Dell Inspiron 14 5420 14 inch Student Laptop - 2 2K Display Intel Core i7-1255U 16GB DDR4 RAM

Bought "Used Good" from Amazon Warehouse. Other than the box being a little rumpled the laptop is just like new, with no marks on body or screen. Laptop started up with fresh install of Windows, with requests to connect to WiFi and update software, which took a while. Beautiful screen and all apps run perfectly. One notable feature is the ease to upgrade the NVMe M.2 SSD and the RAM. Only 7 screws hold on the bottom (2 rear screws are captive and help remove the bottom). Several YT videos show removal. I replaced the 512GB SSD with a 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus (also "Used" from Amazon Warehouse). Prior to replacing the SSD I downloaded the Samsung Migration Software and installed the 2TB drive in a FIDECO NVME USB Enclosure (any of dozens of similar units by other names will work). The Samsung software transfers the entire contents of the internal drive (bit-by-bit) onto the Samsung SSD in the enclosure, so it is an exact duplicate, but with larger capacity. After replacing the internal SSD with the 2TB SSD the laptop booted right up exactly as before. The original drive with all software can be saved as a backup. I also replaced the two 8GB RAM modules with two Crucial 32GB DDR4 3200MHz modules. Yes, this little laptop has two RAM modules and accepts up to 64GB of RAM! This may be overkill for most users but is useful for running some computational software in physics and engineering. Most laptops, even larger ones, have RAM soldered in so RAM upgrading is impossible. Regarding gaming, I have not tried that yet, but other reviewers have had mixed success do to the relatively small RAM in the onboard graphics card. Read more

This is a nice machine. Windows 11 is awful but the machine is one of the best Intel, Windows laptops I've ever purchased. ...and I've purchased nearly a hundred of them (as a former IT geek). There was a time when Dell make complete junk. This is not that. It is a MacBook? No. But it's rather nice. Read more

Very Reliable, once you reinstall windows otherwise you'd find yourself experiencing audio issues with the audio, however to resolve this just reinstall windows using a fresh copy or Dell's recovery partition and you would be fine.. I assume the drivers included in the factory image has a bug that cannot be resolved.. Read more

The battery holds a charge for so much longer than my old laptop and works really fast even with several tabs open Read more

Don’t waste your money and your time. Take some pictures as a proof in case of returning(when you receive and when you return). I bought a used-good condition Dell laptop, it had problems and reboot alot by itself while I was working on it. Then I returned that but the seller never refunded me, because they said I sent a wrong item which I swear to god I returned everything as it was delivered, so they said they disposed the item. Now I lost my money, and I lost the defective item that I bought Read more

I was intentionally taking longer with this one because it is priced over $1,100 and I wanted to really be thorough about using it and making sure everything about it is worth the price. At this amount of money, it is competing directly with the 13" MacBook Pro with the M1 chip. And while that has been on the market for a while, it has aged incredibly well and is still the laptop to beat around the $1200 mark, since it is often sold below the MSRP of $1,300. I am going to start with the screen, since that is what you will be staring at all the time. Dell used a 1440pish resolution (2240x1400) and it does look beautiful. Unlike some of the cheaper Inspiron SKUs, this screen is 100% sRGB and has a higher brightness at 300 nits. It also has a low blue light rating from TUV, it really is a great screen, and I don't have many complaints about it, but I do wanna mention that MacBooks have a peak brightness of 500 nits and Windows laptops in that price range do need to step it up. I love that the bezels are thin, it makes the laptop look and feel really contemporary. The lid and the keyboard deck and sides are made of metal, aluminum alloy (I think). And the Dell logo is engraved into the lid, which is not the case with the cheaper Ryzen version of this laptop that is being sold on Amazon alongside this Intel model. The keyboard is backlit, and it has a fingerprint scanner in the top right-hand corner of the keyboard that doubles as the power button. As long as you follow the directions when you are enrolling your fingerprint, you will find it to be very accurate. The trackpad is one of the things that prevents me from giving this laptop 5 stars, it's serviceable most of the time but it's not as good as it should be for the price. One thing is the diving board design, only allowing it to be clicked on the bottom half or so. I have experienced issues where it will low-key freak out and act strangely, almost like it has a secondary function that got triggered somehow. The CPU you get with this laptop is a 12th gen Core i7, this is using their new architecture where there are performance cores (x2) and efficiency cores (x8). Only the P cores support hyper threading, so you end up with 10 cores/12 threads. 16GB of 3200MHz DDR4 is installed, but this laptop can support up to 32GB and it can support faster memory, up to 4800MHz. There is also a dedicated GPU, the Nvidia GeForce MX570 with 2GB of GDDR6. The port selection is good, you get HDMI, 2x USB A, and 1x USB C that supports 3.2 gen 2x2 data transfer speeds, which is 20Gigabits per second (half the speed of Thunderbolt 4). The USB C port also supports Power Delivery charging and DisplayPort alternate mode, but I suggest using the included wall charger. I kept getting annoying notifications, even when using a PD charger that supported the proper amount of power. For performance, the computer does really well with any kind of task, you can even play some serious games, however you shouldn't expect more than 720p/30-45 fps. And some games will just crash if the graphical settings are too high. The biggest problems is that 2GB of VRAM is just not enough, if it had 4GB this thing would be on par with a 1650. I think that it is mostly to help with design and video production workflows, more than being intended for gaming. So please, don't buy this thinking you will be able to play games as well as someone with a gaming laptop. You could get one for this price, but this is NOT it. Pros+ Good performance with the i7 and 16GB of RAM Has Intel (AX211NGW) WiFi 6/6e connectivity (unlike some of the cheaper 2022 Inspirons that use a Mediatek card) Above average display, with vivid colors, good contrast ratio, and decent brightness Durable, metal on the lid and keyboard deck Fast 3.2 gen 2x2 USB C Port that supports power, 20Gbps data transfer, and video output Fingerprint scanner for convenient unlocking Sliding webcam cover for easy privacy Cons- The trackpad could be better The MX570 doesn't really have enough video memory to allow for decent gaming Battery life is decent (6-8 hours), but it could be better but it depends on screen brightness and what you are using the computer for during that time (it’s possible to get up to 10-12 hours of mixed usage with low brightness) Update: I was incorrect about the 4800MHz DDR5 support, there may be a SKU of this laptop that ships with DDR5 because it does list DDR5 as one of the supported types of RAM in Dell’s official manual. I tried installing a mobile stick of 4800MHz (DDR5) and the SO-DIMM would not physically fit into the socket on the board. The notch in the middle of the pins (on the memory module) is in slightly different places with DDR4 vs DDR5. Read more

This is a great laptop here. The specs on this are great and for a reasonable price. My only complaint is the fingerprint reader. It needs an update or something, I can't even get it to complete the setup. Seems rather small.. Read more

I was so excited l had bought this laptop for all it's features. 5 days later it started rebooting itself out of sudden while l was doing some office work. It did it 2 times, l called customer service they connected remotely and did some updates. That did not help at all. It continued rebooting so l decided to just send it back to Amazon. No time for that's when you depend on a laptop to work from home. Read more