Dell - G5 15.6" Gaming Laptop - AMD Ryzen 7 - 8GB Memory - AMD Radeon RX 5600M - 512GB Solid State Drive - grey

Been using Dell gaming for a while and been very happy with it. Always buy open box for savings. Few options of this machine are new to me and quite a delight. Backlight changes color, C type port and hdmi port on the left side. Upon upgrading the memory, had some difficulty due to number of screws and ability to find to area to push up cover safely. Performancewise, nice machine. Not tested yet with gaming as my primary use is not for gaming. Hard drive a bit small for needs so supplementing with external drive. Only thing I am not sure yet is that seems to get hot too fast when I am not even gaming but just working. Long term that is concerning and this is the reason I do not give it 5 stars. (Another machine I got from work is a business dell and does not have the heat concern and weights much less and also expandable to 32 gig ). Another plus of this machine is that it has alienware software and high performace alienware command center toggle in keys. High performance turns on the fans on high. Feel I broke even with the open box discount. So far very happy.

Great Hardware But IF YOU USE LINUX YOU MUST USE UBUNTU SAFE GRAPHICS MODE ON GRUB MENU TO INSTALL AND LOAD EVERY TIME UNTIL YOU UPDATE TO KERNEL 5.10 OR ABOVE! Google how to upgrade ubuntu 20.10 kernel 5.10 Follow instructions reboot turn off safeboot then sign the new kernel: google "signing a Linux kernel for secure boot" follow instructions reboot turn secureboot back on in bios then boot ubuntu. ALL GRAPHICS DRIVERS WILL BE INSTALLED by kernel but optionally you can apt install the amdgpu drivers (non-pro version) if you want. INSTALL STEAM TO COMPLETE DRIVER INSTALLATION: "sudo apt install steam"

Got the laptop on a $100 discount, which was perfect because it only comes with 500gb. Used the savings to buy a Samsung 970 EVO plus for the second nvme slot for games and videos. I was worried about the 8GB RAM, but the laptop seems to handle everything without a problem. I use the laptop for games and streaming. I stream on 720p 30fps using this laptop with no problem (PS: do not blame the laptop if your upload speed is only 2mbps or lower, do not expect you can stream on that upload speed) CoD Warzone on High settings no problem, when streaming I tone it down to normal, though I have not experienced any problem on high settings. Apex Legends on all Ultra settings while streaming no problem Cons: - Thermal is terrible, if you are planning on using this as your main gaming device buy a cooling pad to help your intake fans. Or, just buy a cooling pad, thermal is terrible. - heavy and bulky for a 15’ laptop. - battery is terrible, only around 3hrs - design.. well its personal preference - if you are sensitive about fan noise, this is slightly louder than a razer laptop. The AMD SmartShift technology is what makes this laptop a very capable budget laptop. My only suggestion is, wait for this to go on sale again.. Dell laptops tend to go on sale very often.

I had bought a msi bravo on 5/17 that had a ryzen 4600h and a rx5500m and there is no comparison this dell g5 is far superior in terms of features and hardware. Screen is so much brighter and is 144hz compared to 120hz. Few trade offs but nothing worth going back. first is no freesync panel and I liked the chassis design better on my old laptop this g5 reminds me of a old ps1 gray plastic body but for the price and productivity of the laptop there is no better deal for the price.

What an absolute nightmare. It's now 2022 and nobody should drop a few hundred dollars on "cutting edge technology" just to experience headache after headache right out of the box. But that's what I bought yesterday with this laptop. I don't know if it's Dell or AMD's fault, but this is simply a failed piece of hardware and after just one day I'm tired of trying to make it work correctly. For whatever reason, this laptop will ignore the AMD RX 5600M discrete video card and use the obviously inferior AMD Integrated Graphics no matter how many "high performance" settings are engaged in Radeon Software and Alienware Command Center. Of course, this is exactly the OPPOSITE of how a high performance gaming laptop should operate. After spending far too many hours trying to make this work, it's going back to Best Buy today. I've come to the conclusion that the failure of this laptop that is physically in my hands is caused by an endless loop of engineering failures. First, this is a boiling HOT laptop. So hot that just using the keyboard to type this review, the palms of my hands are uncomfortably warm without a game even running. That is simply a hardware design failure and it's not even debatable. So to compensate for that, a software failure called Game Shift was put in place to supposedly spread out CPU and GPU computing power into some mirage of optimum performance. That sounds great...on paper. It just DOES NOT WORK on this laptop that I have in my hands (which is all I have to base my review on). In fact, the only part that does work is pressing G (F7) and have the fans go immediately to 100% RPMs to bring the temps down before some kind of China Syndrome Meltdown happens inside. In full disclosure, I purchased this laptop as an "Open Box" online from a local Best Buy. When I arrived to pick it up, I found out it was the store DEMO model, not one somebody took home and brought back after a few days. But the SSD is still at 93% health and the laptop looks nearly unblemished, so I was OK with that part. What I'm NOT OK with is Best Buy and their Geek Squad not spending the time necessary to update all of the software and drivers to ensure this laptop is performing as advertised before putting it up for sale. As this unit (apparently) set on a display case for the past year plus with not a single piece of software being updated during that time. I watched videos and read forum postings and updated software from both Dell and AMD websites, in addition to Windows, and still just trying to get a basic benchmark to run correctly is next to impossible. Disabling the Integrated Graphics to force the RX 5600M to be used doesn't work. Neither does entirely deleting the Integrated Graphics from Device Manager. In fact, when running the Graphics Benchmarks after doing this, they are WORSE, which just blows my mind!! How can a laptop with a 6GB discrete video card produce a benchmark in only in the FOURTH Percentile??? And another benchmark website won't even complete the benchmarking because of a missing GPU!?!? Seriously...a MISSING GPU. I'm sure there are people that have these laptops performing as intended on paper. Otherwise, the return rate would be nearly 100%, right? Well I can't find the magic recipe to make it happen for this specific unit and neither can my 21-year old son. Which brings me back to my biggest problem about this whole transaction...Why should we be the ones forced to make it work like it should? We didn't design or manufacture it. We didn't have it on display for 1-2 years in a retail store. We're just the end consumers. Fortunately, Best Buy is a much better place for making a purchase like this than some place like ebay because I'm fully confident Best Buy will take this unit back without any fuss. Now I have to go back to square one to upgrade another son's older Dell gaming laptop when I thought I had found a solution in this Dell G5 15 SE that would last him several years. I was wrong...

