Dell Inspiron 13 7386 2-in-1 review – captivating execution at a premium price


Yet another 13-inch convertible! Dell Inspiron 13 7386 2-in-1 has arrived in our office, bearing Intel’s brand new Whiskey Lake (Coffelake refresh) CPUs and NVMe storage devices, everything about it sounds promising, but the competition is challenging. Lenovo Yoga 730, which we recently reviewed, is a strong contender, not to mention the classy Envy x360 by HP.

It also has to answer some questions. Like, is the Core i5-8265U a worthy refresh of the Core i5-8250U or it is just another marketing trick created to take the money out of people’s pockets. At first glance, the Inspiron 13 7386 2-in-1 has the looks but has it got the guts? Let’s find out!

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/dell-inspiron-13-7386-2-in-1/

Contents


Specs Sheet


What’s in the box?

The packaging contains a compact 45W charger, some useless manuals and the laptop itself.


Design and construction

As we’ve said before, Dell Inspiron 13 7386 2-in-1 is very pretty. There is just something about it that makes it feel premium. When you touch it, when you lift it. The way it has a small footprint but also some heft to it. Enough superlatives. It is 13.7mm thick and weighs 1.4 kg. Yes, it is a little more than its competition, but in this case, it can never be too much. If you have read our full review of the Inspiron 14 5482 2-in-1 you know that, in our opinion, it is too heavy for a convertible. But keep in mind that this device is some 6mm thinner and 350 grams lighter than that.

The all aluminum body takes different shapes thanks to the hinges, which, in our opinion, are a little softer than they should be. There are some vibrations when you use the touchscreen in laptop mode. This touchscreen, however, is super responsive and supports Windows Ink and proprietory pens.

Moving down a little bit we find the other, more conservative, input devices. With a short travel and not very clicky feedback, the keyboard feels average. However, like its bigger cousin, it is illuminated. Just in front of the spacebar, you can see the touchpad. It feels okay – nothing special but it is more than fine for us. In the top right corner of the base is the fingerprint reader. It is probably the same sensor as in the Inspiron 14 5482 2-in-1, as it is exceptionally fast.

This device is equipped with bottom-firing speakers. It also breathes air from a relatively big vent on the bottom while hot air comes out of the device from its back.

WidthLengthHeightWeight
Dell Inspiron 13 7386 2-in-1308 mm (12.09″)212 mm (8.50″)13.7 mm (0.55″)1.40 kg (3.1 lbs)
Lenovo Yoga 730 (13)307 mm (12.09″)216 mm (8.50″)13.9-14.1 mm (0.55″)1.12 kg (2.5 lbs) (-20%)
HP Envy 13 x360307 mm (12.09″)215 mm (8.46″)14.9 mm (0.59″) (+9%)1.30 kg (2.9 lbs) (-7%)

Ports

Dell has been pretty modest with the connectivity options of this device. We only have the power plug, an HDMI connector and a USB Type-C 3.1 (Gen. 1) with DisplayPort support on the left, and a regular USB 3.1 (Gen. 1) and a 3.5mm audio jack on the right. Sadly, no SD card reader nor Ethernet connection.


Disassembly, upgrade options and maintenance

Dell Inspiron 13 7386 2-in-1 is pretty easy to disassemble. Removing the 7 Phillips head screws result in a slight movement of the bottom plate. This movement allows you to easily stick a plastic pry tool inside, and pop the plate open.

As you can see, the heat pipe is a tad narrower than the one on its bigger brother. However it cools only a CPU here, so there should not be any problems in this aspect.

Moving our heads a little downwards reveals the sad truth of modern thin devices – soldered RAM chips. Make your choices carefully here because you can’t upgrade this one. However, this is at the expense of not one but two M.2 SSD slots! How cool is that for a 13-incher?!

Furthermore, at the bottom, we can see a long, but thin 38Wh battery unit. There was probably a little bit more room for battery here, but Dell played it safe, not pushing the boundaries too much.

In the last image, you can see how Dell has implemented the hinge mount on this laptop. It has four mounting points to the chassis and the arm is pretty long. This is definitely a strong connection here.


Display quality

Our unit of Dell Inspiron 13 7386 2-in-1 is equipped with a Full HD IPS touchscreen panel, IVO M133NWF4 (IVO0536 / 8F4J5). Its diagonal is 13.3-inch (33.78 cm), and the resolution – 1920 х 1080p. Additionally, the screen ratio is 16:9, the pixel density – 166 ppi, their pitch – 0.153 х 0.153 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 53 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels).

Viewing angles are comfortable We offer images at different angles to evaluate the quality.

