Dell I3565-A453BLK-PUS Review

Finding an entry-level laptop that suits your needs in a market that is a sea of options can be a testing task. The Dell I3565-A453BLK-PUS is an entry-level laptop that comes with the bare necessities and a super pocket-friendly price tag that’ll put a smile on your face. It is catered towards light users like home users and school students.

In this Dell I3565-A453BLK-PUS review, we are going to see how well a budget computer like this one performs on a day-to-day basis. The specs in this laptop are pretty basic and it clearly tells us that this laptop doesn’t want to show off as something else. Even if you’re only looking for a budget laptop, is this is the budget laptop you should spend your money on? Let’s find out.

Design

We’re talking about a budget laptop here but Dell doesn’t seem to think that way. When you look at this laptop for the first time, you wouldn’t guess that this is a budget laptop. The laptop comes in a dark gray color and has solid build quality. Though the primary material is still plastic, you won’t find this as cheap. Even when you flex the screen or other parts of the laptop, there is no creaking which is a testament to the build quality.

When you open the laptop, you can see how cheap this device is. The bezels around the screen are huge. There is an HD webcam in the middle which is good for making some video calls with your friends. The keyboard here is a full one with a dedicated number pad on the right side. 

The typing experience is decent with more than adequate key travel. If you’re someone who types a lot, like a blogger, you’ll find this keyboard pretty handy. There is no backlighting in the keys which is a bit of a disadvantage when working in the dark. The touchpad is pretty neat as well. 

The Dell I3565-A453BLK-PUS model is also portable even though it’s a budget laptop. The laptop is only 0.9″ thick and weighs around 5.07 pounds. Yes, there are better portable laptops, but for this price, this is more than satisfactory. Overall, the notebook comes with a neat design that caters light users well.

Dell I3565-A453BLK-PUS Specs

The Dell I3565-A453BLK-PUS gives you a decent multimedia performance. It comes with a 15.6″ screen that has a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. This is only HD resolution and in a world of 2K and 4K displays, this is going to look lackluster. But for this price, you can’t get anything better.

The display is good enough for everyday use. You can enjoy watching movies and TV series on this screen. The viewing angle is not the best so you need to be right in front of the display to get the best picture. The picture quality is good and since you have HD quality, most modern content will look good on this display.

The sound output of the laptop is not bad. The laptop does really well in a small room. You don’t have to crank the volume all the way up to listen but even when you do, there is only a little distortion. But if you’re in a bigger space, then you may not find the audio output sufficient. In that case, getting a good pair of speakers or headphones will certainly help.

Everyday Performance

The Dell I3565-A453BLK-PUS is powered by an AMD A6 9220 processor. This is a dual-core processor from AMD and comes with a clock speed of 2.90GHz. As this is an entry-level processor, there is no turbo boost available so this is the maximum power you can get from this AMD chip.

The processor gets a benchmark score of 2169 in CPUMark benchmark. When it comes to everyday activities, the laptop does a good job. You can browse the internet, steam all the videos you want, play some light games, download stuff, listen to music, and do a lot more without any problems. The processor can also handle a bit of workload as well so if you need to do some heavy lifting, this laptop is there to help.

The memory department comes with 4 gigs of DDR4L RAM. As you can see, this is not a lot of RAM for a modern laptop. But it should be more than enough for most light users. You can do a bit of multitasking with it and also run some multithreaded applications as well. You won’t be able to upgrade the memory, so be sure about this before you make a decision.

For storage, there is a 500GB 5400rpm hard drive. The hard drive gives you enough space to play with and you can store all your games, movies, photos, videos and other valuable data without any restriction. One demerit with this storage is that this is a mechanical drive and is awfully slow. Most budget solutions stick with this solution to cut corners and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Gaming, Battery Life and Connectivity

The Dell I3565-A453BLK-PUS is not a gaming machine and it comes with only an integrated graphics card. You might be able to do some light gaming and that’s it. If you’re looking to play some graphically intensive games, then you should be looking at hardcore gaming laptops.

The battery life of the laptop is decent. With a light load, the laptop can stay alive for about 4 to 5 hours which is impressive for a budget device. If you’re going to do something processor intensive, then you can expect the laptop to last a lot less.

When it comes to connectivity, the Dell I3565-A453BLK-PUS model gives you a lot of options. There is a couple of USB 3.0 ports, a USB 2.0 port, an HDMI port, an SD card reader, a headphone jack, and also a DVD writer. This should be more than enough for the average user. The laptop also supports Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity as well.

Bottomline

The Dell I3565-A453BLK-PUS is a solid budget laptop that comes without any bells and whistles. The price point is very attractive and justifies the specs in this notebook. With reliable day-to-day performance, you can have a good time doing the stuff you like. The battery life is also more than what you’d expect. If you’re a light user looking for an inexpensive and solid budget laptop, then this is probably it.