Asus vs Dell

[aimulaidni]

Hi everyone,

The motherboard on my Dell Inspiron (15, 7547) just died and I'm looking for a new laptop. My primary criteria is good design and I can't seem to find any that are priced below a $1000 (15" laptops). The only two that I somewhat liked are the Asus Zenbook Pro and Dell XPS 15. I'm not sure which brand to go with and which configuration.

Asus has the following configuration:

15.6", 4K, I7-7700HQ, GTX 1050 Ti, 16 gigs of ram and 512 gb ssd

About $1300

Dell has the following configuration:

15.6", 4K, I5-7300HQ, GTX 1050, 8 gigs of ram and 256 GB ssd

About $850

Both are used but still have a warranty on them. And I get an extended warranty on them using my credit card. I'm just not sure which company laptop to go with or which would last me about 4 years. I read a lot of reviews and went to a lot of forums and both are equally not good in terms of their customer service and longevity of the laptops. So I wanted to see what the general opinion is here and if there's a particular brand that would be more preferable.

Thank you!

 

[Golfdriver97]

What are you going to use the laptop for?

 

[ochhanz]

, the Asus has better specs (especially the memory), the Dell one has probably slightly better service & driver support and better battery I guess and is of course much cheaper. Do you need the better specs?

Personally I think the XPS is a bit better priced, especially since it is less of a risk with buying it used (cause of the cheaper price).

Whatever the case make sure it is in good shape of course (check body/screen for cracks etc, check battery life, sound, stress test, if the ports work etc).

 

[aimulaidni]

What are you going to use the laptop for?

The windows central app on my 950XL is really annoying me. I replied to your msg sometime back but it doesn't seem like it's posted here.

I used to use it for Photoshop and Solidworks, but the usage of these programs has gone down drastically. Nowadays it's mostly browsing and watching videos. I will still sometimes use the above programs but not on a daily basis anymore.

 

[aimulaidni]

, the Asus has better specs (especially the memory), the Dell one has probably slightly better service & driver support and better battery I guess and is of course much cheaper. Do you need the better specs?

Personally I think the XPS is a bit better priced, especially since it is less of a risk with buying it used (cause of the cheaper price).

Whatever the case make sure it is in good shape of course (check body/screen for cracks etc, check battery life, sound, stress test, if the ports work etc).

Yeah, I was thinking the same and since I can always upgrade the ram, I was thinking I could go with this option. But I just noticed, the buyer actually increased the price to a $1000 (I guess he saw what the others were selling it for). I should take back what I wrote before, the Dell is a new one.

 

[ochhanz]

Yeah, I was thinking the same and since I can always upgrade the ram, I was thinking I could go with this option. But I just noticed, the buyer actually increased the price to a $1000 (I guess he saw what the others were selling it for). I should take back what I wrote before, the Dell is a new one.

, in that case the Asus is a bit better value I think, but as long as it's condition is still good. I also think the Asus more in balance with the 4k screen.
That being said do you need a 4k screen? Although the screen is a little bit sharper (mostly small texts are noticeable), it consumes more energy (/less battery life), is slower (/more pixels need to be rendered) and it is more expensive. On the plus side (and somewhat annoying) some oems only use their screen panels (contrast, color etc) in combination with 4k (mostly relevant for artists however).

I personally think 4k is a waste of money in most cases, but that's just me.
2.5/3k like Microsoft's Surface or Apple's stuff etc has makes more sense than 4k.

 

[aimulaidni]

, in that case the Asus is a bit better value I think, but as long as it's condition is still good. I also think the Asus more in balance with the 4k screen.
That being said do you need a 4k screen? Although the screen is a little bit sharper (mostly small texts are noticeable), it consumes more energy (/less battery life), is slower (/more pixels need to be rendered) and it is more expensive. On the plus side (and somewhat annoying) some oems only use their screen panels (contrast, color etc) in combination with 4k (mostly relevant for artists however).

I personally think 4k is a waste of money in most cases, but that's just me.
2.5/3k like Microsoft's Surface or Apple's stuff etc has makes more sense than 4k.

Thank you for your reply! Someone actually bought it before I could get to the asus, so I had to go with the Dell option. I don't necessarily need the 4k but I noticed that 1080p looked dull on my previous laptop whereas it looked great on a 13" screen. And I didn't want to go with a 13" screen as I think it's too small. So the only other option they had was a 4k. I didn't see much difference though in price between a 4k and a FHD, I think it was around $100. I was looking at some of the surface stuff too but they don't have anything in the 15" category except for the surface book 2 and the starting price on that is $1800 which is way out of my budget.

Thanks again!

 

[ochhanz]

Thank you for your reply! Someone actually bought it before I could get to the asus, so I had to go with the Dell option. I don't necessarily need the 4k but I noticed that 1080p looked dull on my previous laptop whereas it looked great on a 13" screen. And I didn't want to go with a 13" screen as I think it's too small. So the only other option they had was a 4k. I didn't see much difference though in price between a 4k and a FHD, I think it was around $100. I was looking at some of the surface stuff too but they don't have anything in the 15" category except for the surface book 2 and the starting price on that is $1800 which is way out of my budget.

Thanks again!

, your welcome. With dull you mean slightly pixelated / slightly blurry texts or do you mean dull colors and/or contrast? Cause the former is determined by having full hd vs 4k (the rest depends on the quality of the panel). Anyway iirc the XPS does have a very good battery so at least you will still should get long battery life with the 4k panel and 100$ indeed not that big of a difference.