I found the Inspiron’s 15.6-inch, 1366 x 768 display to be a little lackluster. The typically colorful Windows 8.1 Start menu looked somewhat pale, and the blue orbs in the laptop’s default background looked pixelated.
The trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens was watchable on the Inspiron, but not stunning. Larger action scenes such as a TIE Fighter-Millennium Falcon dogfight looked crisp enough to be entertaining, but character close-ups revealed the screen’s lack of detail.
The Inspiron also underwhelmed in terms of brightness. The laptop registered 167 nits on our brightness test, a score that pales compared to the Lenovo G50( 238 nits), the Acer Aspire E5( 230 nits) and the 192-nit average of other budget notebooks we recently tested.
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The notebook’s stereo speakers look tiny, but they were more than powerful enough to fill a small meeting room with music. When jamming The Gaslight Anthem’s Get Hurt, Brian Fallon’s soulful croon came through clearly, as did the somber guitar plucks behind him. My only complaints were the weak bass, and the occasional muddiness that I heard when the song’s powerful chorus kicked in at max volume.