Dell Inspiron 16 Plus (7620) Review

Last year, we gave Editors' Choice honors to Dell's Inspiron 16 Plus (7610) for its value and features as a capable big-screen laptop. The new Inspiron 16 Plus model 7620 ($1,599.99 as tested) enhances and upgrades its predecessor, adding a new 12th Gen Intel processor and stepping up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti GPU. (It's also available as a convertible as well as the clamshell seen here.) With impressive battery life, a sharp 1080p webcam, and all-around good performance, it's a superior successor with few downsides. The Inspiron 16 Plus loses some of its value proposition (and misses an Editors' Choice award this time around) due to its higher price tag, and its build quality is less premium than some competitors in this price range. But it offers a lot to like as a general desktop replacement for productivity tasks, or moderately demanding creative workloads.

16 Inches for All Workflows

The Inspiron's build and visual design is relatively unassuming—a clean, minimalistic style with a splash of muted color—despite the fairly potent components inside. This style has led to huge success for Apple's MacBooks and Dell's own XPS line, though the 7620's design and materials fall a bit short of that premium feel. Of course there's a price-cutting upside to keeping things simple, but the Inspiron 16 Plus comes away feeling more like your run-of-the-mill consumer notebook than the fairly powerful, somewhat costly machine it is.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

The new Inspiron 16 Plus is quite similar to last year's, but not identical. At 0.75 by 14.1 by 9.9 inches (HWD) and 4.51 pounds, the Dell is quite thin (tapering to an even thinner 0.67 inch at the front edge), though its 16-inch display and onboard components keep it from being super-light. Still, it's reasonably portable for a big-screen laptop.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Speaking of the screen, our test unit offers what Dell calls 3K resolution—3,072 by 1,920 pixels with a 16:10 aspect ratio. The IPS panel is nicely big with relatively thin bezels, though the colors and brightness (rated at 300 nits) don't blow me away. That's especially true compared with the amazing OLED displays we've seen, but the Inspiron's screen doesn't stand out even compared to other consumer laptops.

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The rest of the build is good but unremarkable. The keyboard provides comfortable typing with decent travel and feedback, though the keycaps feel a bit smaller than you'd expect in a laptop this size (especially since there's no numeric keypad).

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

The buttonless touchpad is also serviceable, but its carved-out structure is interesting: The pad's edges are defined by three grooves at left, right, and bottom, attached at the top like a wide diving board. There isn't nearly as much spring, of course, but clicks feel good despite the pad's pretty uncommon way of implementation. (The previous Inspiron 16 Plus had a traditional touchpad.)

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Rounding out the feature set is solid all-around connectivity. The left flank holds a USB 3.1 Type-A port, a USB-C port with Thunderbolt 4 support, and an HDMI video output. On the right, you'll find a headphone jack, an SD card slot, and another USB-A port. The laptop also supports Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Another standout feature is the webcam, which offers 1080p rather than the usual lowball 720p resolution. It makes a big difference for the end user, with video quality that's considerably sharper than average and which you'll appreciate in a do-it-all laptop on which you're certain to take some video calls.

Testing the Inspiron 16 Plus: A Capable All-Rounder

Our review unit is the starter model, which targets creatives and professionals so the baseline is high: a Core i7-12700H processor (six Performance cores, eight Efficient cores, 20 threads), 16GB of memory, a 512GB solid-state drive, and the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti GPU. It rings up at $1,599.99.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

If you're in the mood for upgrades, RAM maxes out at 32GB and storage goes up to 1TB. Gamers can bump the GPU up to an RTX 3060 for a notable increase in graphics performance. For our benchmark charts, we compared the 7620 to an array of competitors shown in the table below.

These laptops' components and (with some exceptions) prices are largely comparable, though they span a few different categories—if a system is a good value and can accomplish the tasks you need, don't fuss over its theoretical purpose! The Dell XPS 15 OLED is a prestige-screened desktop replacement, while the HP Spectre x360 16 is a 2-in-1 convertible. The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Gen 7 is a midrange gaming rig. Finally, the Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio is a versatile option for creatives who need touch input, but it comes at a high cost.

Productivity Tests

The main benchmark of UL's PCMark 10 simulates a variety of real-world productivity and content-creation workflows, measuring overall performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, web browsing, and videoconferencing. We also run PCMark's Full System Drive storage benchmark to test the throughput of the system's boot drive.

Three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs' Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).

Our final productivity test is workstation maker Puget Systems' PugetBench for Photoshop, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe's famous image editor to rate a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.

The Inspiron 16 Plus looked good in this round, proving one of the better performers in this highly capable bunch. The Dell isn't a mobile workstation with a Core i9 or AMD Ryzen 9 to crunch through giant datasets, but it's more than ready for any productivity task.

Graphics and Gaming Tests

We test Windows PCs' graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark: Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). We also try two OpenGL benchmarks from the cross-platform GFXBench, run offscreen to accommodate different display resolutions.

The GeForce RTX 3050 Ti isn't one of Nvidia's top gaming GPUs (witness the 3070 Ti results), but it's a huge step up from what integrated graphics can do. As with the CPU, you'll want stronger silicon if your work is graphics-intensive, but the Inspiron should suffice for anything short of serious CGI rendering.

Battery and Display Tests

We test laptops' battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100% until the system quits. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.

We also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).

Good news! Battery life is one of the Inspiron 16 Plus' strengths, with more than 15 hours of runtime in our video rundown. As with most desktop replacements, you'll probably want it plugged in for peak performance while working on demanding tasks, but since that's not always possible it's reassuring to know you can expect a full day of work on the go (or on your couch). As I said earlier, the display is underwhelming to the eye, with only middling color coverage and rather modest brightness.

A Little Bit of Everything

The Dell Inspiron 16 Plus is an appealing laptop in most aspects. It's reasonably priced, relatively portable, and mostly well put together, with solid performance and battery life. The screen is its biggest shortcoming, though more disappointing than outright poor. Otherwise, it checks most boxes for general users and can handle moderate workloads for creative pros.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Though competent across the board, the Inspiron isn't a standout. That's a soft negative, mainly centered on the display and a build that feels less premium than that of some competitors in the same price ballpark. But if you're concerned with functionality first, especially with a combination of a big screen and good battery life, this is a capable big-screen choice for general use.