My laptop journey: Dell Inspirion 7620 2 in 1

I got a refund for the Slimbook Executive 16 that I sent back. Although they refused to pay for the transport which, form what I read online, should have been covered by the refund. It was around 20 euros in total and I didn’t want to “debate” over it anyway. They were generally nice over email and I also removed their stickers from the laptop and perhaps I should not have done that. So it is ok.

Am happy that I returned it because I want to test other laptops. Now I am convinced I will order (to test) the Dell Inspirion 7620 2 in 1:

It has a 16inch screen at 16:10, something I fully love.
I has a good keyboard it seems with no nonsense numpad:

It is very well built I’ve heard. Fully aluminium. A bit heavy at 2kg, but because it is really sturdy I’v read. My laptop is 3kg….and shitty built 😁

It is also a convertible and has a touch screen + fingerprint reader:

Not that I’d use these much, but it is a nice bonus considering that I tweak TROMjaro for touchscreens too, and now I can directly test it on my machine and not rely on the old tablet that we have. I would also love to add a proper fingerprint reader support to TROMjaro, so now I can test it.

As for the internals, I will go for the i7-1260P CPU and perhaps the MX550 Nvidia GPU combo. Not as powerful as the Slimbook, but a lot more than my current laptop. The advantage is that this combo consumes a lot less power than what Slimbook had under the hood. Which means much better battery life (they say it lasts all day) + a much slimmer and usb-c power adapter that you can buy for like 20 Euros from any tech-store if you need to replace it.

So in a way although the Slimbook is half a kilo lighter, its charger is massive so….this Dell with such a small charger despite being heavier I would like it to be like that.

Another cool thing about this laptop is that it has dual channel RAM slots that you can upgrade. For a 2 in 1 this is quite unique. They say max 32GB in total, but I’ve heard you can put 64GB and I will try that. As for storage unfortunately it only has 1 m2 slot and they say that it supports up to 2TB, but again I’ve heard you can add up to 4TB. I will compromise to 2TB of storage if this laptop is as good as I read it is, but 4TB would be perfect for me….will have to try and see.

Actually the entire laptop seems quite easy to fix and upgrade:

And being a bit popular you can already find components despite being released just a few months ago. They have a detailed manual about how you can replace and upgrade parts.

Speaking of that, the awesome Framework 13.5inch laptop that is marketed as very repairable (and it is) clocks at around 1.400 Euros with the same CPU and no GPU. This Dell clocks around 1.300 Euros new via ebay and around 1k second hand via the same ebay. So it is much cheaper overall, seems very durable, much larger screen, yet still relatively easy to repair/upgrade.

Oh and I’ve read that the speakers on this Dell, 4 of which, are one of the best out there. Same goes for the webcam that even has a camera shutter for privacy.

Overall the laptop (in theory from what I read and see) seems quite slim, very robust, very powerful, decently upgradable and repairable, amazing screen, good keyboard, great speakers and good webcam, great battery life. At least in theory, let’s see in practice.

I will likely buy it second hand since this laptop is a very new model and so second hand units should be barely used. Getting it much cheaper allows me to buy a 4TB m2 and even some 64GB of RAM, if the laptop can handle all of that.

For now I will continue with the work on TROM II but I plan in February or so to order it and test.

Massive thanks to Roma and the few others who donated for my laptop campaign. Basically Roma made this possible.

The laptop is my sole enabler of everything you see TROM-made. Websites, video editing, TROMjaro and all of that. Therefore it is the most important piece of technology in my life, and thus I want to choose with care. Basically I would love to just have 1 laptop and that’s all.

Anyway, I am sharing these in case it helps others too.