***UPDATE 5/17/2016******
After having this for more than a month now, using it daily, with the added SSD and RAM, I am very happy. It starts lightning fast, last BIOS time was 8.0 seconds which is fantastic. Overall I think this is a great looking laptop, I really like the black with red accents, and love the rubber like texture. It does not show fingerprints for me, I've seen a review or two that complain about that, maybe greasy hands??. The keyboard is quiet, responsive, and overall just works well. The screen is plenty bright, most times I have the setting at 50% brightness and it's more than adequate. I have not used the HDMI port yet, but do plan to eventually have a dual screen setup, as of now I just don't have the space. This is the first laptop i've owned with a lighted keyboard, which I really like, and seems to work well.
I have used it for a small amount of recording with Presonus Studio One 3 Artist, with an AudioBox USB interface. I can get latency down to about 6ms and that's imperceptible to most people. It handles anything I've thrown at it with ease, mostly staying at about 10-20% CPU performance. Thats running about 5-6 tracks, a few effect and VCA busses, and some direct insert effects. I guess Dell sorta markets this a gaming laptop, albeit a cheaper one, but a lot of the gaming laptops i've looked at compare quite closely to this, usually have 16gb ram already installed, and a higher end graphics card etc, while some don't even have as good a processor, and sometimes have an i5 instead. A similar MSI will cost a least a few hundred dollars more. I think this is a powerhouse computer in sheep's clothing,and a fantastic value, just MHO. If you're in the market for a solid laptop with an awesome feature set and processor, this is definitely worth considering.
***************************************************************************************************************************************************
I purchased this less than a month ago, not from amazon, but wanted to leave a review here anyway. I have the i7559-2512BLK 15.6 Inch FHD Laptop (6th Generation Intel Core i7, 8 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD + 8 GB SSD) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M.
I wanted the best processor I could afford in a new machine. I knew I wasn't going to use it for gaming, but instead I needed a fast laptop for music recording software. When you start running plug-ins, multiple inputs, a bunch of tracks, effects etc,it can bog down a processor quickly. I knew I would add an SSD drive, and more ram, so that was less of a consideration when I decided. I was looking at some core i5 laptops, but figure the quad core i7 would just about guarantee it would handle anything I threw at it.
I also liked that it had an 1x8gb ram chip, so I could just add another, and not need to buy two new 8gb chips. I added a Samsung 850 EVO M.2 250gb SSD, and I love that this laptop has an M.2 slot for another drive, makes it easy to keep plenty of storage. I use the SSD drive for my OS and music software, and kept the original 1tb HDD for storage, pics and music etc. So now I have 16gb ram, with a 256gb SSD drive, and a back up 1tb HDD, Full hi-def screen, 4gb graphics card, and a top notch i7 processor.
It now runs super quick,and starts up in seconds. together, both cost me about 130$ from amazon, and it was money well spent for the upgrade. The funny thing is, the specs on my laptop now, mirror many of the gaming laptops costing a lot more, but maybe are missing a feature or two, usually an optical drive, or touch screen. The good bones are there though, and for a lot less money.
I like the look and feel of this laptop, and kinda like the black w/ red accents. Some don't seem to like it, but I do.
So far I am very happy with this. My one complaint would be no optical drive, but an external drive is cheap enough and fits right in my laptop bag, so not a deal breaker.
It all depends on what your looking for in a new laptop. this one fit the bill for me, and the price was very good. If this particular setup works for you, its a great laptop for the money, and the i7-6700HQ chip is a great processor, that has a benchmark score of over 8000, which is double most core i5 processors. This will also work for most gamers, except probably the most serious of them, and a lot of times, they run desktops anyway.
Running Studio One with 4 tracks of audio, multiple effects on each track, and the CPU never went over 10% on the performance monitor. Which shows the kind of processor it is. IMO, it's the all important factor. A disc drive is cheap and easy to change, and most people do these days to SS drives, RAM can really only go so high, and is only so useful after 16gb. But a bad processor will make all the other parts irelevent, when doing anything that really tests performance.
BTW, the pics include a keyboard skin I'm using too.
CaseBuy Keyboard Silicone Cover Protector Skin for Dell Inspiron 15 3000 5000 i3541 15-3542 15-3543 15-3551 15-3552 15-5545 15-5547 15-5548 15-5555 15-5558 15-5559 15-7559 17-5748 17-5749 17-5755 17-5758 17-5759 US Layout(Red)
| Standing screen display size | 15.6 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 pixels |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 pixels |
| Processor | 2.6 GHz core_i7 |
| RAM | 8 GB DDR3L SDRAM |
| Memory Speed | 1600 MHz |
| Hard Drive | 1 TB Hybrid HDD + Flash Cache |
| Graphics Coprocessor | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 4GB GDDR5 |
| Chipset Brand | NVIDIA |
| Card Description | Dedicated |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 4 |
| Wireless Type | 802.11ac |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 1 |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 3 |
| Average Battery Life (in hours) | 10 Hours |
