Dell G3 15 3590 Laptop Review: Inexpensive with Easy Upgrades

The narrower bezels of the G3 3590 when compared to the last generation G3 3579 have resulted in a smaller footprint. Even so, they still weigh about the same at roughly 2.5 kg each. Dimensions are similar to the HP Pavilion 15 Gaming, Aorus 15, and Lenovo Legion Y540 while being slightly heavier in the process.

The budget Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 is a 1x1 802.11ac module with integrated Bluetooth 5. Thus, theoretical transfer rates are limited to just 433 Mbps compared to 1.73 Gbps or greater on most modern Ultrabooks likely to save on costs. We experienced no connectivity issues during our time with the system.

The bottom panel is secured by 10 Philips screws. Servicing will require a sharp edge because the bottom panel is latched tightly around the corners and edges.

The clickpad is exactly the same size as it was on the G3 3579 (~10.5 x 8 cm). Perhaps unsurprisingly, they also feel identical from their slightly roughened surface texture and the moderately loud and spongy click when pressed. The strange cursor responsiveness behavior that we experienced on the G3 3579 is not present on the G3 3590.

Color space is narrow at just 59 percent and 38 percent of sRGB and AdobeRGB, respectively. Users who want deeper and more accurate colors ought to look at Dell's higher-end XPS or Alienware families instead. The G3 3590 is definitely not suitable for digital graphics work where precise colors are paramount.

To our surprise, the display is well calibrated out of the box which is uncommon for a budget laptop. Grayscale and color temperature are excellent especially for an inexpensive panel where average DeltaE values are usually very high. The limited gamut of the panel means colors will still become increasingly inaccurate at higher saturation levels so matter how well calibrated the display may be.

Outdoor visibility is very poor as the maximum brightness is reduced to just 171 nits from 276 nits when running on battery power. This is nearly 70 percent dimmer than the latest XPS 15 7590 FHD and most gaming laptops in general. Meanwhile, viewing angles are excellent as one would expect from an IPS panel, but apparent brightness decreases even further if viewing from obtuse angles.

The Core i5 CPU is performing exactly where we expect it to be when compared to the average i5-9300H in our database with no major throttling issues. Opting for the pricier Core i7-9750H will net 30 to 40 percent faster multi-threaded performance.

See our dedicated page on the Core i5-9300H for more technical information and benchmark comparisons.

PCMark benchmarks are consistently higher than last year's G3 3579 largely due to the newer Turing GPU and primary SSD in contrast to the Pascal GPU and primary HDD of the predecessor. Overall scores are still below that of faster gaming laptops like the Alienware m15 R2 or HP Pavilion 15 Gaming.

Two internal storage bays are available (M.2 2280 NVMe + 2.5-inch SATA III bay). Our test unit comes equipped with a 128 GB primary Toshiba BG4 SSD and a secondary 1 TB WDC WD10SPZX HDD. While sequential read rates on the SSD are decent at about 1200 MB/s, sequential write rates are slower than even most SATA III SSDs at just under 200 MB/s. This is a budget drive after all with similar results to the Toshiba BG3 found on the Dell G7 17 7790.

See our table of HDDs and SSDs for more benchmark comparisons.

The cooling solution consists of twin ~50 mm fans and just two heat pipes between them. The fans are always active no matter the load at 29.4 dB(A) against a background of 28.4 dB(A) and so they are never completely silent. Common loads like browsing or video streaming can bump the fans up to 35 dB(A) temporarily before falling back down to 31 dB(A). In general, the fans are audible but not loud enough to be distracting.

Fan nose when gaming will induce a constant fan noise of 49.5 dB(A) to be louder than what we recorded on the G3 3579. Meanwhile, the HP Pavilion 15 Gaming with faster GTX 1660 Ti graphics runs significantly quieter when under similar conditions.

We recommend becoming familiar with the pre-installed Dell Power Manager software as it directly controls performance and fan behavior.

We stress the laptop with synthetic loads to identify for any potential throttling or stability issues. When running Prime95, clock rates would spike to 4 GHz until reaching a high core temperature of 96 C just a few seconds later. Thereafter, clock rates steadily fall until they stabilize at the 3.4 to 3.5 GHz range in order to maintain a relatively cooler core temperature of 88 C. Thus, the G3 3590 is able to maintain respectable Turbo Boost clock rates albeit at higher core temperatures than expected. CPU and GPU temperatures when gaming remain stable at 76 C and 72 C, respectively.

Running on battery power will limit performance. A Fire Strike run on batteries returns Physics and Graphics scores of 8555 and 7535 points, respectively, compared to 11693 and 9315 points when on mains.

The system draws between 6 W and 28 W when idling on desktop depending on the power profile and system brightness. When running Witcher 3, consumption becomes only 94 W compared to 101 W on the last generation G3 3579. In other words, the G3 3590 is able to offer up to 2x the graphics performance of its predecessor while consuming less power in the process. The GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q SKU is expected to be about 30 percent more demanding than our GTX 1650 SKU when gaming.

At most, we're able to measure a demand spike of 132 W from the medium-sized (~15 x 7.5 x 2.5 cm) 130 W AC adapter when running both Prime95 and FurMark simultaneously. This high of a consumption steadily drops over time before plateauing at about 113 W as shown by our graphs below.

There is a bug where the the system would not enter Sleep mode correctly seemingly at random. When this occurs, the system fans would continue to run and power consumption would be as high as 20 W. When everything is working as intended, consumption in Sleep mode would be just 0.68 W.