Dell Inspiron 15 3000: What Real Users Actually Think

I have been using this laptop for the past 4 months and I did not find any major issues with this laptop. As with all laptops, there are minor bugs in the OS but apart from that it is very user-friendly and convenient. I mainly focused on Budget while buying a laptop because I wanted a mid-range performance for a good price. This laptop offers that performance. I code, Develop, Learn courses, Write notes, attend meetings, lots of coding and networking. After all these tasks I don't find any major issues with this computer. If you are a student on budget you can go with this laptop. However, I say this is not a gaming laptop.

Inspiron 3000 are not reliable, I would not recommend getting one.

This is such a common problem on Inspiron. My Inspiron broke down similarly, but it still lasted 3 years, 11 months. I bought another Inspiron this Black Friday haha.

It's worth checking with Dell anyway. Had a complete power failure on my Inspiron. Long out of warranty. Went to Dell support anyway, they told me if I sent it in, they'd fix any issues that were hardware failure rather than user damage. They paid for shipping and fixed everything!

Probably just normal use. It does not take much abuse for these hinges to snap in my experience.

I did! I have few complaints tho. I am using this for remote learning.. 4x a week for 3hour at a time. The first few weeks I can go on MS teams, word and the internet for hours at a time but recently it started to crash on me a few times. I got this laptop for Black Friday. So it has been around 2 months now? I could've gotten an i5 or an i7 but I know I wont be doing any school after march so I can live with it for a few months. As for the materials it is made of cheap plastic so if you wanted something sturdier this is not for you.

I bought an Inspiron 15 3520 i5 1250U 16 GB 256 SSD for about 500 last October from OfficeDepot. Right hinge broke this morning. I've been researching fixes on it and it seems like an extremely common problem with this model and Dells the past 3-5 years. The performance is really good though. Screen refresh is 120 mhz. Battery is horrible though. I'm guessing a repair will be around $200, so I'm tempted to just buy something newer. My previous laptop was a Lenovo I used for 5-6 years without issues.

It's on sale right now at $399 CAD + $20 off with Perkopolis seemed like a good deal for 512GB ssd and 8 GB RAM. What made me purchase was obviously the price and that you CAN upgrade RAM and SSD when needed which no one really mentioned. It's meant for word and excel type and doing taxes so it has more than enough power to handle it. I think for the price it's better than getting something used off of marketplace.

The hinge of this laptop is so bad, mine broke off after a few days of arriving, the battery life is very annoying if you use your laptop a lot.

I've been using a 5593 myself with an i5 1035G1 and have a similar experience. I'm definitely pushing it hard with gaming but it seems to keep up fine if I make compromises. Still wouldn't recommend it to gamers haha. AMD has much more capable integrated graphics these days. It's been about 4 years and the battery life is pretty bad, about an hour on full charge tops. Definitely considering a battery replacement at this point. On the other hand, the rest of the hardware is still holding.

Based on your review, it sounds like a solid choice.

Great review. I would rather go with the Dell Pro or Dell Plus now — the updated new model has better resolution and better battery life.

As a technician, while you are very correct, many consumer grade laptops do not use a single piece backplate for the LCD. This is very intentional — the idea the plates are held by glue or plastic makes it very inexpensive to manufacture.

I just ordered this model with i7/ 16GB Ram/1 TB SSD for $561. I'm very gentle on electronics and the current 12 yr old HP Probook running windows 10 it will be replacing is still mint but the probook wasn't capable of editing go pro video so it was time for new. My usage is general web surfing, email, some light video editing, and futures trading.

When I do research on laptop of this price range, this Inspiron 3505 is the best. During black fridays, the price in Dell Canada is 480+12% tax=540 CAD, that is US$425. Couldn't find a one with 3450/3500U/8/SSD256 under US$500. The only cons with 3505 is its HD/TD non-touch display. So if you need a better display with touch screen, forget this. Otherwise dont hesitate to take it. Its good looking and quality worth the money.

I've had mine for maybe a bit more than a year. It is a piece of work. It's good for gaming, though when I opened it up I noticed it could fit more ram and memory. It's hinges broke off 3 months in. The back cover is cheap plastic. I used it on a soft surface all the time and it still broke everywhere. It's all bendy and I had to replace the charging port and charging cable a bunch of times now. The mousepad refuses to work even after I moved it to its proper place when I noticed it wasn't properly seated.

The specs state that 16 GB RAM is the max, but I put 32 GB in mine and it's recognized.

I have been using it for 3 months. Company laptop. I have a 2012 Asus i7 laptop at home, still using it. To be honest this Dell is rubbish. My 2012 Asus i7 is better than this 3520 Dell. The worst part is the screen resolution. Believe me, when I first opened the laptop, my first thought was whether there was a manufacturing defect. I updated all the drivers and checked everything. There are no errors, the screen resolution can actually tire your eyes.

