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Dell Inspiron 11 3158 Review

6.0/10
7.0/10
6.5/10



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The line between laptops and tablets is becoming indistinguishable. There are plenty of options to choose from, right from basic ones to gaming ones to touchscreen laptops. It has not taken a long time for laptop manufacturers to come up with convertible and hybrid laptops. The new Dell Inspiron 11 3158 is one such product. The 2-in-1 feature means this convertible laptop gives you the performance of a conventional laptop and the versatility of a tablet. Today, there are several laptops available, roughly in the Rs. 40,000 price range with good designs and configurations. What makes this laptop different from all the rest? Let us find out if this laptop delivers.

Design and Build

Talking about the design, the outer appearance of the Dell Inspiron 11 3158 looks well-polished with its rounded edges that makes it look stylish. The body is made of a plastic material, which feels solid. It weighs 1.39kg, which makes it perfect for those travelling often. The weight of the laptop is only noticeable when you fold it and hold it in one hand like a tablet.

The Dell Inspiron 11 (3158) 2-in-1 has an 11.6-inch HD IPS display. It is disappointing to see a thick glass bezel covering more than an inch of the screen. The touchscreen is smooth and accurate. The webcam at the top that lets you click photos and record videos. Below the screen is a small Windows button that takes you to the Start menu. This is useful when you are using this laptop in a tablet mode and you don't have access to the keyboard. The power button is too placed on the edge for easy access.

People who type a lot will appreciate the keyboard of the Dell Inspiron 11 3158. The keyboard is wide and the keys are sufficiently spaced. The keys are large, smooth and responsive. Unlike other keyboards, this one produces little sound while typing. The actual downside is the absence of the numeric keypad, but that does not matter a lot when it comes to convertible laptops. The small strips beside the keyboard are made-up of a synthetic material, meant to protect the screen and keyboard.

The touchpad is smooth and wide, but we preferred using the touch screen more than a touchpad. The left and right-click buttons of the touchpad are both integrated, and give a satisfying click. The most important feature of any convertible laptop is its hinge design. The Dell Inspiron 11 (3158) lets you switch between a tablet, tent and laptop mode, all made possible thanks to its 360-degree double-hinge feature. The hinge is strong and does its job perfectly fine. You don’t have to apply pressure while rotating it into different modes. The double hinge feature is undoubtedly durable, but it has added some thickness to the laptop which makes it little bulky to use it as a tablet all the time.

For connectivity, Dell has offered plenty of options. There are two USB ports, an HDMI port and a headphone jack on the left side, while there is one USB port and a multi-media card reader on the right. The speakers which are placed on the side, unlike traditional laptops to adapt to its changing format.


7.0/10

Features

The Dell Inspiron 11 3158 is powered by a 6th generation Intel Core i3-6100U processor, clocked at 2.3GHz. This is not a high-end processor, but it should work fine for regular use. The laptop is also set up with 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive, so there’s nothing extraordinary about it. There are several other laptops available with higher specifications within the price range of Rs. 40,000, or even lower. It runs an integrated Intel Graphics 520, which should run some basic games and graphic-intensive software easily. We’ll find out when we run the benchmarks a little later.

The 11.6-inch edge-to-edge touch display has a resolution of 1366 x 768. The display does not appear impressive. The viewing angles are good but the screen looks dull, even at full brightness. Overall, the screen is good for web browsing, watching movies, sending mails or reading books. No matter whether you are making video calls or listening to music, the speakers powered by Waves MaxxAudio sound clear and loud.

The connectivity options of this laptop are more or less the same as most traditional laptops. Out of the three USB ports, two are USB 3.0 that should deliver fast read and write speeds. In terms of wireless connectivity, it supports Wi-Fi 802.11n and Bluetooth 4.0. Besides this, there is one HDMI port and a multi-media card reader while the optical drive is missing. This should not be a problem because most of the software and games are now available online. The Dell Inspiron 11 3158 laptop comes with a non-removable battery, which according to Dell lasts for 7 hours. We will run a test later to gauge the real-world performance. This is good when you are travelling or going for long meetings.


6.0/10

Performance

To check the performance of the Dell Inspiron 11 3158, we ran a couple of benchmarks. The 3DMark benchmark looks at all the subsystems, with emphasis on the graphics performance. It earned a score of 1156 in that test, which is average. We also ran the Street Fighter IV gaming benchmark tool from Capcom, which recorded a score of 10535. The overall gaming scores of this laptop is decent. Besides these, we also ran CrystalDiskMark benchmark to test the read and write speeds of the hard drive. The scores we recorded for sequential read and write speeds were 97.73 MB/s and 92.04 MB/s respectively, which is pretty decent. Slightly older games like DOTA2 and CSGO should run just fine, but latest titles will see average performance. For running everyday browsers and productivity software though, this laptop is still good.

The boot-up time of the laptop was approximately 20 seconds and that’s good. We had two browsers running, music playing in the background and Handbrake, the video encoding software running at the same time. We found that switching between them was not an issue. We also tried playing several HD videos on YouTube and the sound delivered was clear and loud. The audio output of this laptop is decent. You don’t need to connect any external speakers to enjoy your favourite music, movies or TV shows. There was no stuttering visible.

 

The 11.6-inch screen looks vibrant. Colors look real and images appeared sharp, with fine details. The screen is reflective so using this laptop in well-lit places can be irritating at times. We had no trouble using the touch screen; it is accurate and responsive too. We also tested the battery performance with the help of Battery Eater tool, which renders a 3d model on screen till the battery exhausts. This is more than what would typically be used in most situations, but it’s a good indicator. We use this same test for other laptops to gauge their battery performance. The non-removable battery lasted for 2 hours and 26 minutes, with all power-saving options disabled. This may differ based on your usage patterns.


7.0/10

Verdict

Convertible laptops are becoming popular these days. Based on our tests of other laptops, the performance of the Dell Inspiron 11 (3158) is pretty good. The design of the laptop hasn’t changed much from older generations. This laptop can perform multiple tasks and it’s not only productivity software, but games as well. The touchscreen feature can be handy for teaching younger users painting or for playing touch games. Office going users will find it easy to give presentations, using the touchscreen. All-in-all, it’s one of the more affordable, actually usable touchscreen laptops around that you should consider.


6.5/10