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Dell Inspiron 13 7000 2-in-1

Dell Inspiron 13 7000 Review – This is not the first Inspiron 13 7000 2-in-1 we’ve seen from Dell — we looked at an identically named unit before (Dell Inspiron 15 5000 2-in-1 and Dell Inspiron 13 5000 2-in-1). Compare this 2016 edition with that earlier model and you’ll find that the price has jumped up a couple of hundred dollars, with the most significant changes being new 6th-gen Intel parts — specifically a new CPU and GPU. At this $1,900 price, that includes a dual-core Core i7 processor, along with Windows 10, 8GB of memory and a 256GB SSD.

Dell’s dropped the stubby and not particularly-comfortable stylus with this new model, too, and one of the USB ports has been swapped to USB Type-C (there are still two regular Type-A USB 3.0 ports, though). The chassis has also changed subtly — and we actually prefer this new design. It’s perhaps a little squarer and more conventional, but also comes across as more premium and professional. The main body uses a single piece of metal that wraps around the edges, a design that gives the whole thing a very solid and rigid feel. The keyboard keys are nice and stable and the surrounding metal base doesn’t flex at all when you’re typing or using the trackpad, unlike what you’ll ind on cheaper plastic laptops. There’s also a slight dip in the chassis below the trackpad that makes resting your hand there a little more comfy and creates a lip you can use to pry open the display.

The trick that makes this unit a 2-in-1 is, again, a screen that lips around almost 360º, transforming it from a laptop into a serviceable (if not exactly svelte) tablet. Flipping the screen right around is a relatively smooth and straightforward action, aided largely by a pair of discretely-chunky and sturdy hinges.

The 13.3-inch touchscreen has a glossy finish and produced nice clear visuals with relatively naturalistic colours, though it does have an anti glare coating that gives of a vague ‘oil-slick’ sparkle — it’s not the worst we’ve seen in this regard, but that sparkle can be quite visible against a white background. Battery life could likewise be a little better — 3:38hr isn’t a bad result for PCMark 8’s tough Home test, but it only added an extra hour, reaching 4:40hr, for watching a 1080p movie. Other 13-inchers we’ve recently tested, like the HP Spectre 13 and Acer Aspire S 13, have managed nearly 6 hours in the latter test.

As a tablet, the 13 7000 is also serviceable but not particularly compelling — the general thickness and weight of the whole package combined with wide and uneven black bezels around the entire screen makes it less appealing to use as a slate than a ‘true’ tablet like, say, a Surface Pro. This is definitely a laptop first and a tablet second — and at 1.6kg, this isn’t a device you can hold in one hand.

It’s a neat option to have for, say, watching movies or playing touchscreen games in bed or on the couch, and ‘tent’ mode — where you turn the screen around 270º and use the front edges to prop it up — is also useful for space-restricted touchscreen use, like following along with a recipe in the kitchen.

And Dell has included some convenience features here, too — an IR camera means you can log into the machine using Windows Hello’s face-recognition tech and the included charger is pleasingly compact and doesn’t add a lot of weight to the whole package.

In all, this is a tough-feeling little unit with lots of pleasing features and it’s a device whose main shortcomings are fairly easy to overlook. Recommended.