Dell G15 Ryzen Edition review: a well-balanced laptop at a very attractive price

Data sheet Design Screen Software Performance Autonomy Price and availability ConclusionCommentsView product sheetAvailable at €1399

Well aware that all players can not necessarily afford an Alienware computer, Dell offers a more attractive alternative than in the past by bringing renewal to its "G" range. The Dell G15 takes on the challenge; a laptop that comes in both Intel and AMD versions and which intends to make a name for itself in the affordable gaming PC segment.

“Affordable” and “attractive” are the two words that the Dell teams had to keep in mind when designing this new laptop. A good thing because if we regularly review laptops that stand out for their performance (and their high prices), we are still looking to expand our opinions on the models that stand out, this time, by their price positioning, at the image of the Asus TUF Gaming A15.

Dell G15 Ryzen EditionDell G15 5515 Datasheet

The PC was lent by Dell for this test.

It is the Dell G15 Ryzen Edition (5515) that is the subject of our test today. A model equipped with a Ryzen 7 5800H processor and an RTX 3060 with a maximum TGP of 125 W, a configuration to which is added a 120 Hz Full HD screen, 16 GB of DDR4, and a 512 GB NVMe SSD Several configurations are available on the official Dell website, some even more affordable, notably equipped with RTX 3050 and Ryzen 5 5600H or Intel Core i5-10500H processors.

Dell G15 Ryzen EditionDesign

The design and conception of a laptop are crucial elements for a product that intends to stand out through its price positioning. Dell had to make choices to maintain a floor price and it is no surprise that we find a chassis made entirely of plastic.

The set is however perfectly assembled and offers a good feeling of solidity. The plastics seem relatively dense, moreover the Dell G15 is quite imposing, especially with its thick rear outgrowth. With its almost 2.6 kg and its bulky 240 W charger, it is not the best solution for nomads.

We find design elements borrowed from the Alienware m15 R5, in particular with similar curves, but also at the level of the central hinge which offers excellent stability to the screen and which makes opening with one hand possible. The air vents above the keyboard, the rear protrusion, or the LED placed on the power cord are other unmistakable signs that show us that Dell is really moving away from its G5 with for the idea of ​​putting more consistency between this “Gaming” range and its Alienware laptops.

Overall, design and aesthetics are appreciable despite the exclusive use of plastics. This one also has a rather interesting property since it does not retain any fingerprints, on the other hand the surface is rough to the touch, which may cause, for some, an unpleasant sensation at the level of the wrist rest. .

Finally, the Phantom Gray color of this Ryzen Edition is quite original with this gray dress speckled with small blue shards, it looks a lot like the tiles in my bathroom, but Dell can't help it. Joking aside, this color changes from what we are used to seeing with laptops which are mostly black.

Keyboard and touchpad

On the keyboard side, however, there is no question of getting closer to the m15 R5 here. We take advantage of a very basic keyboard, like that of the G5, which only leaves a feeling that is just right for gaming. The keys have a very short stroke which will be ideal for typing text, but not especially for gaming. Fortunately, their dimensions are not too narrow, with the exception of some such as the "enter" key which is split in two, or the Ctrl, Shift and Lock keys. Shift which would gain in efficiency by taking up a little more space.

The keyboard backlight acknowledges the absence of RGB. It adjusts on three levels and is efficient enough to use the keyboard in all circumstances. The touchpad is far too small for our taste and its surface is not the most qualitative in terms of sliding. It is nevertheless precise and responsive, nothing exceptional.

webcam and audio

Dell has chosen to integrate a webcam on this laptop, however ignoring any biometric solution. With a simple 720p sensor, this camera will do just fine for regular use. We often insist on this point, but in an era where telecommuting is becoming more and more important, manufacturers would do well to look into the effectiveness of their laptop's audio and video. Anyway, we can always argue that this is not the range of this Dell G15, but in this case the removal of the webcam could have served the immersion by considerably reducing the upper border of the screen.

