I owe Dell an extra seven minutes of time on the work clock.
That’s because while I was working on this blog post I found myself watching a video of an old friend and his daughter playing each other in “Street Fighter” on YouTube. That now makes me one of 500 million viewers who watch online gaming content, according to research firm Newzoo.
“The games sector continues to be bigger than consumer spending on cinema box office, DVD and Blu-ray disc sales and rentals, online video services, physical music and streaming music services combined,” said industry analyst Piers Harding-Rolls of HIS Markit.
Yes, gaming has gone far beyond the basement, and Dell is ready to support the industry’s growth in many ways. From delivering the hardware needed to create the games, to the PCs on which you play them, to sponsorship of eSports leagues and professional gamers that bring the gameplay to even larger audiences.
Most gamers already know about our Alienware line. Twenty years of gaming experience pioneering specialty high-performance gaming PCs unrivaled in their engineering and innovation, has made Alienware a leading gaming brand that caters to gamers wanting a high-performance, premium PC gaming rig.
We’ve also just refreshed our entire Alienware notebook lineup and continue to push the limits when it comes to performance.
But, there are many out there who want a box that can hit 1080p, 30-60 frames per second, at a lower price point. Dell leveraged our deep understanding of PC gaming to create a system that retains all the great features of a Dell laptop backed by premium service and support while still being able to easily handle the latest gaming titles all at an affordable price. That’s why we were so excited to launch our new Inspiron 15 Gaming laptop that gives gamers a $799 system ready to play the latest games straight out of the box.
“We’ve selected the components [of the new Inspiron 15], so you have a 1050 or a 1050TI, i5 and i7 quad cores. We’ve built the thermal solution so it’s built around the max capacity of those components. It’s what you would expect from a real gaming box,” Bryan de Zayas, director of game strategy at Dell told VentureBeat at #ces2017. “It takes in air from the bottom and expels it out the back. It’s all built around the thermal solution, versus just putting parts into a box with the cheapest thermals and being done with it.”
As Trusted Reviews noted, rather than striving to be thin – like many of the laptops recently on display at CES— we’ve chosen to stuff this system with dual fans, oversized pipes and heat exchangers, as well as two speakers and a subwoofer.
Since I’m not the target audience for it, I reached out to a couple of gamers I know well — my nephews — to see what their reaction was to the new Insprion 15 Gaming laptop. As a college student and a recent college graduate, their budgets are understandably limited, so they definitely liked the price tag. I sent them the product details via Facebook Messenger and heard back almost immediately.
“I’m really impressed with this system. For $800 I think it’s fairly and competitively priced, too,” said Josh Pevehouse, who isn’t a fan of bulky or weirdly shaped systems. “The Inspiron 15 looks like a normal laptop, and since it weighs only 5.5 pounds it’s actually portable.”
“My laptop I’m using now weighs 8 – 10 pounds and it couldn’t even compare to the specs on this,” Jake Pevehouse noted. He also likes that it can game without necessarily looking like it. “Esthetically it is nice and plain which will appeal to consumers that don’t necessarily want to broadcast that they carry a gaming laptop for everyday use.”
I promise I didn’t coach them on those comments, but they were both quick to volunteer to test drive and review the system. Unfortunately for them, my role here at Dell doesn’t mean I have access to a couple of extra systems I could loan them. But, the one still in college is eligible for our student discount, making this laptop an even better deal!
[UPDATE 3/2/17: In case you’re interested in hearing more about the Inspiron 15 Gaming laptop’s performance, here’s a review that just came out from Linus Tech Tips.]
