Dell Inspiron 15 5000 5585 Laptop Review: An Excellent Alternative to Intel

Despite its similarities to the Inspiron 15 5584, size and weight are different for the 5585. The AMD model is slightly thinner (19.5 vs. 22.5 mm), shorter (359 mm vs. 364 mm), and lighter (1.8 kg vs. 1.9 kg) than its Intel counterpart. It's still relatively long in depth due to the thicker top and bottom bezels of the display and so a number of other 15.6-inch laptops are smaller like the Asus VivoBook S15 S532.

As an AMD-powered laptop, it's understandable that the Inspiron 5585 ships with a non-Intel WLAN module by default. The 1x1 Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 performs at only one-fourth the speed of the more common 2x2 Intel 9260. To the everyday home user, however, performance remains sufficient and reliable for day-to-day browsing or streaming.

Note that the Qualcomm module is in the uncommon M.2 1630 form factor as shown below. The motherboard still supports M.2 2230 if users want to upgrade or swap WLAN modules.

The bottom panel is secured by 9 Philips screws. It takes some practice to safely detach the panel from the edges and corners without damaging the surrounding plastic. Once inside, everything from RAM, batteries, storage, and WLAN can be easily swapped.

The clickpad is identical to the one on the Inspiron 15 5584 down to its large dimensions (10.5 x 8 cm) and textured plastic surface. We find cursor control to be smooth and accurate even if moving at slow speeds, but the feedback from clicking is still far too weak and could have been firmer. 

Color space is narrow at just 56 percent of the sRGB standard whereas most mid-range to flagship Ultrabooks typically cover 90 percent or more. Colors are noticeably shallower on the Inspiron to make it a poor option for any sort of video editing or graphics work. Nevertheless, the limited color reproduction is common on inexpensive laptops.

Grayscale is not bad out of the box with an average deltaE value of 3.2 and this only becomes better after calibration. Color accuracy, however, remains poor regardless of any calibration settings because of the narrow gamut mentioned above. Colors become increasingly more inaccurate at higher saturation levels with blue in particular being the most inaccurate.

Outdoor visibility is below average. While the matte panel will reduce reflections, glare will still be prevalent because the display is simply too dim for comfortable outdoor use. Furthermore, maximum brightness will automatically drop to just 180 nits when running on batteries compared to 254 nits when on mains unless if the correct settings are toggled in the Radeon settings.

Viewing angles are otherwise excellent with wide color and contrast changes only if viewing from extreme and unrealistic angles.

AMD says that its Zen+ Ryzen 7 3700U should be 10 percent faster than its older Zen Ryzen 7 2700U, but our independent observations are more of a mixed bag. CineBench results, for example, reveal almost no differences in multi-thread performance between the Ryzen 7 2700U in the Latitude 14 5495 and Ryzen 7 3700U in our Inspiron 15 5585. When running CineBench R15 Multi-Thread in a loop, however, the 3700U is able to maintain slightly faster clock rates for longer for a small 5 percent gain in performance. In real-world terms, the CPU performance advantages are so small that jumping from the Ryzen 7 2700U to the Ryzen 7 3700U will be trivial.

Despite the above, the Ryzen 7 3700U offers slightly more consistent clock rate performance than a Core i7-8565U or Core i7-8550U when under high processing loads as shown by our comparison graph below. Intel CPUs tend to drop in clock rate more quickly than an equivalent AMD CPU because of its shorter-lived Turbo Boost potential.

AMD Ryzen U series processors continue to offer noticeably poorer single-threaded performance compared to the Intel Core U series.

See our dedicated page on the Ryzen 7 3700U for more technical information and benchmark comparisons.

PCMark benchmarks rank our Inspiron 15 5585 below the competing Intel-powered Asus VivoBook S15 on nearly all accounts. When compared to other laptops powered by the Ryzen U series, however, our Dell is one of the faster performers in PCMark even if by only single-digit percentage points.

We experienced no issues on our test unit save for some infrequent sleep issues. Our unit would sometimes not wake from sleep and a hard reset would then be required.

The Ryzen 7 3700U comes with the same integrated RX Vega 10 GPU as on the last generation Ryzen 7 2700U. Even so, 3DMark results are higher than expected with numbers that rival even the 10 W GeForce MX150 as found on the Asus VivoBook FX433. Scores are about 18 to 47 percent faster than the average RX Vega 10 in our database. If you want the best of what the RX Vega 10 has to offer, then this particular Dell configuration has the fastest implementation thus far.

Undemanding titles like DOTA 2, Fortnite, and Rocket League will run well at native 1080p on very low settings for sharp visuals even without all the post processing. Idling on Witcher 3 shows small but consistent frame dips over time to suggest that performance could be smoother.

The cooling solution consists of a single fan and a short copper heat pipe over the CPU. The system is quiet and almost inaudible at under 30.4 dB(A) when video streaming or browsing. Fan noise will remain quiet at only 31.4 dB(A) even with heavy multi-tasking and browser tabs.

Gaming loads will kick the fan to maximum for a noise level of 41.4 dB(A). Results are louder than most Ultrabooks with slower integrated UHD Graphics but otherwise similar to the Asus VivoBook S15 S532F with faster GeForce MX250 graphics.

We can notice no coil whine or electronic noise from our specific unit.

We stress the system to identify for any potential throttling or stability issues. When running Prime95, the CPU will spike up to 3.3 GHz for the first few seconds before dropping to 2.8 GHz in order to maintain a core temperature of 88 C. After about 10 minutes, however, clock rates continue to fall to 2.5 GHz for a slightly cooler core temperature of 82 C. This behavior mirrors our CineBench loop test above where performance drops at a relatively steady rate over time.

When running both Prime95 and FurMark, core temperature stabilizes at 73 C with a CPU clock in the 1.4 to 1.6 GHz range. Since the base clock rate of the CPU is 2.3 GHz, the CPU will throttle if fully stressed. The Intel CPU in the Inspiron 5584 is much cooler at about 60 C when under similar conditions which explains the warmer surface temperatures on our AMD variant as recorded above.

Running on batteries will limit CPU performance just slightly. A 3DMark 11 run on batteries returns Physics and Graphics scores of 6716 and 4349 points, respectively, compared to 7250 and 4165 points when on mains.

Overall power consumption is not unlike the Intel-powered Inspiron 15 5584. Idling on desktop demands between 4 W and 7 W while gaming loads will demand about 37 W. Since the RX Vega 10 is at least 100 percent faster than the UHD Graphics 620, however, the graphical performance-per-Watt outstrips any other laptop running on U-class Core i5 or Core i7 processors at the time of writing. Intel's integrated UHD Graphics series is embarrassingly far behind which is likely the key reason why the upcoming Intel Ice Lake series will focus extensively on improving graphics performance to catch up with the AMD Zen+ series.

Power consumption when running Prime95 is steady for about 5 minutes before dropping slightly. The behavior matches our CineBench loop results above where scores would be relatively steady for the first few minutes before falling slightly.

We're able to record a maximum consumption of 44 W from the small (~9.4 x 4 x 2.6 cm) 45 W AC adapter when running both Prime95 and FurMark simultaneously. The recharge rate will therefore be much slower if running high loads like gaming. Like the above, the system is able to maintain this high of a demand for a few minutes before inevitably falling due to thermal limits.