When you ask people about laptop brands, you’ll probably hear Dell among the first 4- 5 brands that they’ll mention. This is because Dell is a very popular brand that has tons of loyal customers worldwide.
Dell laptops & computers are made by Dell, an American multinational company named after its creator Michael Dell. The company that develops and creates computers and computer-related products.
As of 2019, Dell has ranked 34 among the top Fortune 500 companies, making it one of the most successful computer companies out there.
Is Dell Laptop Good – Dell 2022 Brand Rating
Dell’s Key Strengths
- Amazing premium laptops like the XPS ultrabook that have stylish ergonomic designs and a long battery life
- Durable laptops. Most of their laptops were made to last and to survive minor damage.
- Good Warranty. Some Dell laptops can have their warranties extended by up to 4 years.
Dell’s Key Weaknesses
- Bad value selection for mid-range laptops. Dell has amazing premium laptops and good budget laptops. But they lack a lot of good mid-end laptops which force people to spend like a king for premium laptops or settle for a cheap laptop.
Top-Rated Dell Laptops
Design [24/30]
Dell has a large collection of laptops with different designs. They have some laptops that have innovative and slick designs, particularly their premium laptops. Their XPS series is best known for their designs that make them look like polished gemstones with their silvery to dark gold designs.
They also have amazing business laptops that look the part with the Dell Precision M6800. This laptop when folded looks like a business ledger which helps give it a professional and functional feel.
However, their older models look like they were made by grade-schoolers which shows Dell’s past when it still didn’t focus on their laptop’s looks.
They also have laptops that are a little lackluster, which offer a decent design but are lacking in impact. Laptops like the Dell Inspiron 15 look like your run of the mill laptop however it does have good specs and it’s worth a buy if you’re only looking for a functional laptop.
Overall, the majority of Dell’s laptops have good designs but some of their older laptops look ugly while some laptops didn’t bother to look good at all. This brings down its score to 24/30.
Support and Warranty [26/30]
Dell has good customer support. Their staff might not be able to answer or respond as quickly as other brands but they sure are knowledgeable and they often give helpful advice to their customers. Their staff shows a good understanding of their tech and they show genuine care for their customer’s worries. I guess this explains why Dell has a lot of loyal customers who trust the judgment of the staff.
The slow response may not be a weakness but a hidden strength, since it shows that customer support is thinking carefully about the problem and they want to give the right answers to their customers [which they often do].
As for warranty, most Dell laptops have at least 1-year warranties. Some of these warranties can be extended up to 4 years like with their XPS laptops. Dell also offers a warranty on accidental damages. This includes damage to the laptop via drops, collisions, falls, and liquid spills.
Overall Dell’s support and warranty are pretty solid with their amazing staff and reasonable warranties.
We give their support and warranty a score of 26/30.
Innovation [8/10]
Dell has made some amazing innovations recently. One of the most notable innovations is with their XPS series. Generally speaking, powerful laptops have amazing specs but it comes with the price of being heavy and bulky. They aren’t very portable which seems to defeat the purpose of a laptop in the first place.
Dell sought to solve this problem and created the Dell XPS 13. A powerful but lightweight laptop. By compressing all the essential parts and creating a slim and lightweight design, the XPS series was a success. The only issue we have over the Dell XPS 13 is the UHD Graphics 620 card that it has. It’s a good graphics card but it really falls flat when it’s time to run graphically heavy applications or by planting modern video games.
Thankfully its successor the XPS 15 is way better than the XPS 13 and it even has the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card. This makes the XPS series truly an innovative laptop that will pave the way to create more powerful portable laptops.
We’re hoping that Dell continues with this trend and we would love it if the rumored Dell XPS 17 would be an even more powerful laptop than the XPS 15.
Another DELL innovation to look at is the Dell Latitude 5420. Most laptops these days have slick-looking designs but they come with a price of durability. Sometimes all it takes to break these good looking laptops is a single hard bump to the floor.
The Dell Latitude 5420 is different though since it’s designed to withstand impact and last for a very long time. The laptop honestly looks like a tank and it certainly can take a lot of abuse before breaking down.
Lastly, the Dell Latitude 5420 is designed to be very bulky which makes it hard to carry around however it is relatively light despite its bulky. Weighing only about 5 pounds, it may not be extremely light but 5 pounds is certainly reasonable for a big and bulky laptop.
Overall Dell has shown significant improvements and creative innovation on their laptops over the past few years. We give Dell a score of 8/10 when it comes to innovation.
Value and Selection [28/30]
Dell’s laptops are known to be a little bit pricey with good specs however they do have cheap and affordable laptops that anyone can buy. A good example of this is the Dell Chromebook 11 which costs just about 100 bucks.
This 11-inch laptop features 4GB of RAM and is powered by an Intel Celeron N2840 that has a processing power of 2.16GHz up to 2.58GHz which is decent for a laptop being sold near $200. Additionally, the chromebook 11 can be bought for 9.99 which allows it to be used via touchscreen. Lastly, Chromebook 11 has a 10-hour battery life, making it an ideal low-end business laptop.
