My initial thought on seeing this new Dell Inspiron 17R SE pulled from its box for the first time was, "Wow, does anyone still make laptops this big?" It's doubly surprising, as we've talked about the latest generation of Dell Inspiron laptops at some length, usually to point out how thin and attractive they are, at least for budget-minded laptops.
Dell Inspiron 17R Special Edition
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The difference is that those systems, typified by the Inspiron 14z, are part of Dell's "z" line, which indicates a thinner body (perhaps related to the z axis in the Cartesian coordinate system). This is the regular full-thickness Inspiron, a line that Dell has not particularly emphasized of late. There's still a further catch here, however. This is the SE or Special Edition version of the 17R, which means its options include high-end CPUs, discrete graphics, 1080p displays, and backlit keyboards, packed into a chassis that's at least partially aluminum.
In this particular case, our review unit includes an Intel Core i7-3610QM CPU, a 1,920x1,080-pixel, 17.3-inch display, 1TB of HDD storage (coupled with a 32GB solid-state drive), and an Nvidia GeForce 650M GPU, for a total of $1,099.
To be sure, $1,100 is not what anyone would describe as a budget laptop, and Dell's Inspiron line definitely tells the best overall story when it's sitting around the $700-$800 mark. At the same time, that combination of a quad-core Core i7, midrange Nvidia GPU, and 1080p screen is not the stuff of budget laptops. The closest mainstream analog I could find is an HP Pavilion dv7 that trades a smaller hard drive for a Blu-ray player, and costs around $1,200. Toshiba has a Qosmio X870 that can be configured with a better GeForce 670M GPU for $1,299. Getting similar specs from a boutique gaming PC company, or Dell's more upscale XPS line, will also cost a good deal more.
It seems to me that the concept here is to put your dollars into the components inside the laptop, while not worrying as much about the outside. What you end up with is a laptop that isn't going to win any beauty pageants (although it's not hideous), but has some mid- to high-end components at a good price. That said, the GeForce 650M GPU keeps this from being an unbeatable budget gaming monster -- that's too far removed from Nvidia's highest-end parts to satisfy ubergamers.