Dell Inspiron 13 7306 2-in-1 laptop review: Compact convertible for drawing and creative tasks ^↺

The overall appearance of the 13.3-inch laptop is dominated by black aluminum and very little plastic. When folded up, the convertible's thickness is shy of 2 cm even including the small rubber feet. Since the display raises the laptop at the back by a few millimeters when opened to improve airflow, bigger feet are not required. Dell's inspiron 7306 then also reveals another feature: The back edge of the base unit doubles as a magnetic dock with two pogo pins for charging the included stylus. Dell does not need to use eccentric lines and instead relies on its great build quality to create a premium laptop aesthetic.

Upon manual inspection, there are a few weaknesses: Both the base unit and the screen make creaking noises when twisted from the corners. Similarly, the keyboard area slightly yields under pressure. The important part is that the amount of force required to slightly twist the chassis is small. The mechanical resistance only significantly increases after the material is already slightly bent.

At just 1380 grams, the Dell Inspiron is a very lightweight device and even when inside the carrying case, the thin laptop can hardly be described as heavy. Thanks to the additional display functionality that lifts the back of the base unit, the rubber feet are extraordinarily tiny. However, all competitors are similar in size.

Even with our fast AV Pro UHS-II V60 reference memory card, the microSD card reader's speeds are not up to current standards. This is another area which can be improved with an appropriate docking station.

The Intel AX201 module provides Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1 with moderate transfer speeds. While an upload speed of 919 MB/s will not top any current charts for the Intel AX201, the aluminum chassis is partially responsible and makes positioning the antenna more tricky.

The Intel Core i7-1165G7 comes with current security features such as TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot. As such, Windows Update confirms the compatibility with the Windows 11 upgrade. Authentication via the fingerprint sensor integrated into the power button works flawlessy and consistently.

Aside from the charger, the Dell laptop's scope of delivery also includes the stylus, which has two buttons and an eraser function.

Dell offers customers 1 year of hardware service with onsite/in-home service after remote diagnosis. There do not appear to be any warranty extentions available for the Inspiron 7306 at this time.

Dell has left almost nothing to desire when it comes to the Inspiron 7306's input devices and included a good keyboard, a glass clickpad, a multitouch screen and a digital stylus.

Thanks to its pleasant backlighting, the Dell laptop's keyboard can be comfortably used even in the dark. While the 15x15 mm keys do not offer a particularly strong feedback, the haptic feedback is distinct. Overall, the keyboard of the convertible is very easy to get used to.

In similar fashion, the touchscreen responds uniformly well to up to 10 simultaneous inputs. The touchscreen does not suffer from a significant, perceivable latency.

At the time of writing, our configuration of the Dell Inspiron 7306 with the Intel Core i7-1165G7 and 16 GB of RAM is the only available model. Only the silver model's display option is flexible.

The performance characteristics of the Dell laptop are controlled by the "Dell Power Manager" application. It allows users to choose between four profiles with the following results:

The economical quad-core SoC Intel Core i7-1165G7 is primarily used in compact laptops with slightly higher performance requirements. The processor was manufactured with the SuperFin process and has access to a TDP of 12 watts to 28 watts, selected by the OEM. In the case of our test device, the chosen TDP of 26 watts is only maintained for about 40 to 60 seconds under load before the convertible has to throttle due to thermal constraints. Subsequently, the continuous TDP sits at 18 watts. This is also illustrated  by our Cinebench R15 loop, where the performance drops from 805 to 679 points after only a few loops. Running the benchmark when the processor is already warm results in a maximum score of 702 points.

Overall, the processor within the Dell Inspiron 7306 falls behind its competitors when it comes to the multi-thread performance. Only the Samsung Galaxy Book with the weaker i5-1135G7-Prozessor reaches even lower scores. By contrast, the single-core results of the Dell convertible paint a different picture. Here, the Inspiron 7306 achieves mostly excellent benchmark results. 16 GB of RAM with the highest throughput in our comparison certainly does not hurt in these scenarios.

The good PCMark 10 scores reflect the stand-out single-core performance and fast RAM. Even though the laptop struggles under prolonged as evidenced by the decreasing TDP, most daily workloads only require short bursts of performance in order to facilitate a smooth user experience. Thus, the laptop feels very responsive during day-to-day use.