I just got this laptop in my hands. It is loud fan wise and you CANNOT dock this. However, with the HDMI port and a USB converter, I have VGA to USB and VGA to HDMI, you can use two monitors. Other than the loud fan and the lack of docking capabilities, I do like this laptop so far. It is fast. I'll agree that it is a good budget laptop.

Should have read this before getting this laptop. I pretty much only do gaming on my computers. Got this as it was the cheapest I could get. Big regrets. Nearly all games are EXTREMELY slow and sometimes the up arrow key is unresponsive. The worst problem I have had is that even on light games, after around a few minutes it starts to lag a lot. I am not very happy with this laptop.

The hinge issue is a common terrible design flaw with this computer. Bought this laptop with the same problem but this time it happened after the warranty expired. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY. Purchases like these should last much longer than a couple years.

Dell Inspiron is a piece of crap. Mine is only a year old and has already given major issues. Do not buy from Dell.

One issue I've had with this laptop -- it will very rarely not power on. Even if it is plugged in, there is an issue starting up the computer. What I've had to do, which is silly (but works) is disconnect the battery, hold down the power button for ~30s to drain residual power, then plug the power adapter in and power the PC on as normal, without the battery connected. This should power on the PC. After doing this, reconnect your battery and it will work just fine. Kind of a weird quirk though.

Battery feels cranky. I have the same computer with 32gb ram and 1tb memory. The computer is not the best, can last about four hours, specs say 8hrs. The price paid was $592.63. The computer works fine, bought it more in a gaming way than other. I think my MacBook Pro 2015 lasts better but this computer has the touch screen which I deactivated.

Yeah, check eBay, and you'll see there are many people selling screen cover and hinge replacements. It seems to be a common issue with Dell laptops.

Should be repaired by a technician easily. However, I would avoid Dell Inspiron laptops in general. The build quality is low, especially 3000s and 5000s series ones. Dell Latitude 5000/7000/9000 lines are better.

I borrowed my sister's DELL Inspiron 13 yesterday just to watch a few movies. The moment I opened it, just literally trying to open it, I heard loud cracking noises — it was the hinge breaking apart. I've learned the hard way to stay away from Dell.

Same. Worst laptop I've ever owned.

The hinge mainly breaks from opening the lid anywhere but center, repeatedly. Opening on one side or the other causes much greater force on the opposite side hinge due to flex of the lid, leverage, and the small, weak hinges. They will usually hold up fine if you always open from center, securing the bottom with your other hand, and not too fast.

It happened to me and I got it fixed through warranty and now it happened again. But the warranty has expired.

I had to go and get it fixed at a local repairing shop. The guy charged me like $5.

I had a Dell G3 15 a couple years ago and this happened to me too — all the hinge mounts are just plastic and can't take normal use. I called about having it serviced and they said warranty doesn't cover it, but a quick Google found this was a common issue on the Dell forums. I noticed someone had customer support reach out to them to schedule a repair, so I tried my luck — sure enough customer service set up a repair and it was fixed for free.

I've had this laptop for a year now, and it's great! The gaming actually works well if you have the 16GB RAM. The graphics couldn't run something like Detroit Become Human, but for lighter gaming, or even some medium-load games like The Sims with a bunch of mods, or Minecraft with a bunch of shaders, will work well.

Thanks for explaining. Have you encountered any issues with the hinges? I did a Google search and it seems hinge issues are extremely prevalent with this Dell model.

If the photo editing is light, then yes that should be a good value device. The specs are typical for a budget device but on the higher end of the budget spectrum and full HD is especially good. 250 nits should be ok unless you watch things outside or in bright rooms. RAM should be easily upgradable later if you find it lacking. But you probably won't based on the things you said you'd do.

As a general rule, no matter if it is Dell, HP or Lenovo, stay away from Consumer platforms. They're usually not great in terms of development, firmware and have a much higher failure rate than professional laptops. If you can make the psychological move, it's way more cheaper and secure in terms of potential hardware issues to get a used Latitude like a 54x0 Series or a 74x0 series.

Please don't say that. My warranty expired 2 days ago and the hinge broke right now. I'm broke. Like literally living paycheck to paycheck.

It has a bad quality when it comes to 3D pixels, and only shows a good quality when charging. Such a disappointment.

The first batch of this laptop faced hinge issues — they are more stiff than required. Dell covered this hardware fault in basic warranty. You should have called Dell before warranty expired and asked them to repair.

It has a bad quality when it comes to 3D pixels and only shows a good quality when charging. There are fake laptops nowadays and it's hard to buy a real one without any issues.

Probably can play Genshin on low to medium settings. This laptop is good on most basic tasks that do not require a dedicated GPU. Dell normally uses Latitudes in corporate, not Inspirons.