You might be wondering how Dell has managed to cram in such impressive specs into this budget-friendly gaming laptop. Turns out, there’s no magic formula – there have simply been cuts in other areas, most significantly the screen. The palmrests and touchpad are cooler than skin temperature with a maximum of 28.8 °C / 83.8 F and are therefore cool to the touch.

According to our colorimeter, the Dell G5 15 SE’s display nailed 108% of the sRGB color gamut, sliding past the 106% mainstream gaming laptop average. It also beat the HP Omen 15’s 102% and the Legion Y545’s 99%, but couldn’t quite keep up with the 117% from the Zephyrus G14. Meanwhile, Dell G5 15 SE’s baseline 60Hz panel covered 63% of the sRGB color gamut, which is duller than the budget gaming laptop average (72%). Add an impressive battery life to the mix, and you’ve got a no-thrills gaming laptop that gets the job done to a satisfying standard. If you’re not fussed about RGB lights and skinny bezels, and just want a laptop that can play your entire Steam library in Full HD, then you’ll struggle to find a better value gaming laptop than the Dell G5. Verdict

Performance - Without shortcomings

On the plus side, the Dell G5 15 SE's battery life is fantastic for a gaming laptop. While other gaming laptops are dying out before they even finish a movie on Netflix, this one will keep on keeping on for several hours of video or everyday, general use. You can even get a few hours of moderate gaming out of it if you keep your settings tuned for battery life or balance rather than going all-in on performance. In the Alienware Command Center app, you’ll find a tab for the Nahimic audio software, which is relatively helpful in getting better sound. There are multiple presets, such as Alienware, Com, Movie, Music, Racing, Role Play, Shooter and Strategy. You can also create your own custom profiles. Within each profile are settings for the Audio Effects (Bass, Treble, Voice, Loudness, Reverb and Surround Sound), Equalizer and Microphone. Dell G5 15 SE (2020) gaming, graphics and VR On the Grand Theft Auto V benchmark, the Dell G5 15 SE got 56 fps, which didn't make it past the 62-fps category average (it once again flew by the 45-fps budget gaming average). The Omen 15 (60 fps) and Legion Y545 (62 fps) did slightly better, while the Zephyrus G14 (115 fps) excelled.

inch gaming laptop built for style and performance. Featuring the latest Intel® Core™ Processors and NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ Laptop GPUs.

Dell’s value gaming laptop delivers a killer combo

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. Overall, we were pretty impressed with the Dell G5 15 SE's performance. It lags behind other AMD Ryzen 7 4800H systems - such as the Asus TUF A15 - in our general use benchmarks, but not by much. It beats out the Alienware m15 R2 on some tests, but where the Dell G5 15 SE seems to run into trouble is with its AMD Radeon RX 5600M GPU. The Dell G5 15 SE has some of the longest battery life we’ve seen in a gaming laptop. Surprise, surprise, it’s all thanks to AMD. After it continuously surfed the web over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness, the G5 15's battery lasted 7 hours and 14 minutes, which crushed the 4:50 mainstream gaming laptop average. The Omen 15 (3:05) and Legion Y545 (3:38) were basically dead on arrival, while the only competitor left standing was the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (11:32), which can also thank AMD. Dell G5 15 SE (2020) webcam Dell’s 512GB SSD copied 4.97GB of data in 12.4 seconds, translating to 410 megabytes per second, which is just under the 467-MBps mainstream gaming laptop average. The Legion Y545’s 128GB SSD hit a slow 189 MBps, whereas the 512GB SSD in the Omen 15 and the 1TB SSD in Zephyrus G14 nailed 728 MBps and 1,131 MBps, respectively. The G5 churned out even worse results for photography colour gamuts, proving that this isn’t a multi-talented machine – although I didn’t expect so given the G5’s (relatively) low price.

In comparison, all tested devices range from 0.1 (minimum) to 240 (maximum) ms. » 77% of all devices are better.The laptop gets 45fps on average during our Total War: Three Kingdoms battlefield benchmark on ultra settings, which isn't awful, but its not great either. Meanwhile, the GPU pushes out 42fps on average during our Metro: Exodus benchmark on ultra settings. The display's bezels aren't letterbox-sized, but they are noticeable, even if they are pretty easy to forget about. The built-in 720p webcam is positioned above the display where you'd expect and the laptops speakers are on the sides of the chassis toward the front. The Dell laptop does what it's supposed to do: It runs all the games that are found in our database smoothly. The combination of the Core i7-8750Hprocessor and the GeForce RTX 2060 graphics unit will make sure of this for the next years coming. Should the GPU no longer be able to meet the requirements, the possibility of using an external GPU through the Thunderbolt 3 port is available. In terms of colour accuracy, the G5 was once again far from the required standard with a sRGB colour gamut of 54.8%. This isn’t a huge issue for gaming, but it does mean that the G5 is a poor option if you’re intending to use it for design work. One of the other more noticeable performance issues is the laptop's thermal performance. The laptop gets noticeably hot under strain, both on the underside and on hot spots around the keyboard. This isn't a problem unique to Dell - most budget laptops struggle with this issue - but just because all the other laptops are melting in your lap doesn't give the Dell G5 15 SE a pass.

The maximum temperature on the upper side is 51.5 °C / 125 F, compared to the average of 40.4 °C / 105 F, ranging from 21.2 to 68.8 °C for the class Gaming. Dell offers a decent gaming laptop with the G5 15 5590. However, the relatively favorable price requires some compromises. inch, FHD, 1920 x 1080, 165 Hz, anti-glare, non-touch, 100% sRGB, 300 nits, wide-viewing angle (WVA)

As I stealthily approached the Militarized Temple of Megara in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, I was surrounded by lush shrubbery accompanied by bright yellow flowers that popped on the display. When crawling my way through a Leader House in the dead of night, I spotted the telltale gear of a Captain in the distance. And when cranking down the game to its lowest settings, I experienced the silky smooth 144Hz refresh rate in action as I cut down my enemies. The plastic on the chassis's base feels a lot more solid than the lid, which gives the impression that the lids plastic casing might pop clean off if you dropped it at just the right angle. This is also the first gaming laptop to feature AMD's SmartShift technology, which helps the laptop manage the power distribution between the CPU and the GPU to get more power to where the need is greater at any given moment.