Dell cripples this computer like crazy. Avoid this model! There are lots of things wrong with this computer. To name a few of them: Dell puts tape between the thermal pads and the VRMs/chiplets that causes the thermal pads to not transfer heat, resulting in dangerously hot VRM temperatures. The newer bios revisions throttle the GPU performance of this. Alienware command center is tied in with other essential drivers, so if there's a software issue on this laptop it can break a lot of the other things on the laptop. The copy of windows that is shipped with this has no drivers properly installed on it, resulting in loss of performance out of the box. The heat sink fins have a gap of air between them and the fan where air can escape the cooler, resulting in higher temperatures. The heat sink has hollow space in the middle of it, reduced surface area for the cooler and fans means the laptop won't cool down as fast. The fans audibly struggle to keep up with how warm the computer is getting, to the point where under a full load at max ram speed the computer still reaches temperatures of 100+ Celsius. The computer doesn't have enough power delivery on the motherboard, which means that the computer will throttle because it doesn't deliver enough power. The thermal paste application out of the box is HORRENDOUS, I highly suggest to everyone who has this to repaste it ASAP.

I piked up an "Open Box" machine today but i was shocked that they not only gave me refurbished, but not working and damaged. They didn't include the power adapte, and the device dose not turn on at all. You can see in the pictures i included that the whole Motherboard and the Keyboard was replaced!!! and somehow they label it as an "Open Box". Before i leave this here, i must say that the problem has to be a from the individuals who fixed and labeled this laptop, because i have had an open box condition machine before for another device and it was actually an open box condition. Poor work this time, but i believe Bestbuy could do better.

The Dell G5 Special Edition with all AMD CPU/GPU is a great contender for the gaming laptop marketplace. You get the AMD4800H with 5600M dedicated graphics for a reasonable price. For a lot of detailed bench marking information, I recommend you check the review on hothardware dot com. Trust me – you will be impressed. There is 512GB SSD and 8GB of RAM. This is 2 x 4GB of RAM. See the picture and this is 3200 memory with 22 timings at 1T.So if you want to upgrade the RAM, you will likely replace with 2 x 8GB. You can also expand the hard drive with an additional drive. It is supposed to have a pair of M.2 slots for adding a hard drive space. One is taken with the 512GB drive so there is one open. I did not take off the cover and verify this. With an AMD CPU/GPU combination, you get the advantage of SmartShift. This laptop is one of the first to offer this. SmartShift basically controls the power management between GPU and CPU. There is a 4 zone backlit for your keyboard. It was easy to configure in the Alien Command Center. I tried to get a good pic but it does not show up well in pictures. The screen is 1920x1080 @ 144 hz. It is a Va panel. I is crystal clear and amazing. Seeing 2 USB 2.0 connections was a little disappointing. I wish there were at least 2 if not 3 USB 3 instead of just one. But you can use hubs for expansion. After unboxing, I charged the battery. The battery charges relatively fast. I did find the power button a little odd as it is not clear if it is pressed on or not. After going through all of the Windows and Dell registration stuff, I recommend you download all Dell updates (bios, drivers, Alien Command Center, etc.) and Windows updates of course. This was easy and efficient. After it is all charged, I do a battery test. Of course this is a gaming laptop so my expectations were low. Under load/gaming I got about 50 minutes on battery only. Under a very light load I got about 2.5 hours. Definitely in the reasonable range for a gaming laptop. I ran an OCCT stress test to test stability for 2 hours. It passed with flying colors. Temperature is one main concern with any electronics. Heat and moisture is an electronic devices enemy! These are the temps I was seeing: Full load GPU/CPU in Celsius: 66/81 degrees without using the Game shift (Fn shift 7) and 59/84 degrees with Game shift. GameShift makes a HUGE difference as you can see. So you MUST have this on while you are gaming or any other demanding tasks. The heat is concentrated at the rear bottom. I strongly recommend a cooling pad. In fact, you will not be able to game with this sitting on your lap. Now for a gaming test with Game Shift enabled. The fans are a little loud but you do not hear them with a headset on. I tested Call of Duty Modern Warfare. On the lowest settings it was about 130 fps. On max settings it was around 80-90 fps. The screen looked amazing and gameplay was crisp and responsive. Very respectable I gotta say. You should be able to play anything you like on this and it will be fine. I saw the CPU hit a max of 108C and GPU hit 85C. This is much higher than I would like. A cooling pad is mandatory as you can see. You can get good ones for around $30. But remember the heat is in the rear so pick your cooling fan configuration appropriately. I will get one with 4 outside small fans and one large center fan. The keyboard feels really nice while gaming. I did not feel any flex to the keyboard. Overall this is an impressive laptop for a reasonable price. The heat is a concern and you should do everything you can to cool it down while under load. Battery life is in the expected range for a gaming laptop. 8GB of RAM (2 x 4GB) is a little disappointing for this price. 16 GB would be more appropriate. I do recommend this laptop with 4 stars.