On the audio side, the experience is frankly disappointing, but this is not a surprise. At this price, manufacturers rarely make efforts on the audio section of their laptop. The problem with the G15's speakers is above all that they are not ideally positioned. The sound seems cavernous, almost muffled, it saturates when you increase the volume a little and offers a very sad rendering when it comes to launching our favorite playlists. In short, fortunately the combo jack and offers a good listening and communication experience.

The connection

Nothing really striking at the level of the connectors. Dell provided the bare necessities, the essentials, with an Ethernet port and a combo jack on the left side and two USB 2.0 ports on the right. The rest is located on the back, with a USB 3.2 port, a USB-C socket, an HDMI 2.0 connector, and the power connector. At least the power cable doesn't get in the way, as is often the case on other PCs.

Dell G15 Ryzen EditionA screen that lacks pep and accuracy

Our test unit is equipped with a 15″ IPS panel manufactured by Chi Mei (reference CMN1522). It is this same Full HD 120 Hz panel that equips the entire new G15 range. Apart from its limited, but sufficient, refresh rate compared to other gaming computers, this screen shows a lot of small weaknesses which, taken together, result in a less than optimal experience.

Let's start first with its qualities, because it is not devoid of them. We benefit from a good level of black, measured at 0.192 cd / m² when the light intensity is adjusted to its maximum value. This results in excellent contrast for an IPS panel with a ratio of 1445:1. The maximum brightness of the screen is however not very high, with 277 cd/m². The anti-reflective coating is however effective enough to have good visibility indoors.

The color temperature, like the gray levels, is also not too bad and close enough to the reference value, with 6,343 K. The gamma curve, on the other hand, shows a large irregularity, while the colorimetry is not not really faithful with an average delta E measured with a value of 3.9 and (very) large chromatic drifts on certain shades.

The most palpable disappointment, however, comes from the colorimetric coverage. The Dell G15's display only covers 63.1% of the sRGB space, which is among the lowest among the gaming laptops we've tested this year. To top it off, you can't take advantage of G-Sync with this 120 Hz screen.

Dell G15 Ryzen EditionSoftware

Low price often means partnerships and promotional offers, in a word: bloatware. The Dell G15 thus arrives with McAfee antivirus and the “exclusive” Dropbox offer for Dell customers.

Alongside this, Dell offers us a series of utilities that are only rarely useful: Dell Customer Connect, Dell Digital Delivery, Dell Mobile Connect, Dell Power Manager, or Dell Update and My Dell. It's a lot, and we finally wonder why not combine all the functions offered within these utilities in a single software.

Dell G15 Ryzen EditionPerformance

This is one of the most interesting configurations of the G15 range sent to us by Dell for this test. It is equipped with a Ryzen 7 5800H processor with its 8 cores and 16 threads, a clock frequency between 3.2 and 4.4 GHz and a TDP of 45 W. PL1 and PL2 are respectively adjusted to 54 and 65 W. This is a CPU found in a lot of competing laptops, like the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro for example.

Under Cinebench R23, we see that the performance of this chip is significantly down in this configuration compared to other models that we have tested. We obtain a very good score in single-core with 1,397 points, but more limited performance in multi-core with 10,792 points, which remains below the Asus TUF Gaming A15 and... the Alienware m15 R5, both equipped with this same chip. However, these scores remain better than those of many configurations powered by an Intel processor, in particular the Core i9-10980HK which equips the Gigabyte AERO 15 YC or the Alienware m15 R4.

With PCMark 10's Modern Office benchmark, we get a score of 6,359 points. This is a good result which shows that this PC will be comfortable performing more demanding tasks than simple office activities. By way of comparison, we were getting similar scores on significantly more expensive configurations like the MSI GE76 Raider or the Razer Blade 15 Advanced.

Storage can probably be part of the regrets on our test copy. The 512GB NVMe SSD only offers an effective storage of 454GB, which is a bit light at present to install several "big" games. Sequential read speeds are decent at 3 GB/s, but only 1 GB/s in sequential write.

In-game performance

The graphics card that is responsible for propelling this Dell G15 5515 is none other than an RTX 3060 whose basic TGP is set at 115 W, a value which rises to 125 W taking into account the Dynamic Boost 2.0. The promises are attractive on paper since it is a question here of having the lowest possible bill while maintaining honorable performance in game, something that we have been able to verify using our benchmarks.

