The decision was made, and I settled on a gaming laptop.
It ultimately came down to momentum and laziness. My last device was a big, heavy, powerful notebook that I turned into the center of my digital life, and so I followed it up with a big, heavy, powerful notebook that I will turn into the center of my digital life. Time will tell if this was the right call. One thing that has definitely changed since 2011 is that cloud computing has made it so that so much more of the services we access and tasks we run can be performed with nothing more than a web browser. Whether or not this impacts just how much computing power I will actually need is yet to be seen.
I chose a 15-inch Dell G7. This particular model has all the hardware I wanted in the form factor I was looking for. I have seen are other variations of this laptop that have bigger monitors, or have a bigger SSD + worse video card, but this one checked all the boxes off for me.
Design wise, it’s not so bad. The outside is made out of the same gunmetal-esque material that I often see in the business laptops issued by my employer. The biggest difference between this and any other “business-class”-looking Dell is that the G7 has big (but subtle) cooling vents on the bottom, and the Dell logo is blue instead of grey/silver. You could probably bring this thing into an office and no one would think anything of it.
The sides of the device are lined up with delicious ports. I think I have everything I need on here, which is a huge relief.
Opened it up, and the laptop contains a big wide keyboard, complete with number pad. I thought this was a bit excessive at first, until I reflexively began using the number pad on several occasions. Guess I needed it more than I thought.
The keyboard layout is pretty good overall. The keys are all big enough, and they feel just clicky enough for my tastes. My wife also likes it because, according to her, it is significantly quieter than the keyboard on my broken Macbook Pro.
The keys also glow blue, which is the one other thing that makes this stand out from a business laptop. I saw one user review complain about this due to how blue light can affect the quality of your sleep, but if you are that worried about how well you sleep, you shouldn’t be getting on a computer that close to bedtime. Personally, I think it is a good compromise. I like the idea of light up keys in general, but hate the rainbow spectrums that some gaming laptops opt for. Dell picked a subtle color and stuck with it, and that’s fine with me.
Initially I had no luck with this laptop’s touchpad. Ostensibly it works the same as the Macbook Pro’s, which I love. Clicking down on the pad itself, rather than having to reach for a button, is a right way to make these things. There is a feature in which the very bottom of the touchpad has two small sections meant to simulate right and left click, and apparently my fingers wander down such that I constantly trigger unintentional right clicks. I ended up disabling this feature, in which case right clicks are done by using two fingers, just like on an MBP. This is also fine with me.
This laptop made me realize that I have become That Guy who cares about the size of screen bezels. It’s not that I insist on bezel-less displays. I just want them to be small and subtle if possible.
The G7’s display laughs at my request. I mean look at it (in the picture above, I mean):
Maybe that image stirs nothing within you, but for me it evokes the same animalistic reaction I used to have to old 1980’s/1990’s laptops where the screen was so small that the top half of the device was more bezel than screen.
Worse yet, the fact that they are so big means that despite having a 15 inch screen, the G7 is exactly the same size as my 17 inch Macbook Pro. Here they are stacked together. You can barely see the MBP underneath it. Here I was thinking I had something smaller than the MBP, something that would be easier to handle and carry, but instead I am right back to square one.
In the G7’s defense, however, it feels a touch lighter. Sturdier too. Despite the fact that it is made out of straight aluminum, the bottom cover of the Macbook Pro is very thin and very bendy. When held with one hand in the center, it always felt to me as if the sides of the device were trying to sag under the laptop’s weight. The G7 feels solid when held from anywhere.
In any case, once I am in the zone writing code or playing a game, the bezels will become invisible, and I will not care. But they still bug the crap out of me.
As for the quality of the display, I am not the right person to ask. I am unable to detect the subtle differences in color and sharpness that tech reviewers possess, and I have always felt that matte displays look washed out and/or fuzzy. I do know that I fired up Dragon Quest XI for all of five minutes and it looked anything but washed out and fuzzy, so I am probably crazy, and since the display shines where it counts most, I don’t feel like thinking about it with any greater depth.
The power cord for the G7 contains a big old power brick that feels like you could hurt someone with it. The cord itself is also not terribly long. You can easily plug this thing in from any desk, but you aren’t going to stretch it out to some far off outlet in your home without some help.
No review of a laptop is complete without an assessment of the battery life. I had to delay publishing this post to ensure I put the battery through enough paces to get a true sense of its durability. When doing web browsing and other basic tasks, it can get about four hours of life when Windows is running in battery saver mode. Cranking the battery mode up just one notch, AKA “Battery efficient” rather than “Battery saver”, it can lose 10% charge in less than 30 minutes doing the exact same tasks.