The only downside to the Dell Chromebook 11 is that it comes with only 16 GB of hard drive space which makes it really inconvenient to store large files such as video, audio, and programs. However, the Chromebook 11 is still more than a bargain for a $100 laptop.
If you don’t like the Chromebook 11’s poor hard drive space, you might want to aim for a pricier but affordable option. We’re talking about the Dell Latitude E7470. It’s a 14-inch laptop powered by an Intel Dual-Core i5-6300U processor with 8GB of RAM.
The laptop has 255 GB of SSD hard drive allowing for faster load time making it more efficient and convenient for the user. It only costs $299 more than the Chromebook 11 since it’s being sold at $399. This Dell Latitude E7470 makes the 4 times more expensive than the Chromebook 11 but at the cost of better overall specs and more than 10 times the hard drive space.
Just from looking at one of their cheapest products, you can tell that Dell focuses a lot of bang for your buck with decent specs as well as interesting features like a touchscreen.
The same can be said for their mid-end laptops like the Dell Inspiron 15. This laptop features good specs with its 10th Generation Intel Core i3-1005G1 processor that can run up to 3.4 GHz, 8GB DDR4 memory, and its 15.6-inch Diagonal HD SVA 1366 x 768 Touch screen Display. The specs don’t seem to ma
Its 15.6 inches of display and 7 hours of battery life make it a good laptop for movie viewing with friends and family, and its large display and decent specs allow you to run mid-end games with no problem. It has a 128 GB SSD allowing it to run and load games smoothly as well as a 1 TB HDD for large file storage like movies, songs, and most mid-end games.
Of course, what Dell is truly known for is its exceptional premium laptops like the Dell XPS 15. The XPS series is where Dell steps up their game, the XPS 15, in particular, is known for its impressive specs that are almost on par with most high-end gaming laptops.
The XPS 15 features the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 video card with 4GB GDDR5 RAM, a 16GB DDR4-2666MHz RAM, and a 9th Generation Intel Core i7-9750h with six cores capable of each going up to 4. 5 GHz and 1 TB SSD. With specs like this, you’ll think twice about buying a gaming laptop.
This 15-inch laptop also has impressive features like CinemaStream which lessens buffer time allowing for smoother video streams and CinemaSound which enhances the audio of your media allowing for greater volume and higher audio quality in general.
It also features Killer Wireless, which boasts the latest Wifi 6 technology which allows for a smoother and better online experience.
Lastly, the XPS 15 is known for its lightweight and portable design. With dimensions of 9.27 x 14.06 x 0.66 inches and a weight of 4.5 pounds, the Dell XPS 15 is one of the lightest high-performing laptops ever made.
The only downside to The XPS 15 is its ridiculous price. This high-end laptop costs $1799 dollars which is almost unaffordable to most people! But the reasons for the price are primarily because of the expensive hardware it contains like its state of the art 9th gen processor and its amazing features like its next level Wifi 6 technology.
But if $1799 is too much for you can always settle for the Dell XPS 13. It’s an inferior version of the XPS 15 and it costs about $1,199.66. Being an inferior version, it has slightly lower specs than the XPS 15 with its 8th Gen Intel Quad-Core i7-8565U Processor, 16 GB RAM, and 256 GB SSD, and a UHD Graphics 620 which honestly isn’t really good for gaming.
However, with the exception of its graphics card, its specs are still top of the line making a very good premium laptop being sold near the $1000 price.
Dell also has specialized laptops on the market. They have gaming laptops that are pretty well known. The Dell G7 17 is a high-end premium gaming laptop that stands toe to toe with its Alienware counterparts.
All in all, Dell as a laptop brand has very good value selection. They have cheap laptops being sold at $100 as well as affordable convertible laptops like the Dell Inspiron 15. Dell also specializes in laptops for business and gaming, as well as premium laptops that put all of its other laptops to shame.
The only thing pulling Dell back in terms of value and selection is their lack of good mid-range laptops. If it weren’t for that, Dell would have a perfect score.
So whether you have the cash or not, Dell offers enough value and selection for both the rich and the poor but lacks value for those in the middle. We give Dell’s value selection a score of 28/30.
What people’s reviews say
People who review Dell generally love their premium laptops since they get more than they bargained for. Dell is extremely popular with their cheap laptops as well however they tend to get ratings between 2-4 stars for their poor hardware but cheap price. They have
Most people comment that Dell lacks good mid-end laptops which gives Dell an image of a brand that is catered more for the people with money or for people who can only afford cheap laptops with bad specs. I guess Dell doesn’t like the middle class.
Overall Verdict [86/100]
Dell gets an overall score of 86/100. It’s a fairly high score thanks to Dell having good scores in most of the categories. The brand has made some good innovations lately, their customer support and warranties are solid, and they have more or less a good value selection score. What truly holds them back is their lackluster design and the lack of mid-end computers. If Dell works on these two things, they’ll become a better brand in the future.