This right here is the Dell Inspiron 16 plus and there is a very particular reason. I’m reviewing this laptop earlier this year, I reviewed its smaller the Inspiron 14 plus and That was an absolute disaster of a laptop simply because of one fundamental flaw.
It’s got Intel’s core 7 Ultra 155h Series processor
So that It could be my secondary barbecue grill. I thought I’d give the 16 plus a separate chance to see, If it’s any better than its younger sibling and judge it in its own capacity. We have here is no joke, I mean it’s got Intel’s core 7 Ultra 155h Series processor we’ve got a respectable 32 GB of LPDDR5 memory. We’ve also got a nice large 2 TB SSD NVidia’s RTX 460 graphics with 8 GB of RAM additionally.
And finally this is a 16 in Quad HD Plus display, Now at the surface level the Dell ins Born 16 plus looks like quite the impressive machine as it should be because it has quite the Hefty price tag for the configuration reviewing today. we do have Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3 standards on board.I really want to go in depth with this machine to give you guys an honest idea of what you can expect where you dish or hard earn cash on this laptop. So let’s get into it now despite being a mid range plus laptop.
Anyway once you open up the box inside behind some more protective packaging here it is the 16 plus In the Flesh more than that in just a minute. You get some pretty standard looking cardboard packaging for the Inspiron 16 plus it’s like really plain and straightforward. We also get a standard 130 watt charging adapter which makes sense given the hardware. We have and then a standard type-c cable right out of the box which in my opinion is nice to see now you also have the wall outlet charging cable piece and then past that some basic warranty regulation information.
USB super speed Port again a nice large heat exhaust vent
Design a cool fact that if you actually get the non-discrete GPU version of the Inspiron 16 plus, You get a semi premium built with a top half Metallic exterior and Bottom plastic exterior however, It’s not excessively linear so it’s not too sharp looking but at the same time it has a modern stylist approach with all the various cutouts across the body and Just the easy going tone combined with that classic silver color. The discrete GPU version that we have, Here has a complete metallic exterior with a significantly more premium build. Now with that said regardless of which variant You get the overall Design, Language is the same, And I really like the design language of the Inspiron plus series.
It’s got these softened Corners, It’s not excessively linear so it’s not too sharp looking but at the same time it has a modern stylist approach with all the various cutouts across the body and Just the easy going tone combined with that classic silver color.
Productivity laptop and significantly above the average. Now starting with the top side so like I mentioned you have a complete metallic exterior over here which means it feels nice and premium. Also it’s highly fingerprint resistant which is very nice and something that other laptop manufacturers should just do more often and Then you’ve got some subtle branding at the center diversity is pretty interesting.
It’s got these softened Corners, It’s not excessively linear so it’s not too sharp looking but at the same time it has a modern stylist approach with all the various cutouts across the body and Just the easy going tone combined with that classic silver color. Now at the center you unfortunately get a mediocre plastic surface finish track pad here and the biggest crime is the sheer amount of flex on this trackpad. And the second biggest crime time is the rigidness.
Now the real impressive part though is the actual typing quality of the keyboard you’ve got a good amount of key travel there’s a lot of tactility but a little bit of softness as well which makes for a great typing experience.
So everything is on either side so on one side you do have a DC charging port in case you prefer to use that rather than include a type-c charging port you also have a nice large heat exhaust fent over here followed by a modern day HDMI 2.1 port. and then you have one USB type-c Thunderbolt 4 Port. That’s the only one you get on the other side you have a USB super speed Port again a nice large heat exhaust vent. How do you include a Micro SD card reader. Than a full size one on such a large Machine walk me through, This Dell like bottom side of the laptop pretty straightforward stuff.
This laptop you actually have a very nice clean minimalist looking Palm rest over here with lots of space I actually really like the silver color here and again that metallic exterior really gives it a premium feel. There’s not a lot of factility, So when you actually click on the top half of the trackpad, Your clicks hardly register which can be a little bit of a nuisance at times on the contrary though the keyboard is very nice. So you’ve got nice large key caps a lovely choice of font. I love the color coordinated gray key caps and then also of course the keyboard is fully back lid with plenty of brightness to spare. That’s by design a lot of laptops prefer not to have it whether you want or not going to come down to your preference honestly speaking.
Built in fingerprint sensor which doubles as the power button
Above the keyboard you do have this pseudo looking speaker Grill it’s actually not a speaker Grill rather it’s a passive cooling vent, we’ll talk more about that in the thermal section moving over to the hinges themselves. There’s not a lot of wobble it seems to be well T and calibrated. Now as far as display fitting goes you do have a plastic ENC casing all around given this is not an XPS that’s under standable however the actual chin at the bottom is quite thick and noticeable. Unfortunately however the side bezels are narrow enough for modern day standards and then as we make our way to the uper side you have a relatively thin forehead. We do have a 100 % SRGB rating which is decent enough for General productivity gaming and even photo and video editing included a quick rundown of the technical specifications.
