Dell Precision 5750 review: A mobile workstation combining heavyweight performance with slimline design Review

Right after several decades when notebook style and design has quite much targeted on slim and attractive ultraportable laptops, it seems to be as though more substantial units are now earning something of a comeback. That pattern has likely been encouraged by the reality that globally business vacation has practically ground to a halt in recent months, earning pounds fewer of an situation for a lot of business consumers. And, with millions of people now working from dwelling, more highly effective laptops with more substantial shows can appear like an appealing choice, specifically for innovative consumers who want a notebook with a discrete GPU to tackle 3D graphics and video clip. 

As is so frequently the case, it was Apple that kick-started this pattern, with the revamped 16-inch MacBook Professional, released in 2019. This was followed by Dell’s updated Precision 7740, which made available an imposing 17-inch display and workstation-level graphics overall performance. But when the Precision 7740 sent amazing overall performance, it also weighed in at just over 3.0kg, as opposed to 2.0kg for the 16-inch MacBook Professional. So Dell lately introduced its new 5000 Series, headed by the Precision 5750, which offers identical workstation-class overall performance in a more streamlined style and design. 

Options, style and design & display

Dell boasts that the Precision 5750 is “the world’s smallest and thinnest 17-inch workstation”, and it can be hard to dispute that declare. The beginning pounds is quoted at 2.17kg, although our customised assessment unit was closer to 2.4kg. Even so, that’s however a very good pounds for a notebook with a 17-inch display, when the edge-to-edge glass panel helps to retain the total proportions to 375mm extensive and 248mm deep. It is also remarkably slim for these kinds of a highly effective notebook, measuring thirteen.15mm along the rear edge, and tapering to just 8.7mm at the front. 

There are two display possibilities accessible for this 17-inch procedure, with the least pricey supplying FHD+ resolution (1920×1200 pixels). Even so, that looks like an odd — if not downright unwise — compromise for a higher-stop notebook these kinds of as this. Most consumers will almost certainly favor to decide for the contact-sensitive UHD+ display delivered with our assessment unit, which offers 3840-by-2400 resolution (266ppi) and a 16:10 facet ratio.  

The UHD+ display is impressively brilliant and sharp, although to my naked eye the colors did appear a small over-saturated at instances. Even so, Dell states that this display supports HDR 400 and a hundred% of Adobe RGB, so it really should be effectively suited to graphic style and design and image-enhancing work. It is shocking, though, that Dell’s intensive possibilities do not contain a display that also supports the DCI-P3 colour conventional that’s commonly employed for expert video clip-enhancing — specifically as Dell itself mentions ‘media and entertainment’ as a crucial goal viewers.  

The 720p webcam is also a small disappointing in these kinds of a higher-stop notebook, as a lot of favor a 1080p webcam for video clip calls when working from dwelling. 

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Connectivity is very good, though, with four Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports, an SD card slot, a 3.5mm audio jack and assist for Wi-Fi 6 (a.k.a. 802.11ax). Dell even throws in a practical USB-C adapter that offers an supplemental HDMI interface for an external display, and USB-A for more mature add-ons (something Apple normally prices £50 further for). The base of the notebook is held in location by eight torx screws, and Dell’s support handbook offers guidelines for changing RAM and storage modules, so more expert consumers will be in a position to conduct some repairs and updates for by themselves. 

Rate & possibilities

The Precision 5750 is shown on Dell’s United kingdom internet site as a Build Your Own (BYO) procedure that will allow you to specify practically every single crucial ingredient, from the processor, memory and storage, correct down to the selection of battery and electric power provide. 

Dell’s pricing looks to differ on an practically each day foundation, but at the time of composing the entry-level BYO configuration was £2,319.seventy one (ex. VAT £2,783.sixty five inc. VAT) with a quad-core Core i5-10400H processor, 16GB of RAM, a 256GB PCIe NVMe SSD and discrete Nvidia Quadro T2000 graphics with an FHD+ display. 

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Even so, our assessment unit was a major-of-the-variety configuration, equipped with an 8-core Core i9-10885H processor jogging at 2.4GHz (up to 5.3GHz with TurboBoost) along with 64GB of RAM and two 1TB PCIe NVMe SSDs. As talked about, this design also opts for the contact-sensitive UHD+ (3840×2400) display, which is pushed by a discrete Nvidia Quadro RTX 3000 GPU with 6GB of focused video clip RAM, for a whole value of £4,454.ninety six (ex. VAT £5,345.95 inc. VAT). 

Prospects in the US have a more minimal selection, as the Precision 5750 now only looks to be accessible with Core i5 and Core i7 processors, and FHD+ shows. Prices in the US start at $2,139 for an entry-level Core i5 configuration with integrated graphics only, increasing to $3,079 with a Core i7 CPU and Quadro RTX 3000 dGPU.  

Functionality

The Precision 5750 has the very same RTX 3000 graphics card as the heavier Precision 7740 that we reviewed in January, although it added benefits from a newer 10th-technology Core i9 processor. As a final result it edges somewhat forward on processor overall performance in Geekbench 5, recording scores of one,290 for solitary-main overall performance and seven,600 for multi-main, as opposed to one,two hundred and seven,000 respectively, for the Precision 7740.  

Graphics overall performance is quite identical, though, with the Precision 5750 obtaining 220fps with Cinebench R15, and seventy four.5fps on the more demanding Unigine Valley — only fractionally forward of the Precision 7740 at 205fps (Cinebench R15) and 73fps (Unigine Valley). 

Even so, there’s an location exactly where the Precision 5750 considerably outguns its more substantial counterpart. Even when employing its fewer electric power-hungry integrated graphics, the Precision 7740 could only deal with 3 hrs and 10 minutes of streaming video clip from its 6-cell 97Wh battery. In distinction, the integrated graphics of the Precision 5750 lasted for a more respectable seven hrs and 10 minutes with the very same battery capability. Admittedly, Apple’s 16-inch MacBook Professional outlasted both of those of its Dell rivals at just over 11 hrs from a 100Wh battery, but its graphics overall performance was considerably weaker — 145fps in Cinebench R15 and forty eight.5fps in Unigine Valley.  

Impressively, the Precision 5750 was practically silent through our assessments. Even right after regularly jogging the intensive Unigine Valley assessments, it created only a quite minimal hum from its twin-fan cooling procedure, with just a gentle sensation of heat drifting up by means of the keyboard panel. 

Conclusions

If pounds and battery lifetime usually are not specifically crucial, then the Precision 7740 will give workstation overall performance at a somewhat lessen value. Even so, the Precision 5750 is considerably lighter and offers top-quality battery lifetime, when offering a slight edge on overall performance. It is no ultraportable, but if you want a notebook that can deliver real workstation-class graphics overall performance both of those on the desktop and on the road, then the Precision 5750 is hard to beat.

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