Dell Inspiron 15R Special Edition (7520)

Dell's Inspiron Special Edition laptops are souped-up versions of the company's popular everyday computing laptop line, offering Ivy Bridge technology, discrete graphics, and a somewhat hipper look. The Dell Inspiron 15R Special Edition (7520) ($1099.99 direct) is equipped with a Core i7 CPU, switchable AMD Radeon graphics, and a speedy mSATA drive that boosts performance. It also comes with a Blu-ray drive, which complements the striking 15.6-inch full HD display. You won't get a full days' worth of battery life from the Inspiron 15R Special Edition and its graphics performance, while good, can't match that of our current Editors' Choice, the Lenovo IdeaPad Y580 , but it is a strong media laptop just the same.

Design and Features
A black anodized aluminum lid with a tight honeycomb textured pattern distinguishes the Inspiron 15R Special Edition from the standard Dell Inspiron 15R , but it retains the same silver trim and smooth rounded corners. A shiny Dell logo is positioned in the center of the lid.

The chassis measures 1.3 inches thick and weighs 6.1 pounds, making it a shade heavier than the 5.3-pound Sony VAIO E15 (SVE15116FXS) but on par with the Lenovo Y580. Granted, six pounds is not exactly back-breaking, but compared with today's ultrabook laptops it is monstrous and your shoulder will feel its presence. On the plus side, build quality feels solid and durable.

The Inspiron 15R's screen measures 15.6 inches and has a 1,920-by-1,080 resolution, which means it can display 1080p, or full HD, content. The screen has a matte coating that is glare resistant and non-reflective. Color quality was outstanding and image detail was superb while watching the BBC's Planet Earth on Blu-ray. There was some loss of color fidelity when viewed from an extreme angle but the picture was still quite watchable. The two-watt Skullcandy speakers embedded in the base are loud but a bit too trebly. Missing is the three-watt subwoofer found on the Dell Inspiron 17R Special Edition .

The keyboard deck, which is done up in the same textured finish as the lid, contains a comfortable full size chiclet-style keyboard and a recessed touchpad with a smooth surface. The keyboard doesn't have a number pad but it is backlit for nighttime typing. The touchpad is centered in the middle of the deck and is responsive, as are the two silent mouse buttons. As with the 17R Special Edition, there are three Dashboard keys at the top of the deck that when pressed launch the Dell Audio utility and the Windows Mobility Center, while the third key is user programmable.

The Inspiron 15R Special Edition is loaded with features. You get four USB 3.0 ports, VGA and HDMI video outputs, headphone and microphone jacks, a 7-in-1 card reader, 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios, and WiDi (wireless display) capabilities, which requires a transmitter such as Netgear's Push2TV to send HDMI video to an HDTV or any other compatible external display. There's also a Blu-ray/DVD combo drive, a feature that was missing on the Dell 17R Special Edition.

A 1TB 5,400rpm hard drive provides plenty of storage for all of your media files and the 32GB mSATA drive provides speedy access to frequently used data. Windows 7 Home Premium, Dell Stage media software, and Dell DataSafe backup software are preinstalled along with a few useful apps such as Dell Webcam and Skype. Unfortunately you also get a few not so useful apps in the form of trailware and gameware.

Performance
The Inspiron 15R Special Edition serves up impressive productivity and multimedia performance, thanks to a potent combination of components including Intel's third generation Core i7-3612QM processor (2.10 GHz), 8GB of system memory, and the aforementioned mSATA drive. Its PCMark7 score of 3658 eclipsed the IdeaPad Y580 by more than 750 points and the HP Envy 17 (2012) by almost 1600 points. The 15R's lofty PCMark7 comes by way of the mSATA drive, which is known to improve performance on this particular test.

Scores from the Cinebench R11.5 benchmark test are not as skewed; the Inspiron 15R Special Edition's score of 5.56 lagged the Lenovo Y580 (6.22) and the Dell 17R Special Edition (6.15) but trounced the second generation Core i5-based Toshiba Qosmio X775-Q7170 (2.70).

The 15R Special Edition's Photoshop CS5 (3:34) and Handbrake (1:24) encoding scores are evidence that it can handle your multimedia tasks with relative ease and are right in line with the Y580 and the 17R Special Edition.

Switchable graphics are supplied by a discrete AMD Radeon HD 7730M GPU and the integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 circuitry. The Radeon engine produced solid 3DMark06 scores of 11,185 (1,024-by-768) and 7,897 (1,920-by-1,080) but could not match the Y580's scores of 15,486 (1,024-by-768) and 12,720 (1,920-by-1,080). Results were similar on our Lost Planet 2 DX9 and Crysis DX10 gaming tests; neither laptop hit the 30 fps mark on the high quality tests but the Y580 produced much higher frame rates on the medium quality tests.

The Inspiron 15R Special Edition had trouble completing the MobileMark 2007 battery benchmark test, so we used our comparable 10-hour DVD rundown test to test the 48WHr battery. It lasted 3 hours 10 minutes, which is almost an hour longer than the 2:20 of the Dell Inspiron 17R Special Edition using the same anecdotal test.

The Dell Inspiron 15R Special Edition has a lot going for it. For a little over $1K you get impressive productivity performance, switchable graphics, and a first rate HD display. The addition of a Blu-ray drive sweetens the deal. Its battery life isn't newsworthy but it isn't terrible either, and you can always delete the preinstalled bloatware if it bothers you. That said, as good as the Inspiron 15R's graphics performance is, it can't match the overall graphics power of our reigning Editors' Choice, the Lenovo IdeaPad Y580.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS:

COMPARISON TABLE
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