Dell has been in the gaming business long enough with its Alienware lineup of laptops, Inspiron series and its recently announced G-series. Dell has termed the G-series as its ‘affordable’ lineup of gaming laptops. It offers an NVIDIA GTX 10-series GPU and Intel 8th gen processors at a price tag of below Rs 1 lakh. In making the laptop cheap, there have been certain tradeoffs. Most importantly, and We can’t stress this enough, the device looks nowhere like a gaming laptop. We looked at the dull design, felt the jagged edges around the chassis of the laptop and We got the impression that this laptop should not be costing me more than Rs 40,000 – Rs 50,000. It’s only after delving inside the hardware details of the laptop that We got the full measure of it.
The Dell G3 variant which was given to me for review had an 8th-gen Intel Core i7-8750H CPU, 4 GB of Nvidia GTX 1050Ti GPU, 16 GB of LPDDRX4 RAM, 1 TB of HDD storage and 256 GB of SSD storage. While the laptop’s price has been listed as Rs 82,090 for the 128 GB SSD and 8 GB RAM variant, the increase to 256 GB SSD, 16 GB RAM and including GST, the price comes to Rs 1,08,503.
Build and Design: 6/10
Put the Dell G3 and any regular business laptop such as Lenovo Ideapad 330S side-by-side and you would think that the latter is a gaming laptop. When closed, the design of the G3 is quite low-key. The Dell logo is emblazoned in the centre while the cooling vents sit below the hinges of the G3. Opening the laptop will greet you with more of the same bland design, except for the palm rest, which at least has a pattern on it.
The trackpad is placed slightly on the left side and there are chunky bezels surrounding the display of the laptop. A small detail to notice is the fact that the WSAD keys are outlined with squares. The edges on the end of the palm rest are jagged and not rounded. During long durations of typing, my wrists usually got hurt. All-in-all, the device may not be as light as the MSI GS65 Stealth Thin RF, but it’s not as heavy as the Alienware 17 eitherm which weighs close to 5 kgs. It’s certainly no looker, but to be quite frank, for such heavy-duty internals at this price point, some compromise has to be made.
Keyboard and Trackpad: 7.5/10
The buttons on the G3 were smooth, with flat keycaps, much like keyboards on any other laptop. Obviously, it would be too much of stretch to expect any kind of mechanical keyboard. There is room for a full-size numpad though and the keys are backlit by blue LEDs. The G3’s keyboard was quick and responsive and I did not face any kind of delay in output while typing. As a matter of fact, I’m writing this review on the G3, and the experience has been smooth. Except for, obviously, the sharp edges on the palm rest, which have left quite an impression on my arms.
The trackpad is big and placed slightly to the left. I did not get any kind of unwanted movement of the cursor when accidentally brushing my palm against the trackpad, which is a good sign. However, I felt that the response on the touchpad was just slightly delayed. This was a little irritating but I was using a mouse most of the time, and I trust you will too, especially if you’re buying this laptop for gaming. The buttons underneath the trackpad were working fine.
Features: 8/10
The Dell G3 is quite well endowed for a laptop costing Rs 1 lakh. The hexa-core 8th-gen Intel i7 processor makes computing a breeze on this PC. This is a 45 W chip with 6 cores and 12 threads, which is something that much more pricier laptops such as the MSI GS65 have in them.
The graphical load of the system is handled by an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050Ti with 4 GB of memory, which is quite a robust entry-level option. This happens to be a shade more powerful than the one in its competitor, the Acer Nitro 5, which has a GTX 1050. But then again, the Nitro is cheaper.
Apart from that, you also get 16 GB of high-speed DDR4 RAM and storage options include a 256 GB SSD and a 1 TB of hard drive. Mind you, this is the top variant of the Dell G3 and there are cheaper and lower configuration models as well. Though we’d recommend you stick to this one for your entry-level gaming needs. A 256 GB SSD means you’ll have ample room for one or two of your favourite games, and with 16 GB RAM, you won’t have reason to upgrade. You can get by with 8 GB of RAM, however.
In terms of connectivity, the Dell G3 offers an HDMI 2.0 port, Ethernet, 2x USB 3.1 Type-A ports, 1x USB 2.0 port, SD-card reader and a combo audio jack. There are no ThunderBolt ports on this laptop, but in the interest of future-proofing, I would have liked to see at least one USB-C port.
Display: 6/10
Here I believe that the Dell G3 has a bit of a hill to climb. The 15-inch FHD display of the G3, while good under normal circumstances, does not get the brightness level I would’ve wanted. The maximum brightness on the laptop was nowhere near to what I had expected from a gaming laptop. Colour accuracy was also a big issue on the display as our tests showed that the G3 had an sRGB coverage of just 52.4 per cent. This is depressingly low as some laptops in its price range such as the MSI GE62 7RE Apache Pro had an sRGB coverage of 87 per cent. While all this goes to show that the G3 doesn’t have the best of displays out there, I don’t think casual gamers such as myself would an issue with the display.
Dell G Series G3 3579 15.6-inch FHD Laptop (8th Gen Core i7-8750H/8GB/1TB + 128GB SSD/Windows 10 + Ms Office Home & Student 2016/4GB Graphics), Black
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