I don’t even know what it would do playing a game, as most people say that modern games will draw too much power for the battery to even accomodate.
Those aren’t the numbers I’d like to see, but to be honest, if I am working on something for more than four hours off the battery, I probably should be stopping sooner or later.
Overall, the look and feel of this device is not quite at the level of my old Macbook Pro, but is probably a better overall experience than a modern MBP can provide. The niceness of Apple’s gorgeous, near bezel-less displays is completely offset by the lack of ports and the flimsy keyboard they’ve now adopted.
Comparisons with MBP
I tried to avoid making direct comparisons to my old MBP, but there are a few I need to get off my mind.
Apple really does know how to make a good display. Even though my own unit was non-Retina, it still felt sharp and bright enough for my needs. And the fact that they crammed a 17 inch display in the same form factor as my new G7 feels like an accomplishment on Apple’s part.
Apple’s Magsafe Power bricks were a bit of genius that looks more and more brilliant the farther we get away from their existence. Aside from the actual Magsafe connector, the other smart thing about them is that they could be used in two different modes. You could either plug the power brick directly into the outlet (and thus keep it off of carpets and other hazardous materials), or you could plug in a (provided) extension cable that gave the cord significantly greater reach. Also, the brick itself was rather small.
However, the brick also had the propensity for running extremely hot, so much so that I often worried that the plastic was going to melt. I cannot be sure whether or not it was actually a potential hazard, but I treated it like one, which meant there were many occasions where I had to stop what I was doing because the MBP was low on juice, the power brick felt like a fireball, and the only places it could rest were the carpet or the couch.
Dell’s power brick can also get extremely hot. Whether it is as hot as the MBP brick I cannot say, but it feels a bit better if I hold it. The cord itself is weirdly designed. The brick is close to the middle than either end, which makes it hard for me to stretch it out to certain outlets without having to place it on a carpet or couch or something.
As I alluded to earlier, despite being built out of solid metal, the Macbook Pro felt a bit creaky at times. This was mainly due to the fact that the bottom cover - which unscrews so you can access the hardware - is made out of a very thin sheet of aluminum, one that will easily bend if you put a modest amount of pressure on it. I always thought this was weird, and it made constantly afraid of carrying it in any way that might cause the bottom to push onto the internal components.
In contrast, every surface on the G7 feels pretty sturdy. I don’t know if I would call it a “brick sh*thouse”, but “sturdy” seems about right.
Lingering Thoughts
I am very worried about the 128GB SSD filling up quickly. I don’t plan on installing anything on it other than productivity software, and probably source code for development, but then again I am not worried that I will fill it up, but that Windows will. Looks like I will either need to get back in the habit of performing Windows housekeeping, or upgrade the drive sooner rather than later.
While I think I could use this laptop for another eight year stretch, I am worried that I won’t have a say in the matter. This much beefy hardware in such a small enclosure is going to get hot, and I fear that some of the internal components might die out before I am done with them. Thankfully, it does have a dedicated vent system for cooling, and I can easily open it up and remove dust. I will have to do that, and hope for the best.
On a related note, I am debating whether to turn this laptop off when not in use. I always turned off my MBP, and while I cannot say for sure that doing so caused extra wear and tear, I did always wonder. It looks like the current guidance on whether or not it is worth it to turn off PCs is the same as it ever was - most people say yes, but there are all sorts of caveats that cast a shadow of doubt, and most “articles” that attempt to discuss the dilemma are terribly written.
For instance, many of them go on about how leaving a PC running will introduce a constant amount of wear and tear on things like fans, spinning disks, and displays - … ?!?!!? wait a minute, displays? Do these writers assume that people are leaving their computers on overnight with the monitor up and running and the OS at full blast? The answer to that question is “yes”, which is revealed when you see their casual, throwaway mentions of how most PCs have a sleep mode. I am confident that all modern PCs and monitors have sleep modes, and they all kick in by default.
I may be wrong, but I get the sense that leaving it on and letting it go into Sleep Mode will not put a huge strain on my electric bill or the internal parts. Plus, it looks like Win 10 has some maintenance operations that it only tries to perform when the device is left alone, including file cleanup and disk defragging. I would very much like that kind of stuff to be done so I don’t have to, so for now I will try leaving it on and seeing what happens.