For the most part, the Dell Inspiron 16 Plus (starts at $1,199.99; $1,649.99 as tested) is a mainstream desktop replacement laptop, but it seems to have been hanging out with Dell's gaming rigs: It has an 8GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU instead of humble integrated graphics, and its 16:10-aspect-ratio display has a 120Hz refresh rate instead of a vanilla 60Hz. If you'd like a 16-inch laptop with a little more visual oomph than average, whether for after-hours gameplay or demanding design or rendering apps, the Inspiron 16 Plus is a relatively affordable productivity platform that's almost a gamer and almost a mobile workstation. It doesn't quite rise to Editors' Choice recognition, but it's a viable alternative to more costly content-creation laptops like the Gigabyte Aero 16 OLED.
Two CPUs, Several GPUs
If you're okay with humble integrated graphics, the Inspiron 16 Plus (model 7630) starts at $1,199.99 with Intel's Core i7-13620H processor and Intel UHD Graphics; 16GB of RAM; a 1TB NVMe solid-state drive; and a 2,560-by-1,600-pixel non-touch IPS screen. Our $1,649.99 review unit was upgraded with a Core i7-13700H chip (six Performance cores, eight Efficient cores, 20 threads) and the GeForce RTX 4060.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)The Core i7-13620H can be teamed with Nvidia's RTX 3050 or 4050, and you can double memory and storage to 32GB and 2TB, respectively. Prices and discounts on Dell.com change like the weather; our test configuration was $400 off for a week during our review and actually priced higher than a 32GB model the week before that. Windows 11 Home and Wi-Fi 6E are standard.
Carved from generic-looking aluminum in a shade Dell calls Platinum Silver, the Inspiron measures 0.79 by 14.1 by 9.9 inches and weighs 4.54 pounds. Another 16-inch speedster with a 120Hz display and GeForce RTX 4060 graphics, the HP Envy 16, is an identical 0.78 by 14.1 by 9.9 inches but heavier at 5.17 pounds. Both are porkers compared to the 2.6-pound Acer Swift Edge 16.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Medium-thin bezels surround the screen, which flexes if you grasp its corners, as does the keyboard deck when pressed. The webcam at top center has a sliding privacy shutter; it does not offer Windows Hello face recognition, but you can skip typing passwords thanks to a fingerprint reader built into the power button. The display doesn't tilt all the way back to flat but comes close enough to let any user find a satisfactory viewing angle. A speaker grille above the keyboard is joined by two downward-firing speakers on the laptop's bottom.
The Inspiron 16 Plus has a USB 3.2 Type-A port on either side. The one on the left is joined by the AC adapter connector, an HDMI monitor port, and a USB-C Thunderbolt 4 port. The one on the right accompanies a microSD flash-card slot and a headphone jack.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado) (Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Half a (Keyboard) Loaf Is Better Than None
The backlit keyboard makes the HP-style blunder of arranging the cursor arrow keys in a clumsy row instead of the proper inverted T, with half-size up and down arrows sandwiched between full-size left and right. It commits another common sin by assigning Page Up and Page Down to the up and down arrows paired with the Fn key, although it does provide real Home and End keys on the top row.
The keyboard has a shallow, rather wooden typing feel but allows fairly comfortable high-speed input. A midsize, buttonless touchpad glides and taps smoothly; it has a flat, quiet click.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)I could tell I needed a shave when I checked myself out with the 1080p webcam; its images are sharply detailed and colorful with almost no noise or static, though not very bright. The speakers produce fairly loud and crisp sound with a welcome touch (though not a ton) of bass. Audio isn't harsh or tinny.
The MyDell software offers bass, width, and detail sliders along with "EQ Profile" choices like Pop, Acoustic, Indie, Folk, Lounge, and Metal that make minor tweaks, as do "Revive" and "Midnight" buttons (the latter seems to be a mute for late-night listening). MyDell also provides battery optimization and performance-versus-fan-noise cooling modes.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)When it comes to the display, the program gives movie, sports, animation, and ComfortView presets for screen color, plus temperature, contrast, and saturation sliders and bright, dark, and vivid Dolby Vision modes. The 2,560-by-1,600-pixel panel looks a little pale or washed-out with backgrounds that are just a bit dingy instead of dazzlingly white, though details are sharp and contrast is adequate. I could wish for a bit more brightness, but colors are passably rich.
Testing the Dell Inspiron 16 Plus: Near-High-End Numbers
Besides the HP Envy 16, comparably equipped except for a quicker Core i9 CPU, we compared the Inspiron 16 Plus' benchmark performance to that of the 17-inch LG Gram Pro 17 and the 16-inch Samsung Galaxy Book3 Ultra, a step or two up in price at about $2,000 and $2,400 respectively (the latter with a spiffy 2,880-by-1,800-pixel AMOLED screen). The last slot went to the aforementioned Acer Swift Edge 16, a relative bargain at around $1,500 with a 4K OLED display.
Productivity Tests
We run the same general productivity benchmarks across both mobile and desktop systems. Our first test is UL's PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance and also includes a storage subtest for the primary drive.
Our other three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Geekbench 5.4 Pro from Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).
Finally, we run PugetBench for Photoshop by workstation maker Puget Systems, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe's famous image editor to rate a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.
The Inspiron took the silver medal in PCMark 10, though all five laptops breezed past the 4,000 points that indicate excellent productivity for everyday apps like Word and Excel, and slugged it out with the HP and Samsung in our CPU benchmarks—not bad considering the former has a Core i9 instead of Core i7. It also performed admirably in Photoshop.
Graphics Tests
We test Windows PCs' graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs).
We also run two tests from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which stresses both low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Car Chase tests, rendered offscreen to accommodate different display resolutions, exercise graphics and compute shaders using the OpenGL programming interface and hardware tessellation respectively. The more frames per second (fps), the better.
The Envy and Inspiron predictably led the way, since their GeForce RTX 4060 GPUs are the strongest here. The HP narrowly won, but the Dell prevailed when I ran one of our 1080p game tests, F1 2021 with Nvidia's DLSS anti-aliasing enabled—its 109 frames per second (fps) topped the Envy's 84fps and roughly matched the 112fps of the Lenovo Legion 5i Gen 7, which had an older RTX 3060.
I ran the benchmarks (except for battery life) using Windows' and MyDell's high-performance rather than balanced power profiles. The otherwise quiet Inspiron's cooling fans roared during the graphics-intensive tests, with the left-side vents blowing notably hot air.
Battery and Display Tests
We test laptops' battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.
We also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
I tried our video rundown three times, but our first sample Inspiron 16 Plus system never lasted more than four hours, which is barely acceptable for a high-end gaming rig, let alone a mainstream laptop. Happily, Dell sent a replacement, which showed much more stamina. The Inspiron's screen delivered adequate brightness and color, but nothing spectacular; the Gram Pro's IPS panel did much better, nearly matching the OLED Galaxy and Swift.
Verdict: Keep an Eye Out for Savings
The Dell Inspiron 16 Plus is a capable choice for everyday productivity plus some multimedia creation or after-hours gaming, though its display's color and brightness are less impressive than its 120Hz refresh rate. This could have been a more positive review a week ago, when our test configuration was $1,249.99 instead of $1,649.99, but we need to gauge based on MSRP in cases where prices sway so drastically day to day. Keep that in mind, and check Dell.com for discounts while you're checking out desktop replacements with fancier OLED screens.
