For these professionals, there are Dell Precision workstations. The new 15- and 17-inch Precision 7550 and 7750 models received powerful hardware, but at the same time, a rather ergonomic design, due to which it is convenient to work with them in the office and at home, and even take them on a business trip. No joke, but here is 64 GB of memory, an Intel Xeon processor and a discrete NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 graphics card.
It's no secret that most often video and photo processing takes place on large and powerful desktop PCs. If we talk about professional equipment and filmmaking, then graphics calculation is sent to server clusters. But videographers who need to quickly edit a video, or designers who work with 3D graphics, most often use ordinary PCs and laptops. The pros and cons of a PC are obvious. Yes, you can install hardware of any capacity, use a couple of video cards, get upgrade options, and much more. But transferring a PC to a meeting room or, in the case of working from home, to the kitchen is simply impossible. A laptop offers more mobility, but often sacrifices power. Dell Precision has found a compromise between size and performance. This workstation is not much larger than a typical 15-inch office laptop, but its hardware is impressive, however.Let's start with the design, there is also something to look at.
Appearance
The Precision 7550 is very beautiful, made of metal, which gives us a solid case that does not bend and has no backlash. It is pleasant to hold a laptop, although you are unlikely to do it often.
The edges of the case are beveled, and the shape of the bottom is slightly tilted to make it easier to use the keyboard. Visually, it looks pretty nice, but at the same time strictly and neatly, most for a workstation.
The display hinges are quite tight to keep the screen from dangling, but balanced and the laptop does not jump on the table when you open the lid with one hand. It would seem that this is a small nuance, but in office laptops (and in any other) it is most often annoying. You come with a mug of coffee and you can't open your laptop normally.
Dell Precision 7550 case, and all surfaces around the keyboard are matte. This means that they are not fingerprinted. It is still necessary to wipe the laptop periodically, but it will always remain neat. The palm area is rubberized and hands do not slip on it, and prints do not remain either. Of course, this is more of a trifle, but if you have ever seen a laptop splattered with fingers, you understand what we are talking about.
As befits a powerful laptop, there are all the necessary ports for connecting peripherals. When working with video, you often need to use an additional monitor, external drives and other accessories. The charging port is proprietary and routed to the rear panel. There is also an HDMI 2.0 mini Display Port 1.4 port for connecting a screen or a projector, as well as RJ-45 Ethernet up to 1 Gbps. Yes, in offices you also sometimes need to connect to the Internet via wire. And at home it is often faster and more stable than Wi-Fi. The wireless modules here, by the way, are the most modern: Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1. In addition, there are cooler grilles at the back for exhausting hot air. In fact, there are ports on the back, to which wires are connected for a long time and they do not need to be turned on and off often. This is convenient because they will not get in the way on the table.
On the left, the Dell Precision 7550 has two USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports, so you can connect smartphones and tablets here, as well as monitors that support this standard. There is also a slot for smart cards, which are needed in organizations for secure access to documents or VPN.
But if you have so far only conventional USB-A wires, they haven't forgotten about you. On the right side of the laptop are two regular USB 3.2, a 3.5mm headset port, an SD card slot and a Noble Lock slot.
At the bottom, almost half of the space is occupied by the fan grill. The cooling of this laptop should be powerful, because iron here is serious and under loads it can heat up. Special rubber feet were also made for air outlet. They raise the laptop slightly above the table and prevent it from sliding, and at the same time give the air space to exit. On the side you can see the grilles of miniature speakers, which even give out a good sound if you need to show some video to colleagues.
In short, the Dell Precision 7550 looks like an office laptop, but with the most thoughtful details and nuances. Some moments are not even visible at first glance, but when you start working with it, it becomes clear that the engineers have thought through everything to the smallest detail. And of course, this workstation looks better than the usual matte black notebooks that are usually found in offices, there is still style here.
Display, camera and keyboard
There are several variations of what the display will be in this laptop, but the size of all is 15.6 inches. The main differences are in brightness (from 220 nits to 500 nits), resolution (Full HD or UHD), and whether the display will be touch-sensitive. In the review, we have a UHD variant, 3840x2160 with a brightness of 500 nits and a color gamut of 100% Adobe RGB.
| Display type | 15.6 FHD | 15.6 FHD | 15.6 FHD | 15.6 UHD | 15.6 UHD |
| Panel technology | WVA (Wide view angle) | WVA (Wide view angle) | WVA (Wide view angle) | HDR400 | HDR400 |
| Resolution | 1920x1080 | 1920x1080 | 1920x1080 | 3840x2160 | 3840x2160 |
| Brightness | 200 nits | 500 nits | 500 nits | 500 nits | 600 nits |
| Color spectrum | 45% NTSC | 100% DCIP3 | 100% DCIP3 | 100% Adobe | 100% Adobe |
| Contrast | 600: 1 | 600: 1 | 600: 1 | 1500: 1 | 6000: 1 |
The screen is matte, which looks great when working from home or office without any glare. The response time is 35 milliseconds, so it will not be very comfortable to play, but this is not required from a workstation. All display options open to approximately 135 degrees.