3D Mark

As with the other machines, we run 3D Mark's beefiest benchmark first, namely Time Spy Extreme. Without too much surprise, the Dell G15 5515 comes last in our table, logical since it is only the second laptop with an RTX 3060 to arrive on our desk. With a score of 3,809 points, it is just behind the Alienware m15 R5 which is however equipped with the same graphics card, also adjusted with a basic TGP of 115 W. The difference is however marginal to see a will actual Dell to limit its G15 compared to this m15 R5. Moreover, the graphics scores of the other benchmarks are almost identical between these two laptops, but it is true that the Alienware is ahead (by a few small points) each time.

Below, the different scores obtained with 3D Mark show us that we are dealing with a machine that has good potential with an RTX 3060 which certainly shows limits, but which offers a good level of performance in a configuration at this price. However, it is the ray tracing performance that marks the most difference compared to more powerful graphics cards.

Apex Legends

The G15 has no problem with Respawn's signature battle royale. By adjusting all the graphics parameters to the highest level, the game runs on average at 140 fps, so we easily surpass the potential of the panel, limited to 120 Hz.

Red Dead Redemption 2

On the Rockstar Games title, the G15 keeps pace with an average of 58 fps in ultra. That's a little more than what the Alienware m15 R5 offered us, but it's still below most configurations we've tested with Full HD definition. Anyway, the fateful bar of 60 fps is almost reached.

Benchmarks in games with Ray Tracing

control

The gaming experience is excellent on Control. We have an average of 84 fps in ultra, this drops to 48 fps when ray tracing is activated, but rises to 78 fps by adding DLSS.

Watch Dogs: Legion

We see once again that the management of ray tracing is not the strong point of this G15 with Watch Dogs: Legion. The game's benchmark shows us an average of 63 fps with the "very high" graphics preset, and only 37 fps once we activate ray tracing in ultra. With DLSS, the framerate goes up to 47 fps. It will be necessary to play on the quality of the ray tracing and the level of scaling of DLSS to reach 60 fps.

Heat dissipation and noise

At first glance, we had a little trouble understanding how the ventilation of this Dell G15 works. Finally, this is a big difference compared to Alienware products: we don't have our hands on much! It is therefore not possible to adjust the rotation speed of the fans, and there is no "boost" mode either, as on MSI computers for example, where the ventilation will activate at full speed. Only the Fn + F9 shortcut will allow us to activate the "performance" mode of the PC, after installing the Alienware Command Center software. Unfortunately, we do not benefit from almost any functionality with this software which remains logically reserved for Alienware.

The main thing, however, is to have a properly cooled PC, and this is the case with the Dell G15. The heat is perfectly evacuated thanks to the two fans, and even if it is surprising not to see the heat pipes when the chassis is opened, the heating remains limited and only rarely extends to the keyboard.

The processor sometimes reaches temperature peaks around 90 / 92 ° C during heavy loads, and we occasionally observe throttling with processor frequencies which will come to stabilize around 3.6 GHz. However, on the whole, the performance in terms of heat dissipation is good, and we appreciate the great discretion of this system. The ventilation is indeed heard only during heavy loads and is almost inaudible during light office use.

Dell G15 Ryzen EditionAutonomy

In addition to the real 240 W brick as a charger, it is pleasant to note that the Dell G15 is making great efforts in terms of autonomy. Admittedly, this is a PC whose use will be mainly sedentary due to its lack of compactness, but it has enough juice in its bowels to last a whole day's work, and even more depending on usage.

Using PCMark 10, we were able to rate the battery life at 09 hours and 16 minutes, while our configuration scores a performance index of 5,794 points.

Dell G15 Ryzen EditionPricing and Availability of the Dell G15 5515 Ryzen Edition

The Dell G15 5515 Ryzen Edition is displayed with a price of € 1,299 on the manufacturer's official store, for the configuration tested here. You will get a little more in terms of storage by investing an additional €100, and a little less in terms of performance by starting on a model equipped with a Ryzen 5 processor and an RTX 3050 or 3050 Ti, necessarily less attractive references. but whose price falls below the 1,000 € mark.