Precision 7530/7540 experiences?

[Wasmachineman_NL]

Has anyone got any experience with the newer Dell Precision Mobile Workstations? I'm thinking of retiring my ThinkPad P50 (which is garbage btw) within a year for a 7530 or 7540.

Few q's: is the cooling any good in the newer Precisions? How's the keyboard and battery life? The STH review said battery life was atrocious in the Xeon/RTX5000 equipped 7540, but I guess that's because of the 4k screen.

 

[Navy_BOFH]

I use a 7510 - based on the same design - so this might help a little...

1) It is a complete boat anchor for a laptop still. Durable... but a boat anchor.
2) Keyboard is not Lenovo legendary quality - but it is "good". Coming from a P50 you will still understand the annoyance of the numpad right next to the rest of the keyboard.
3) Battery life is TERRIBLE. And there are no extended battery options for it. My model is a Xeon quad core, FHD, SSD, 32GB RAM - and I get 3 hours on average. It lives with a power supply.
4) Cooling is decent - never gets actually "hot" in my lap - but the fans will spin up and you will hear them in an office setting... at least on my model.

I know the newer models made strides in tech - but since it is the same general chassis design I thought I would share my experiences. We are moving to the XPS-style Precisions because of battery and weight. I have a backpack that swallows any 15" laptop but this one I have to squeeze in there like a sardine can. They are just not meant to be really.... "mobile".

 

[Wasmachineman_NL]

I use a 7510 - based on the same design - so this might help a little...

1) It is a complete boat anchor for a laptop still. Durable... but a boat anchor.
2) Keyboard is not Lenovo legendary quality - but it is "good". Coming from a P50 you will still understand the annoyance of the numpad right next to the rest of the keyboard.
3) Battery life is TERRIBLE. And there are no extended battery options for it. My model is a Xeon quad core, FHD, SSD, 32GB RAM - and I get 3 hours on average. It lives with a power supply.
4) Cooling is decent - never gets actually "hot" in my lap - but the fans will spin up and you will hear them in an office setting... at least on my model.

I know the newer models made strides in tech - but since it is the same general chassis design I thought I would share my experiences. We are moving to the XPS-style Precisions because of battery and weight. I have a backpack that swallows any 15" laptop but this one I have to squeeze in there like a sardine can. They are just not meant to be really.... "mobile".

Ergo, just get a P53 instead if you value battery life and a good keyboard. Ecch, and I love Precisions. What went wrong with Dell?

 

[Netwerkz101]

I have no real way to respond objectively.
I have upgraded from an Inspiron 1720 to an XPS 17 (L702X), to a Precision 7510.

I have a Precision 7540 and I love it.
Going from non-island keyboards to the island keys on the Precision laptops was strange.
I am no real typist, so it just took a while to get used to it. No technical issues with the keyboard though.

The battery life is decent to me ... up to 5 hours depending on what I am doing.
I have the Intel 9750H 6-core CPU, FHD 1080p display with no discrete GPU - just Intel P530.
(My 7510 has the lowest level AMD FirePro offered (w5170m?))
I have one NVMe SSD and a 2.5" SSD as well - so nothing spinning other than fans.

Fan noise is pretty much non-existent most of the time .... when I spin up a bunch of VMs, I can hear the fan
kick in but it's extremely low noise (in comparison to my XPS 17 (L702X) which would distract folks in an office/library setting).

Again .. this is all relative and subjective input ... the more stuff you add and the more performance to try to pull out of it,
the worse the battery life gets and the more the fans kick in.

They are meant to be desktop replacements that you can take with you as needed.

My only reason for moving from the 7510 to the 7540 was the new need for Thunderbolt/USB 3.1 ports which I didn't want on the 7510.

 

[Terry Kennedy]

Ergo, just get a P53 instead if you value battery life and a good keyboard. Ecch, and I love Precisions. What went wrong with Dell?

Dell seems to be aping Apple with their latest keyboards - non-sculpted 90-degree-sided keys. I'm still using an old "Ultimate" Studio 1558 because it has the (optional) backlit keyboard with (standard) sculpted keys. I do know that those older Studios were built by Quanta while the new systems were built by someone else (perhaps Foxconn, who builds for Apple, perhaps another company / companies).