The display is bright and crisp, even if judged by the personal feelings of the Moscow office employees who use such devices. It is ideal for working with photos and videos, but if necessary, you can connect a professional monitor, there are plenty of connectors for this. In this model it is installed.
But we took care of the settings, so this laptop has a Premier Color utility for managing the screen color. You can calibrate colors, adjust brightness and contrast, gamma, and even color temperature. However, the easiest way is to choose from the preset presets. You can also customize a different color profile for each individual application.
Directly above the display sits a camera, which is needed for making calls to Teams, Zoom, or any other conferencing app. In it, we made a special cover that can physically cover the camera. Many users feel more comfortable when the webcam is closed. In addition, this camera is able to recognize faces and distance to a person. This means that it can be used to log into Windows 10. In practice, it is very convenient: you just sit in front of the laptop, open the lid and it enters Windows 10 itself.
The keys here are full-sized, made according to the island type, there is also a full-size numeric keypad NumPad. There is also a two-level backlight, so that it is convenient to work with dim light or without it at all.
All keys are rubberized, due to which there is practically no noise when typing, clicks are heard very weakly. The key travel is average and the impact is felt, it is a pleasure to type text on it.
The touchpad is slightly offset to the left of the center of the laptop. It is large, supports multitouch, and the buttons have a soft smooth travel and they are also rubberized. There are three buttons, the central one performs the function of pressing the mouse wheel.
The power button is also located on the keyboard in the upper right corner. It has a tighter stroke than the rest of the keys, so you can't accidentally press it. In some modifications of this workstation, a fingerprint scanner is built into the button.
Iron and performance
It is one of the world's most powerful 15 "mobile workstations. The Dell Precision 7550 comes in a variety of configurations. Here everyone chooses for himself what he needs. There are 7 options for processors only:
- Intel Xeon W-10855M, 12MB Cache, 6 Core, 2.80GHz up to 5.10GHz, 45W, vPro
- Intel Xeon W-10885M, 16MB Cache, 8 Cores, 2.40GHz to 5.30GHz, 45W, vPro
- 10th Gen Intel Core i5-10400H, 8MB Cache, 4 Cores, 8 Threads, 2.6GHz to 4.6GHz, 45W
- 10th Gen Intel Core i7-10750H, 12MB Cache, 6 Core, 2.60GHz to 5GHz, 45W
- 10th Gen Intel Core i7-10850H, 12MB Cache, 6 Cores, 12 Threads, 2.7GHz to 5.1GHz, 45W
- 10th Gen Intel Core i7-10875H, 16MB Cache, 8 Cores, 16 Threads, 2.3GHz to 5.1GHz, 45W
- 10th Gen Intel Core i9-10885H, 16MB Cache, 8 Cores, 16 Threads, 2.4GHz to 5.3GHz, 45W
For video cards, about the same choice, it can be NVIDIA Quadro models T1000 4GB, T2000 4GB, RTX3000 6GB, RTX4000 8GB or RTX5000 16GB. And there is also an integrated Intel UHD Graphics 630 or P630 adapter. For drives and memory, you can choose almost any option. But the drives will be NVMe and the memory will be DDR4. The sample for the test, for example, was supplied with two NVMes with 512 GB and 64 GB of RAM.
In addition, there is a discrete NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 graphics card installed. It is based on the same chip as the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070. But the Quadro has reduced clock frequencies and memory bandwidth. This graphics card is specially designed for powerful laptops, so it works perfectly in this mobile workstation. And it comes in handy for video processing. When working with graphics packages lately, it is important that there is a powerful video card with a lot of memory (here its 6 GB, that's enough), as well as a fast processor.
Intel Xeon W-10885M is the processor here. This is a powerful Comet Lake-H model released in Q2 2020 specifically for laptops. This eight-core variant tops the lineup. 16MB cache, 2.4GHz base clock, but TurboBoost boosts up to 5.3GHz. Compared to the Core line, the Xeon has support for ECC memory, vPro platform and Intel Trusted Execution Technology.
Among other things, this Dell Precision 7550 has optimization software. First of all, you need to use SupportAssist, which installs the necessary drivers and updates them, and also checks the health of the equipment.
There is also a dedicated Dell Optimizer program. It allows you to adjust the sound depending on the environment, optimize demanding software, power consumption, as well as a distance sensor for timely locking of the laptop and ensuring security.
To check how well this hardware copes with its tasks, we conducted several tests in popular benchmarks. For starters, 3DMark Fire Strike, which tested the graphics in the game, gave 3590 points. According to the rating of the benchmark itself, it almost catches up with gaming laptops. Overall, a very good result, especially considering that the Quadro 3000 is not a gaming video card, but a professional card for work. But let's compare it with the Dell G5 5590 gaming laptop, which has an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 2070 Max-Q.