The maximum measured brightness is 210 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 188 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 23% in the bottom right corner. This is unacceptably high value. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 5910K (average) – a little warmer than the 6500K temperature for sRGB, which is definitely not bad. The average color temperature through the grey scale before profiling is 5940K.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from uniformity perspective. The illustration below shows how matters are for operational brightness levels (approximately 140 nits) – in this particular case at 67% Brightness (White level = 143 cd/m2, Black level = 0.10 cd/m2).
Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color sensitive work (a maximum tolerance of 2.0 ). The contrast ratio is excellent – 1400:1 (1060:1 after profiling).

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction of the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted line shows Dell Inspiron 13 7386 2-in-1’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers 51% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

Below you can compare the scores of Dell Inspiron 13 7386 2-in-1 with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 27 ms.


Health impact – PWM / Blue Light

PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

Dell Inspiron 13 7386 2-in-1 uses PWM to adjust its screen brightness for every level, except the maximum. While it does that with a relatively high frequency, it can still be harmful when exposed for a long period of time. However, you can eliminate that by installing our Health-Guard profile.

Blue light emissions

Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

You can see the levels of emitted blue light on the spectral power distribution (SPD) graph.

Conclusion

Having a super high contrast ratio and a Full HD resolution makes the screen of Dell Inspiron 13 7386 2-in-1 appear super crisp. However, it is also a bit dim for outdoor usage, which is definitely not helped by the glossy screen coating. In addition to that, it uses PWM-adjustment of its brightness, unless you are at the maximum level. A shortcoming is also the fact that you can see only half of the colors available on the Internet. However, if you would like to make them a little more accurate or want to eliminate the PWM you can get try our profiles.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Dell Inspiron 13 7386 2-in-1 configurations with 13.3″ IVO M133NWF4 (IVO0536 / 8F4J5) (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS panel.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

除了获得高效和健康友好的配置文件,购买LaptopMedia的产品,您还可以支持我们实验室的发展,我们在实验室测试设备,以产生最客观的评论。

办公室工作

Office Work应该主要由那些花大部分时间看文本、表格或仅仅是浏览的用户使用。该配置文件旨在通过保持平坦的伽玛曲线(2.20)、本机色温和精确的色彩来提供更好的清晰度。

设计与游戏

本资料针对专业处理色彩的设计师,以及游戏和电影。设计与游戏》将显示面板发挥到了极致,使其在白点D65的网页和高清电视的sRGB IEC61966-2-1标准中尽可能准确。

卫生保健

Health-Guard消除了有害的脉宽调制(PWM),并减少了影响我们的眼睛和身体的负蓝光。 由于它是针对每个面板量身定制的,因此可以保持色彩在视觉上的准确性。 Health-Guard模拟纸张,因此大大减轻了眼睛的压力。

以33%的折扣获得所有3份资料


Sound

Dell Inspiron 13 7386 2-in-1 is equipped with relatively good sounding speakers. While the highs are pretty clear, while the low and mid tones have some deviations.


Drivers

All of the drivers and utilities for Dell Inspiron 13 7386 2-in-1 can be found on: https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/inspiron-13-7386-2-in-1-laptop/drivers

Storage performance

Our configuration of Dell Inspiron 13 7386 2-in-1 came with an SK Hynix BC501 256GB NVMe drive. While it is behind the best SSDs on the market by much, it is still far better than many of the non-NVMe devices. Keep in mind that the choice of a storage device is strongly dependent on the region you live in.

SSD model (480-512GB variants)Max.Seq.Read (GB/s)Max.Seq.Write (GB/s)IOPS 4K ReadIOPS 4K WriteLatency Read (ms)Latency Write (ms)
SK Hynix BC501 (NVMe)1.440.819430253970.0440.035
Toshiba KBG30ZMS256G1.480.248091198201.5640.309
Samsung PM9813.411.8812199279610.0400.035
LITE-ON CA3-8D512-Q113.181.669864251360.1710.041
Intel Pro 6000p Series1.830.597792282660.0750.033

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. Obviously, as a 13-inch device, Inspiron 13 7386 doesn’t have a lot of space for a huge battery. Hence, the device has just 38Wh of juice.

This is the reason that the battery life of the laptop is average. We got around 7 hours of web browsing and 5 hours of video playback. Given that the Inspiron 13 7386 2-in-1 is definitely not a typical gaming device, you would be considered a Spartan if you decide to do some gaming, especially on battery power. However, it will all end after an hour and a half.

为了模拟真实情况,我们使用自己的脚本自动浏览了70多个网站。

对于这样的每一次测试,我们都使用相同的高清视频。

我们循环使用F1 2017的内置基准,以模拟现实生活中的游戏。


CPU options

The new Whiskey Lake processors have made their way to the Inspiron 13 7386 2-in-1 devices. Our unit was equipped with the Core i5-8256U which works on a base frequency of 1.60 GHz and a maximum Turbo one at 3.90 GHz.


