Operation

Cheers to Intel's 8th generation Kaby Lake-R processors, the Inspiron 13 7000 2-in-1 is a off-white bit faster than you're probably expecting from an ultraportable.

The massive improvement comes from Intel moving to a four cadre CPU design for their 15W parts, which provides a significant uplift in functioning relative to last yr's 7th gen line. If you've been holding off on a laptop purchase considering of sub-x% functioning gains year-on-year, now is the perfect time to upgrade, because Kaby Lake-R is close to fifty% faster than equivalent Kaby Lake parts.

The Inspiron 13 7000 2-in-1 is currently bachelor in three configuration options:

  • Intel Core i5-8250U, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD - $880
  • Intel Core i7-8550U, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD - $1,050
  • Intel Core i7-8550U, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD - $one,250 (Reviewed)

I had the top-terminate model on hand to review, with the more powerful Core i7 processor inside. Yet, fifty-fifty the Core i5-8250U comes with iv cores (compared to two in the last-gen Core i5-7200U), so y'all can await pretty meaning performance gains over previous ultraportables no affair what model yous select.

If you're interested in a total analysis of Kaby Lake-R for mobile devices, check out my extensive review of the Core i7-8550U and how information technology performs compared to a range of concluding-generation chips. If you lot'd rather go a recap of how the Inspiron thirteen 7000 2-in-1 performs, I'll get to some benchmarks in only a moment.

The Cadre i7-8550U is a four core, 8 thread CPU with a base clock of i.viii GHz and a maximum Turbo clock of four.0 GHz (though that decreases to iii.7 GHz on four cores). While the base of operations clock for the 8550U is lower than final-gen parts, the addition of two extra cores and increased heave frequencies allows Kaby Lake-R to significantly outperform Kaby Lake in multi-threaded workloads, while even so providing superior unmarried-thread operation.

The Inspiron xiii 7000 2-in-i that I reviewed also comes with 16GB of RAM – enough for near users – along with a SanDisk X400 512GB SSD, a SATA K.2 drive (non PCIe NVMe) that suits budget laptop lines like Dell's Inspiron series. Wireless connectivity is fairly typical, with support for Bluetooth 4.2 and Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/1000/due north/air-conditioning with 2x2 MIMO.

Beyond all of our benchmarks, the Dell Inspiron 13 7000 2-in-one was 49 percent faster than previous-generation Kaby Lake CPUs in multi-threaded workloads, though at times information technology was more than twice as fast, particularly during curt workloads. In single-thread workloads, gains are in the 10 to 15 pct range, which is nothing to sneeze at either.

Storage performance is a little disappointing because Dell has used a SATA SSD rather than PCIe SSDs we often see in higher-end laptops. The result is nosotros are limited to 500 MB/southward sequential reads and writes, while random performance is a fair bit lower than nigh other laptops we've tested recently.

This sort of SSD performance isn't unexpected, because the Inspiron line isn't a flagship line, and Dell has clearly had to sacrifice some areas of hardware to attain an bonny price point. In fact, with cheaper SSDs inside, Dell is able to offering an upgrade to 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD for merely $200, which is a pretty reasonable price.