*NEW* 2015 Dell Inspiron 15 - 7559, i7 6700HQ/GTX960M owners thread

Soldato
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Anyone else got this sweet machine? I was looking for a "gaming" laptop for ages to replace my 3 year old Samsung. Had resigned myself to spending £1k plus and dealing with a clunky, ugly machine. Problem is, I am not the gamer I once was and maximum FPS/details aren't really top of my list, so was worried it would be a waste.

Enter the Inspiron 15 7559. Scouring the net for ideas, this machine stood out for several reasons, chiefly being the price, which seems like a bargain.

Spec:
i7 6700HQ, 8GB RAM (singe 8GB DDR3L stick included, spare slot), 1TB + 8GB hybrid drive (not all that terrible!), GTX 960M 4GB, FHD screen (but with panel lottery :(), sub woofer (mostly useless), 3 x USB3 (excellent for charging stuff!, usual HDMI/ethernet/SD card reader, backlit KB, no optical!

List price is £749 but can easily be had for ~£700, with a little wrangling or purchase from a third party seller.

Looks wise, this thing is, IMO, a cut above the crowd in this bracket of performance. You can keep the gimmicky bling of typical "gaming" laptops, this machine looks quite professional. The only giveaways are the mean looking vents and red accents to the trim/heatsinks. Even the backlit keyboard is nice and subtle.

Haven't really done any gaming (thanks, Christmas :mad:) but from a very brief play around with Far Cry 3, BF3 and Heaven 4.0, it seams to munch the kind of games I like with good settings and frame rate. Battery life when pootling about Windows and browsing seems excellent, I've been using it for 3 hours or so today and it's reporting 3 more hours in the tank. Not run it down fully yet though.

After a bit of general use, my biggest bug bear with this machine is the touch pad and panel lottery. The pad is very big, Apple style big, but it's a bit inconsistent with sensitivity and the built in buttons are a bit pants. No probs for gaming, as I use a BT mouse, but still an annoyance in Windows. Perhaps a later driver will help this, we'll see. Second annoyance with the model would be the panel lottery. Dell seems to be shipping units with one of two panels, an LG one which is lovely and a BOE one which, from posts on notebookreview, varies from meh to awful. I lucked out for a change and got an excellent looking LGD04B9.

I know one other user here has one on the way (mine was a week+ earlier than expected!) so I thought a thread would be in order to discuss model specific issues and whatnot
 
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I'm typing this on mine :D

All good points you made! I have the BOE display and in my opinion its not that bad. It could be a little brighter but if you use the ICC profile in this review the colours are fine.

http://www.gaminglaptopsjunky.com/dell-inspiron-15-7559-review/

I have the same spec as you, paid £699 with a bit of haggling with an online sales person and then added an m.2 Samsung evo 850 250gb. I also added another 4GB SODIMM (bro gave it to me) which bought it up to 12GB.

I'm not a huge fan of the track pad, it does work and multi gestures work as well but as you say its a bit hit and miss at times.

Gaming wise I havent done a lot on it yet but for the things I have tested it does a great job. Diablo 3 = 100fps in town maxed settings at 1080p, Grim Dawn = 72fps maxed settings at 1080p. There are plenty of gameplay vids on youtube if you search for "inspiron 15 7559" and filter on upload date. Even GTA5 can be set to high and maintain 50+fps at 1080p

It's very quiet and the battery is 6+ hours for general browsing and video watching etc. Doesnt get hot even used on top of a duvet in bed!

The keys are a bit small with not much travel, but im getting used to it now.

It looks good, has a nice finish and doesnt look like a "gaming" laptop.

I had a few niggles at first with "driver stopped responding" for the on board video but updated all the drivers and bios which seems to have sorted it.

I had a few quick tests with undervolting the cpu to -75 in XTU and also +135mhz on the gpu through afterburner, which ran heaven fine. It doesnt seem to get hot anyway but always nice to save a bit of juice.

I was all set to spend a couple of grand on a new gaming laptop until I saw this and I think its money well spent. I have a beefy desktop PC and this is more for when im working away and fancy some gaming in a hotel room etc.
 
Soldato
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This is the laptop I'm looking to get but am not sure I want to wait for Dell delivery times.
I have seen it elsewhere (not ebay) for £699

Is it worth the wait buying it from Dell directly or would I get the same after care (downloading software from Dell website etc) if I bought it from a laptop etailer?
 
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I want to buy this laptop but its frustrating how it is only available with the red accents. In the US you can get it all in black/grey!

I hate red and that is honestly the only thing stopping me buy this laptop, ridiculous I know!
 
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They are more of a maroon colour if that's any consolation. There's a line around the track pad and the back vent under the monitor when you have the laptop open.
 
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Just ordered this for £699 delivered, next day DPD delivery from a store that allows me to save on laptops.

2 Questions:

Which SSD:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sams...state-drive-mzhpv128hdgm-00000-hd-206-sa.html

or

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sams...-solid-state-drive-mz-n5e120bw-hd-202-sa.html

In other words, does it benefit from the PCI-E interface or is it SATA interface on the M2 port?

And

Which 8GB stick do I get to match the current 8GB it has?
I'd like 16GB dual channel if possible.
 
Soldato
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With regards to the RAM, mine came with Micron DDR3L-1600 / PC12800

M2 slots are just breakouts for SATA controllers IIRC, I'd go with the 128GB @ £65 personally, Well, actually I am holding off for a nice 256GB M2 card, maybe next month. Nice to have a fast boot SSD and 1TB HDD in a laptop this size
 
Soldato
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I can get another 8GB (albeit different make) for £35

Or I can buy a 16GB dual channel kit for £70, remove the stick that is already in it and sell it on the MM for £25-£30 to someone else who has this laptop. This means 2 owners end up with nice dual channel 16GB kits of ram in their laptop :)

Decisions decisions
 
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Associate
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Second annoyance with the model would be the panel lottery. Dell seems to be shipping units with one of two panels, an LG one which is lovely and a BOE one which, from posts on notebookreview, varies from meh to awful. I lucked out for a change and got an excellent looking LGD04B9.

Panel? Screen?

I wonder if you buy direct from Dell you can request the LG one?
 
Soldato
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You can send it back under DSR as many times as needed until you get the right one... Not ideal but it's been done. Seems the quality of the BOE screen is quite variable, some are quite good, some very yellowy in whites
 
Soldato
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Panel? Screen?

I wonder if you buy direct from Dell you can request the LG one?

I tried asking them and they said I couldn't.
At that point I saw no point in ordering from Dell directly and having to wait till 15th Jan for my laptop when I could get it elsewhere for £699 with DPD next day delivery.

Anyone know the size (dimension) limit of the M2 SSD that fits in this?
 
Associate
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Anyone know the size (dimension) limit of the M2 SSD that fits in this?

It's a 2280 length slot and there is a screw in the laptop ready to hold it down. I put a samsung 850 evo 250gb in mine, cloned over the OS from the existing drive and restarted the laptop, didnt even need to go into the bios as the m.2 slot is port 0. The laptop doesnt support PCIE SSD's so your stuck with m.2 6GB sata. It boots into the Windows 10 login page in around 5 seconds now.
 
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