Dell G3 Gaming Laptop Review : Gaming And More

Dell is well known for its Alienware gaming laptops. However, Dell is also pushing out machines that aren’t dedicated gaming machines, but deliver great gaming performance along with all-round usability. The Dell G3 is a part of this series of laptops and while it does not look like a traditional gaming laptop, it does pack some impressive specs on paper.

Design & Build

The design of the Dell G3 is sober for a gaming laptop, to say the least. It does not have any flashy lights, heavy accents, nor does it feel like a gaming laptop. On the outside, it carries the Dell logo and a few ports. The laptop has an SD Card port, 2 SuperSpeed USB 3.1 ports, 1 USB 3.1 port, 1 HDMI port, 1 ethernet port, a headphone hack and the charging port. Relatively thin for a gaming laptop at 22.7 mm, the Dell G3 weighs in at just 2.5 Kg.

The subtle design is good in other environments or for users who do not perform heavy gaming. The design of the laptop ensures that it offers the perfect balance, appearing like a regular laptop.

Display

The Dell G3 has a 15.6 inch 1920 x 1080 IPS LED display. Being an IPS display, it has good viewing angles.The display has an anti-glare coating on it as well. The anti-glare coating is great as it protects your eyes from strain caused by continuous exposure to the display. However, the anti-glare coating is probably one of the most ‘glaring’ problems of the laptop. The coating seems to dim down the brightness of the display, and also makes it appear more dull. This is clearly visible while gaming as one feels like the laptop is not on full brightness.

Not only does this affect the gaming experience on the laptop, the issue spreads out to other utilities as well. If you are in a brightly-lit environment, or even outdoors, the display will be hard to view. Another drawback of the coating is that it does not produce an accurate representation of the colours. So if you’re a designer or an editor, using softwares such as Photoshop or Illustrator would be an issue.

Keyboard

The Dell G3 has a full-sized keyboard which adds to your convenience. The keyboard is well spread out and the keys have good travel in between them. The feedback from the keys is also good, fit for both intense gaming and every day business affairs. The keyboard is also equipped with a num pad which is extremely helpful for both gaming as well as day-to-day office activities. The trackpad could have been a bit bigger, considering it needs to be used for gaming and the buttons on the trackpad are a little mushy. So fi you’re using the trackpad, we recommend using touch rather than the physical buttons on it.

The keyboard also has a blue backlight which gives that ‘gaming machine’ feel to the laptop. Again, the colour on the keyboard backlight is not very flashy and is good enough to be used in all environments.

Gaming

On paper, the Dell G3 has top of the line specifications. It has an 8th gen, Intel i7 processor which reaches upto 4.1 GHz with Turbo Boost. It runs on 8 GB of DDR4 RAM and has 128 GB of SSD storage, with an additional 1 TB HDD. For graphics, it is supported by the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti with a 4 GB GDDR5 graphics memory. All of this should make the G3 a gaming beast, but unfortunately, it isn’t.

While games such as PUBG run pretty smoothly at a high graphics configuration, the laptop does struggle with heavier games. For example, it could run Wolfenstein II and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey at mid graphics and at 30 fps. Also considering the fact that Wolfenstein II is relatively old. Adding to this is the average display which really took away the pleasure of a good gaming experience .

You can solve this issue by swapping out the 1 TB HDD for a faster and more efficient SSD. On the other hand, you can just run your games out of the existing 128 GB SSD on the laptop, or even upgrade that SSD to a higher storage capacity.

Perfromance

The battery life on the laptop is decent, with it providing around an hour and a half with intense gaming and around 5-6 hours of light use. You can also disable the graphics card while not in use, which will add on its battery life.

The G3 also has a dedicated webcam, with a 720p resolution. While the camera quality is not brilliant, it is enough for basic video calling and Skype sessions. The laptop also has two microphones out front, which capture good sound and can be helpful if you forget to carry your gaming headsets around. The G3 also has 2 front firing speakers, which are tuned by Waves MaxxAudio, giving out good quality of sound, which makes for an immersive experience while gaming or viewing content.

Serviceability

A huge advantage that the laptop does offer is the ability to swap out and upgrade components in case you want to upgrade something or simply change out faulty or worn out parts. The bottom has all the components laid out in a very accessible fashion. You can easily swap out your HDD for an SSD, for example.

Verdict

While the Dell G3 is not a hardcore gaming laptop, it fulfils what it sets out to do. It is an all-round performer with the ability to be used for day-to-day operations as well as a higher level of gaming. However, if you are someone who is looking for something that will exclusively be used as a gaming machine, the Dell G3 is not for you. But if you’re in the market for a feature packed, overall well performing laptop, this is probably the machine for you. At a price of Rs 84,990, this is a pretty good deal for its price.