

In our CPU benchmark list you can see the results other notebooks achieved in our tests.

Dell installs a 512 GB SSD from SK Hynix in the G3 15. This is not one of the fastest models on the market but still achieves solid read and write rates in our benchmark tests.

Our HDD/SSD benchmark list shows what performance can be expected from comparable mass storage devices.

Dell uses an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 in our test model of the G3 15. This graphics card is also suitable for more complex 3D applications but doesn't achieve quite as good benchmark results as other notebooks with this graphics unit. In the 3DMark tests the values are up to 10% below the average of other laptops with this GPU that we tested.

Our GPU benchmark list shows how the installed Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 compares with other graphics cards.

With the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060, most current games can be played smoothly with high graphics settings and in Full HD resolution. Accordingly, the titles we tested ran smoothly with high frame rates and did not show any frame drops or similar.

The performance that can be expected in other titles from Nvidia's GeForce RTX 2060 can be seen in our GPU games list.

In the extended test with The Witcher 3 on the graphics setting "Ultra", the Dell G3 15 shows only slight variations in graphics performance over a long period. At the end of the approximately one-hour test, however, a clear drop can be noticed, which then stabilises between 30 and 40 fps. This means that fluid gaming is still possible, but users must expect performance drops after long playing times for very demanding titles.