Gaming laptops, once immune to price pressures, are the latest segment in the mobile space to see true competition at the cash register. The latest gaming laptop to attack the market is the Dell G7 15[1], which starts at just $850. (My review unit, considerably upgraded from the base specs, runs closer to $1,200.)
The G7 15 is a 15.6-inch machine that can only be described as a bit of a beast. The 30mm of thickness isn’t out of the ordinary, but its 6.3 pounds of weight put it at the top of the class, half a pound heavier than HP’s Omen 15[2] and a pound and a half bulkier than the Gigabyte Aero 15[3]. If you don’t plan to tote the monster around campus, that may not matter, so let’s consider what does: Performance.
While it’s outfitted with an 8th generation Intel Core i7, 16GB of RAM, and two storage devices—a 128GB SSD and a 1TB hard drive—the centerpiece is the video card, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060. It’s not quite the state of the art, but it’s close enough, and it powered the G7 to some impressive benchmark scores in my testing, including some of the best I’ve seen on 3DMark, VRMark, and high-end video game framerate tests. General app performance—which can suffer on some gaming rigs—is also top-notch, as is battery life, which I clocked at 5 hours. Connectivity includes three traditional USB ports, a USB-C port, full-size HDMI, Ethernet, and an SD card slot.
A single screw on the bottom of the chassis allows the entire bottom panel to pop off, giving you access to RAM, the SSD, the hard drive, and the battery.
Now, if...