PCMark, in addition to gaming tests, also checks the capabilities during video conferencing, web surfing and other office tasks. In one test, it overtook the gaming G5 5590, while in the other it fell slightly behind. As expected, this laptop is more powerful than office notebooks in benchmarks, and can even compete with gaming laptops, but a good PC build can overtake it.
Geekbench also confirms that this laptop can handle any office task with ease and much more. Its performance sits between 2020 gaming laptops and gaming PCs.
Synthetic tests, of course, are interesting and indicative, but still why not check the Dell Precision 7550 on real tasks, and even compare it with a rather powerful PC that is now used to work with video. Editing video would be too boring, even from the performance characteristics of the workstation it is clear that it will cope with it. But working with complex graphics is interesting. Therefore, we gave a laptop to try a person who is engaged in 3D animation, graphics, modeling, etc.
When working with video and graphics, absolutely everything is important. You need a top processor, video card, and the more memory, the better. I work in Adobe After Effects, so this is what I selected for the test. Moreover, it is one of the most popular and widespread applications. Let's take a loaded project and send it to render on a PC and a Dell Precision 7550.
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Dell Precision 7550. 19 24 . After Effects (19201080, .mov) 21 23 . .avi 19 48 . , . , , , , , 30. , 10-15% . , , , , NVIDIA RTX 3080, .
In general, I'm really a little surprised. I didn’t expect the laptop to be able to match or even beat my computer in 3D video processing. But now I really ask myself two questions. Firstly, isn't it time to upgrade your PC, and secondly, shouldn't I buy a compact laptop instead of a huge computer.
Thus, thanks to modern hardware, a large amount of memory and NVMe drives, this laptop was able to overtake a productive PC. At the same time, during the rendering, it was possible to use other applications, the laptop did not slow down, but only the ventilation was a little louder. This is not surprising, the processor warmed up to 100 degrees, and the video card to 70. By the way, due to the bevel of the rear edge of the laptop, it can be placed even close to the wall, there will still be a place for heat dissipation. Although it is better to leave a distance, because the exhaust air is extremely hot.
The temperature of the keyboard only in the NumPad area and the right palm area was slightly increased during the rendering. This does not cause any discomfort and you can safely continue to work, for example, with text or read some article on the Internet. You can, of course, watch the video, but this will most likely affect the speed of project processing.
Yes, there are fewer upgrade options and you cannot replace the processor or video card if desired. But you can increase the RAM or change NVMe drives for more capacious ones, if you chose not the top ones when buying. But the capacity of the main iron with a margin will be enough for 2-3 years. Given the fact that this is a laptop and it has all the advantages of this form factor, the conclusions are obvious. It is no longer necessary to build a gaming PC to handle heavy projects. Dell Precision workstations can handle this easily.
The laptop uses a 6-cell, 95Wh Li-ion battery. Of course, autonomy is not the most important parameter in workstations. Nevertheless, sometimes you need to work somewhere without access to an outlet, and we have not forgotten about it. In power saving mode, the battery lasted almost 3 hours, but this with the discrete graphics card enabled. If you do not enable optimization, then the laptop will work a little over 2 hours. Such a stock is enough even for a small flight in an airplane to type some text, watch a video or edit a photo. If you reduce the brightness to 50% and just sit in the browser with the discrete graphics disabled, you can increase the operating time to 6-8 hours. And this time is already enough even for a transatlantic flight. The laptop fully charges in 3 hours.
When purchasing a laptop, you can also choose between 68Wh and 95Wh, both of which support fast charging. The less capacious battery, of course, weighs a little less, the difference is 200 grams.
Summary
This workstation is needed if you need high power, but you need mobility or there is not a lot of space for installing a PC. There are modern interfaces and there is a possibility of a small upgrade. For security, there is a smart card slot, as well as authorization via camera or fingerprint. It has a powerful Intel Xeon processor and NVIDIA discrete graphics, so this is truly one of the most productive laptops available today.
Dell Precision 7550 is perfect for corporate use. It has many options and you can collect the desired configuration for any resource-intensive tasks. The laptop has several security features such as a Noble Lock, a smart card slot, or a Windows login with a face or fingerprint. Such a workstation is also suitable for organizing a remote workplace, which is especially important in the current period. Among other things, Dell provides a warranty and onsite service or even home service for this workstation. You can choose the option for 3, 4 or 5 years. If you purchase a ProSupport support package, the laptop will be serviced directly at the installation site and the next business day after the request.
Even when compared to a PC that currently processes video and graphics, the Dell Precision 7550 performed better and produced a video a couple of minutes faster. Such a powerful laptop will come in handy just for videographers and designers, as well as other professionals who work with resource-intensive demanding software. But at the same time, they want to maintain mobility and take their work computer to meetings, or simply not be tied to one workplace.