Display quality isn’t too shabby except for one uncomfortable fact, So things start off nice and smooth with a crisp 2.5 k resolution on that 16 in IPS panel with a 16 by 10 aspect ratio additionally. We have a fluid 120 HZ refresh rate and Then we only get a peak brightness of 300 nits which is not bright enough. For most outdoor settings and glare will overcome your screen despite having a anti glare coating thankfully. At the center of which you have a respectable full HD webcam which does well enough. I should also mention you do have a built in fingerprint sensor which doubles as the power button.
High-end gaming with this machine
As other potential configurations so we have Intel’s core 7 Ultra 155h processor though you can upgrade to a core 9 Ultra processor as well we get 32 GB of DDR 5 memory here which can be configured all the way up to 64 GB additionally. We do have NVidia’s RTX 460 GPU here which a top spec for this model though you can downscale to a RTX 4050. You’re doing them on a discrete program like Photoshop or running them on a web interface like with Canva. It’s going to be a very easy and crisp experience. Even the integrated Intel arc graphics given we have such a powerful configuration here day-to-day activities like surfing the web watching 4K content or you know online banking is going to be a very smooth and Superfluous experience more demanding activities like, Programming and Coding.
When you do the most demanding activities like multi-layer 4K video editing well the good news is that this laptop doesn’t break a sweat that is until it starts thermal throttling so you can have multiple layers you can do color grading. We have on board which means games like Doom Eternal for example can consistently run well above 120 FPS at nearly maxed out settings but then after prolonged periods the frame rate starts dropping quite dramatically, Because there’s just too much heat buildup which we’ll talk about right now with The Thermals this is undoubtedly.
And it’s going to be a great experience but after about 20 to 30 minutes of video editing I started noticing more frequent frame drops because the laptop just starts getting very hot very quickly. You can also do some pretty high-end gaming with this machine thanks to that RTX 40 chip.
The hottest 16-in laptop I’ve reviewed in 2024 I not joking under unrealistic Peak loads this machine can hit a average surface temperature of up to 48° C in the upper third area making it extremely uncomfortable to be near also under a more realistic sustain load you can hit temperatures of around 41° C which while significantly cooler is still a very hot number. You’re at Max RPM levels often with fan noise reaching as high as 59 DB, Which is gaming laptop territory and very audible on a much brighter note upgradeability. Here is very respectable so you do have two slots both of which are upgradeable to a maximum capacity of 64 GB total.
You also have two m. 2 slots for SSD upgrades so one can be upgraded with a 2280 drive while the other can be upgraded with a 223 30 drive. One of which of course is obviously already preoccupied and then you also have a m.2 slot to upgrade your Wi-Fi module to Wi-Fi 7. Firstly the fat on this thing is always on even when you’re just sitting on the desktop, there’s a 50% chance that the fan is going to kick off but, when you do anything more demanding than pretty much being on the desktop. If you want to do that so it’s nice to see that Dell is still offering great upgrade options.
Micro SD card reader on a 16-inch laptop
We do get a nice large 90w hour battery here but because of how demanding the hardware is you can realistically expect a runtime of about 8 hours with General activities that number drops significantly if you’re doing stuff like gaming or video editing the sound system on here isn’t bad. Here’s a quick sound test for reference always moving on feel, I don’t belong time my to move along push myself to be the best with no regret depending on the configuration.
The Inspiron 16 plus you get price ranges from a little less to $1,000 all the way north of $2,000. Now I feel like the Inspiron 16 plus suffers the same fade as its younger 14-inch brother despite me trying to keep them as separate products it’s like Dell does great things and just suddenly drops the ball out of nowhere for example, What gives same thing with The keyboard and trackpad. The keyboard is so well executed mediocre trackpad you have a great crisp display that has an astonishingly low Peak brighten of 350 nits like what happened but the worst crime of it all is that you have such nice respectable Hardware capable of so many things but because The Thermals are so poorly engineered with this device.
you’ve basically got a quad speaker system with two bottom firing speakers and two top firing speakers and you do have a bit of depth, You get a nice modern looking design but then you have a micro SD card reader on a 16-inch laptop, it’s not going to be as good as he likes of the MacBook Air or MacBook Pro but, It is pretty sufficient for what it is. You’re paying for just because of the thermal issues alone now if you’ve had a different experience with your 16 plus or your 14 plus I’d love to hear about it and hopefully
Their Inspiron and Inspiron plus series to the point where I’m almost starting to wonder if Dell just doesn’t care anymore about their Inspiron lineup. I would only recommend this laptop if you get a significant discount off it because, If you don’t you’re actually not going to get the full performance, I am wrong but after all the objective testing, I done I just cannot recommend this laptop at full MSRP pricing.