Want bang for the buck? Look no further.
Any day a computer arrives at engineering.com feels like Christmas. We love to review the latest computing hardware for engineers. Our latest delivery was a Dell Precision 7560 mobile workstation. As you can tell from the number of mobile workstations reviewed on our site, they are our favored computing devices.
We are as excited as children opening presents. The anticipation is too great. With senses heightened, surprise, joy, disappointment register with admittedly irrational impact. We force ourselves to not to rip through the packaging since we return all review units in the same condition. That allows us to take note of the “out of the box experience.” The packaging is a clue as to which way a company leans. Is the packaging minimal in an Earth-friendly way, with little or no plastic? Or is it a beautiful, well-crafted package designed to make you feel that the same care applies to the product?
With the Dell Precision 7560, we have an outer box over an inner case made of eggshell material. Clearly, Dell is leaning towards Earth-friendly, choosing sustainability over style.
Pulling the 15” Dell Precision 7560 from the package, we realize this is no featherweight. The 7560’s “starting weight” is listed at 5.42 lbs, but this one has been eating. The 7560 is about 1.25” thick at its hinge. By comparison, Apple’s latest MacBook Pro is 16.8 mm thick (2/3”). The 180 watt power supply, not shown the product pages on Dell’s website, adds another pound. It’s nice to have a full-size keyboard with a numeric keypad but it will take up the whole seat-back tray, leaving no room for a mouse. It will be a snug fit in the laptop pouch of your knapsack, so you may have to resort to a checked-in bag for it.
It’s What’s Inside That Counts
The Dell Precision 7560 is no svelte and sporty sports car. It’s more like a black sedan. We expect the beauty and functionality on the inside. In this respect, the Dell does not disappoint. Once we figured out how to turn it on (more on that later), we were able to handle design tasks, even large assemblies, with graphics processors that didn’t stutter. It can run simulations far better than a lightweight laptop, though a mobile workstation generally did cause some impatience. In all fairness, we admit to impatience with all computers when it comes to simulation, even supercomputers. In a pinch, we can close the lid and move from office to kitchen table to coffee shop as the situation dictates. Try doing that with a desktop workstation.
The Dell Precision 7560 will remind you of the first electric car you tried as you search for a way to turn it on. The unit seems to lack an on/off button. For 5 minutes we looked for any way to turn it on, a red or white dot, a winking light, from all angles… until we saw a clue: a plastic peel-away around an unmarked button. You’ll feel like Indiana Jones pressing the stone in the wall as the wall gives way, the light shines and the 7560 comes to life.
Our unit arrived with the latest version of Windows, Windows 11, plus 32GB RAM and a 11th gen Intel core i7-11850H chip running at 2.50GHz, with 8 cores and 16 logical processors. It included an NVIDIA RTX A4000 laptop GPU. For storage, there was a Samsung 2TB solid state drive.
Alas, the 15-inch screen is not a touch screen. But after a few ineffective swipes at the screen we got used to it. Screen resolution maximum is 4K (3840 by 2160 pixels).
The keyboard initially looked like it was falling apart, but it was only that a thin keyboard bezel had come loose. The bezel was easily pressed back into place. Most mobile workstations don’t have a removable bezel but the Dell does. Removing the bezel exposes several screws that allow the unit to be serviced from above—definitely a convenience for the repair technician.
Keyboard and Use
The Dell Precision 7560 keyboard includes a numerical keypad. Really, why don’t all 15” mobile workstations (like my Lenovo P1) have one? Don’t computer manufacturers know engineers value numbers more than words? Instead, we are forced to have a calculator on hand. Simply incorporating a numerical keypad into the keyboard is a salute to the engineering community. But after getting used to the omission, it took some time to get used to the advantage. We found ourselves hitting the calculator button (positioned above the numlock key) when aiming for the delete key.
The 7560 has a big touchpad but no pointing device like the Lenovo’s red pointing device or the gray pointing device that appeared briefly on HP laptops. However, it was easy enough to add a Logitech wireless mouse.
The keyboard keys move up and down easily. Keys are chiclet style and typing words on the keyboard is comparable to typing on the vaunted ThinkPad keyboard.
The 7560 uses half keys for up and down cursor movement, a concession to space rather than convenience. While the letter keys are of standard spacing, the rest of the keys seems to be bit crowded. Overall, the standard keyboard layout (minus the numerical keypad) is a less than an inch less than the more spacious keyboard of the Lenovo P1, which has no numerical keyboard.
One day, my unit greeted me with zebra stripes where an article had once been, then flashed back and forth between stripes and the Word document. It seemed to be triggered by moving the cursor. The problem was fixed by rebooting. The zebra stripe feature did not return after the reboot.
Dell a Workhorse
This review took place while the memory of an Apple event was still fresh. If an Apple event is like a fashion show, with sexy products and electronic music blaring, a Dell event—if there even is one—would be more like a 4-H lineup of horses.
Apple’s events feature computers and devices that get better looking, thinner and lighter. Apple’s lightest laptop, the MacBook Air, was pulled out of an interoffice mail envelope at an Apple event years ago. Pulling a Dell Precision 7560 out of luggage would not be as impressive.
Dell is known for its value, and when measured by bang for the buck, a Dell always delivers. Go elsewhere if you are a slave to style and status, a fashionista, brand conscious, if you don’t care that quite a bit of your purchase cost provides a fat profit margin (Apple’s gross profit margin is over 40 percent, for example). Go somewhere else if you want to be sexy. Microsoft’s thin-and-in Surface Pro may look great by the pool like a fashion model, but like fashion models, don’t expect them to do a lot of work in the house.
As noted, the 7560 will be thick and heavy if you are used to a svelte business laptop like a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon or a two-in-one like Microsoft’s Surface Pro. But it will be a welcome change from the desktop workstation you left in the office. Bring your monitors home and you will have a sweet setup with the Dell Precision 7560. And you will be able to do real engineering, animations, handle large assemblies, even try generative design… all tasks too taxing for lightweight laptops.
How Much?
A 15” Dell Precision 7560 like our review unit, except with 512GB of storage (our unit had 2TB of storage) was listed at $3099 at the time of this writing after 16GB of RAM was added to make it comparable (for a total of 32GB RAM).