GPU options

Intel UHD Graphics 620 is a refresh of the HD Graphics 620 found as an integrated solution in many ULV Kaby Lake processors. UHD Graphics 620 is codenamed “Kaby Lake R U GT2” and it’s a part of the Gen 9.5 generation.

Intel UHD Graphics 620 has roughly the same performance as HD Graphics 620, depending on the other components in the system. UHD Graphics 620’s performance is similar to that of AMD Radeon R5 M420X and NVIDIA GeForce 910M/920M.


Gaming tests

We got the usual framerates for an Intel Graphics UHD 620 graphics card.

cs-go-benchmarks

CS:GOHD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Medium (Check settings)HD 1080p, MAX (Check settings)
Average FPS60 fps34 fps16 fps

DOTA 2HD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Normal (Check settings)HD 1080p, High (Check settings)
Average FPS75 fps37 fps18 fps

GTA-V-benchmarks

Grand Theft Auto V (GTA 5)HD 768p, Normal (Check settings)HD 768p, High (Check settings)HD 768p, Very High (Check settings)
Average FPS32 fps– fps– fps

Temperatures and comfort

Max CPU load

In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.

Average core temperature (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

Intel Core i5-8265U (15W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
3.25 GHz @ 90°C2.04 GHz @ 77°C2.10 GHz @ 75°C

As it is our first look at this processor we were pretty eager for this test. At first, we were very impressed by the 3.25 GHz the processor run at the beginning. However, shortly after the start, the frequencies plummeted down to 2.04 GHz, obviously because of reaching temperature thresholds. Thus, the temperature dropped from 90C on average for the first period, to 77C for the second. Interestingly, our measures at the end of the test showed even lower temperature – 75C and slightly higher clock speeds – 2.10 GHz. Sadly, this is still lower than what most devices with the “older” Core i5-8250U do.

When you look at the cooling system of this device you can easily draw conclusions about the end results of this test. Small heat pipe plus a tiny fan result in no good thermal efficiency. Moreover, we heard the processor screaming inside of the tight chassis… Well, at least that’s what we thought at the beginning, however it happened to be the coil whine, which is pretty frequent in this machine.


Verdict

Dell has almost reached Lenovo the edge in the battle for 13-inch convertibles. This Inspiron is one of the devices that you feel a connection with. You know you are holding a premium product when it is in your hands. We can easily compare the Inspiron 13 7386 2-in-1 to its Latitude cousin – the 7390 2-in-1. At a cheaper price, you can feel the cost-cutting, but only when you boot up the device and dig a little deeper. However, in order to do things fair and square, there is another contender that should be brought in – the Lenovo Yoga 730 (13).

Performance-wise, the new Core i5-8265U fares pretty well against the i7-8550U, found in the Yoga 730. We can comfortably say that the difference is negligible. What was weird at this moment was that despite the Yoga 730 (13) features two fans and a larger heat pipe, its thermals showed arguably worse results in our temperature tests. However, the two devices were super responsive and didn’t stutter for a second so the battle will not be decided here.

If we took a look at the displays of these devices, however, the Dell Inspiron 13 7386 2-in-1 would lose. While both of them use PWM for brightness adjustment, the Inspiron can display just a fraction of the colors you can see on Yoga 730`s screen. In addition to that, the Yoga is far brighter as well. Thankfully, as its Lenovo counterpart, the Inspiron 13 7386 2-in-1`s touchscreen is on a very good level and is super responsive to both touch and pen.

Battery life here is reasonable – around 7 hours of browsing and 6 of video-enjoying. While this is not really impressive, there is something else about the Dell Inspiron 13 7386 2-in-1 that caught our eye – it has two M.2 SSD slots with NVMe support. Cool, huh?!

In conclusion, we can say that the Inspiron 13 7386 2-in-1 is a very well built aluminum device that has a premium taste and very responsive hardware and software. We can definitely recommend this product, but you can still check out the Lenovo Yoga 730 (13) since it can offer quite the same experience as the Inspiron.

Pros

  • Premium build materials
  • Fast CPU options
  • NVMe support with two M.2 slots
  • Minimal port selection but has everything you need
  • Bezel-less design
  • Won’t heat your hands up


Cons

  • No USB-C charging
  • Unimpressive color coverage (IVO M133NWF4)
  • PWM-adjustment of the brightness (IVO M133NWF4) (fixable by our Health-Guard profile)

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/dell-inspiron-13-7386-2-in-1/

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Jan
Jan
3 年 之前

I have a Dell Inspiron 7386 2-in-1 and it will charge via the USB-C port.