Dell G5 15 5590
With the Dell G5 15 5590, Dell is aggressively courting gamers who want to game on the go for much less than you’d expect. And, it has done so successfully by skipping all the bells and whistles and focusing on specs and performance.
If you’re a gamer, the Dell G5 15 5590 will certainly come as a shock - in a good way. An asking price of $1,149 shouldn’t be possible, not for a name brand gaming laptop fitted with a 15.6-inch IPS screen, six-core Intel processor, and Nvidia RTX graphics, much less in a package less than an inch thick. But, here we are.
Of course, thanks to the bigger 90WHr battery our review model came with, it’s a bit pricier than its normal configuration. Still, the Dell G5 15 5590 is affordable as you can get without compromising on performance. While there are plenty of comparable laptops from other reputable companies, like the Gigabyte Aorus 15 2019, Dell has managed to offer better specs at just about every price.
Spec sheet
Here is the Dell G5 15 5590 configuration sent to TechRadar for review:
CPU: 2.2GHz Intel Core i7-8750H (six-core, 9MB cache, up to 4.10GHz with Turbo Boost)
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 6GB
RAM: 16GB
Screen: 15.6-inch, 1080p, 60Hz
Storage: 128GB NVMe SSD, 1TB HDD
Optical drive: N/A
Ports: 3x USB 3.1, 1x USB-C / Thunderbolt 3, HDMI, Min DisplayPort, LAN, SD card reader
Connectivity: 802.11ac 2x2 WiFi and Bluetooth
Camera: 720p camera
Weight: 5.9 pounds (2.68 kg)
Size: 14.3 x 10.8 x 0.95 inches (34.6 x 27.3 x 2.4cm; W x D x H)
Price and availability
The Dell G5 15 5590 mostly as configured here but with the 60 rather than 90-WHr battery is currently available for Walmart for just $1,149, which is fairy insane.
Specific configurations vary considerably and the config Dell sent us isn’t actually currently available from any of its own websites, but normal pricing would be in the $1,399 ballpark as configured and perhaps £1,350 in the UK and AU$2,124.
As ever with Dell notebooks, configuration availability varies frequently over time and with location. But the good news is that the wide range of options means you can usually spec yours up to deliver on the things you care about and avoid paying for hardware you’re not going to use.
As we’ll see, our review system is missing at least one obvious high-end option and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Design
The usual refrain for hardware reviews often involves out-of-the-box impressions. But the actual packaging in which the new G5 from Dell is delivered makes its own statement. It’s utterly unpretentious brown cardboard with absolutely no aesthetic niceties. It just ensures the system survives transit unscathed.
You won’t find us complaining. Fancy packaging like clever levitating box hinges are all very well. But it only adds to the cost of a product without adding anything to the user experience once you’re up and running.
Anyway, literally out of the box the Dell G5 15 5590 mostly impresses. The chassis is a mix of metal and plastic and feels extremely robust. The monochrome-backlit keyboard, likewise, is absolutely rock solid. Put simply, this is a portable that feels like it can take a beating.
Styling is subjective, of course, but the Dell G5 15 5590 at least ploughs its own furrow with its ribbed chassis sides and strip of polished black plastic. By today’s standards, the bezels are merely moderately slim and the lower chin is pretty fat. But at less than an inch thick, it’s pretty svelte for a system with this much punch.
The port count is another highlight. With three USB A ports, a USB-C with Thunderbolt 3 port, HDMI, Mini DisplayPort, LAN and an SD card reader, you really do have all your bases covered. It’s also worth noting that most of these ports plus the power connector are at the rear of the chassis, ensuring a minimum of cable clutter.
Specs appeal
As for specs, the number of options can be bewildering. However, most configs including our review rig come with an Intel six-core Core i7-8750H CPU. It’s an 8th rather than 9th gen chip, but that’s of zero consequence. It’s all the CPU you’re ever going to need in a laptop.
Graphics wise, we’re talking Nvidia RTX 2060, which is the entry-level GPU in Nvidia’s latest ray-tracing capable Turing generation of graphics chips, but very powerful in outright terms. It’s paired with a 15.6-inch 1080p display based on IPS panel technology. Dell optionally offers 144Hz refresh support, but our review rig is limited to 60Hz.
Elsewhere, there’s a storage combo includes a 128GB M.2 SSD with a 1TB HDD and 16GB of RAM. The storage setup is a little unusual, but in theory offers both high performance for a limited number of critical apps, plus plenty of capacity for everything else.
Benchmarks
Here's how the Dell G5 15 5590 performed in our suite of benchmark tests:
3DMark: Sky Diver: 33,781; Fire Strike: 13,768; Time Spy: 5,964
Cinebench CPU: 1,186 points; Graphics: 123 fps
GeekBench: 4,754 (single-core); 21,954 (multi-core)
PCMark 8 (Home Test): 3,845 points
Battery Life (TechRadar movie test): 9 hours and 54 minutes
Total War: Warhammer II (1080p, Ultra): 58 fps; (1080p, Low): 124 fps
Middle Earth: Shadow of War (1080p, Ultra): 77 fps; (1080p, Low): 146 fps
The Dell Gaming G5’s core components are very nicely matched. The Intel six-core CPU, Nvidia RTX 2060 graphics and the 1080p LCD panel combine to deliver properly smooth frame rates at high settings in the latest games.
Specifically, we’re not talking about the very last word in buttery-smooth performance. For that you’ll need an even more powerful GPU and a display with 120Hz-plus refresh. But the point about the nicely matched components can be seen in our gaming benchmark results.
Set to ultra detail, frame rate results in the 60 to 70 fps region are very playable indeed. But they also indicate the futility of optioning a high refresh panel with this configuration. 144Hz support is pretty pointless if you’re only driving the panel at around half that refresh rate. That’s why the 60Hz panel option fitted to our review system makes sense.
As for other performance related observations, the fans are pretty noisy when the system is heavily loaded. But we’d prefer that over a rig that’s prone to thermal throttling. The aforementioned 1080p panel, meanwhile, sports IPS tech and good colours, but lacks a little outright punch if you want to be picky.
Battery life
Another significant highlight is battery life. Nearly 10 hours of movie playback is frankly stellar for a powerful gaming notebook and transforms the Gaming G5 into a genuinely useful all-round computing device, as opposed to merely a transportable gaming rig.
However, it's worth pointing out that in the more intensive PC Home 8 battery benchmarks, which replicate moderate use, such as document creation and video calling, the battery lasted a lot shorter at 4 hours and 39 minutes.
Still, these are very good results for a gaming laptop, especially one as affordable as the Dell G5 15 5590.
Verdict
The best of Dell’s laptops tend to be the very best portable PCs you can buy. We reckon the latest Dell Gaming G5 slots straight into that category. In many regards, it doesn’t set new standards. What it does do, however, is offer a no-nonsense combination of features that actually matter in a gaming portable and then add outstanding battery life into the mix.
Thus, you get robust build, a decent screen, well matched components and strong performance in the latest games, not to mention support for the latest gaming features including ray tracing.
The kicker is the near-10-hour battery life. It makes the G5 so much more versatile than your average gaming portable and should open this laptop up to a much broader market. There will be many who would like a gaming-capable portable but either don’t want to pay an absolute fortune or aren’t willing to give up on usability when it comes to battery life. The G5’s aggressive pricing and excellent battery life squares that circle very nicely indeed.
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