Dell Vostro 15 3510 review – they really botched this one

When we talk about budget-conscious laptops, Dell’s Vostro series is always into consideration. Interestingly, while it is one of the least expensive devices on the market, the Vostro 15 3510 can be equipped with pretty capable hardware.

We are talking about a potential combination of the Core i7-1165G7 and the GeForce MX350. Of course, you can keep the price down by picking a slower processor, like the Celeron 6305, or completely omitting the dedicated graphics card. Interestingly, using only integrated graphics will have a weird impact on the I/O – we’ll talk more about that later on.

If we take the performance factor away for a second, we can see that you get two display options. The first one is probably the least desirable screen ever made – a 768p TN panel. Thankfully, we were able to find ourselves a 1080p IPS model, which is far more relevant in 2022, than the TN low-res abomination.

So, before we start our in-depth tests, let’s pay some attention to the construction of the machine, and see if Dell had to cut some corners in order to keep the cost down.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/dell-vostro-15-3510-discrete/

Contents


Specs Sheet

Dell Vostro 15 3510 (Discrete) - Specs

  • BOE N39X1-NV15N3D (BOE097D)
  • Color accuracy  6.2  4.1
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 2000GB SSD + up to 2000GB HDD
  • RAM
  • up to 16GB
  • OS
  • Windows 11 Pro, No OS, Windows 10 Home
  • Battery
  • 41Wh, 3-cell
  • Body material
  • Plastic / Polycarbonate
  • Dimensions
  • 358.50 x 235.56 x 17.50 - 18.90 mm (14.11" x 9.27" x 0.69")
  • Weight
  • 1.69 kg (3.7 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 2.0
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-C
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • HDMI
  • 1.4
  • Card reader
  • SD, SDHC, SDXC
  • Ethernet LAN
  • 10, 100, 1000 Mbit/s
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ax
  • Bluetooth
  • 5.1
  • Audio jack
  • 3.5mm Combo Jack
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • Web camera
  • HD
  • Backlit keyboard
  • Microphone
  • Single Digital Microphone
  • Speakers
  • 2x 2W, Stereo Speakers
  • Optical drive
  • Security Lock slot
  • Wedge Lock

All Dell Vostro 15 3510 (Discrete) configurations

#CommissionsEarned

What’s in the box?

Besides the laptop, the package contains some paperwork and a 65W power adapter.


Design and construction

Unsurprisingly, the Vostro 15 3510 is made entirely out of plastic. While some notebooks are still structurally sound, despite their plastic construction, the Dell is definitely not on the list. Its lid flexes quite a bit, while the base bends like a madman. You definitely don’t want to throw your bag or put heavy objects inside it, when your laptop is also there.

On the bright side, the device is pretty light, weighing only 1.69 kilos. It has a profile of 17.5-18.9mm. This makes it fairly portable, and very competitive in its class.

Expectedly, the lid can’t be opened with a single hand. However, the bezels around it are pretty slim, with the top one housing an HD Web camera. Interestingly, the lid features two rubber feet, which grip the surface and lift the backside of the base, ensuring a better airflow to the fan, as well as a slightly more comfortable typing experience.

Speaking of which, this notebook’s keyboard is probably one of the few good things about it. It has decent key travel and relatively clicky feedback. More importantly, it features a backlight and has a NumberPad section. Due to the lack of additional support in the chassis, we experience some deck flex. There is also the option for a fingerprint reader, which will be located on the power button.

Another surprisingly good feature here is the touchpad. It has good size, smooth gliding, and accurate tracking. Plus, the clicking mechanism is satisfying to use, and almost the entire area is clickable.

The bottom panel houses the speaker cutouts and the ventilation grill. On the other hand, 100% of the hot air is being blown towards the bottom of the display.

Ports

This is where we see a difference between the laptop featuring discrete graphics, and that, equipped only with an integrated solution. On the left, there is the power plug, an HDMI 1.4 connector, a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, and a USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 1) port. If you get the integrated GPU option, the Type-C port gets swapped for a Type-A one. And on the right, you get a security lock slot, an audio jack, a LAN port, a USB Type-A 2.0 port, and an SD card reader.


Disassembly, upgrade options and maintenance

To take this laptop apart, you need to undo 9 Phillips-head screws. The two in the back edges are captive and lift the bottom panel so you can start the prying process from there.

In terms of battery, you get two options. One with 41Wh capacity, and one with 54Wh. We got the smaller unit, and it lasted us for 7 hours of Web browsing, or 6 hours and 30 minutes of video playback. To take it out, you need to unplug the battery connector and undo all three Phillips-head screws, that hold it in place.

As you can see, there are two SODIMM slots for memory upgrades. Storage-wise, you get one M.2 PCIe x4 slot, as well as a 2.5-inch SATA drive bay. However, if your laptop is equipped with the larger battery pack, the HDD bay will be blocked.

As for the cooling, you get one heat pipe, shared between the CPU and the GPU, which ends up in a rather small heat sink. The graphics memory and the VRMs are not being cooled.


Display quality

Dell Vostro 15 3510 in our configuration is equipped with a Full HD IPS panel with a model number BOE N39X1-NV15N3D (BOE097D). Its diagonal is 15.6″ (39.62 cm), and the resolution is 1920 х 1080 pixels. The screen ratio is 16:9, and we are looking at a pixel density of – 142 ppi, and a pitch of 0.18 х 0.18 mm. The screen turns into Retina when viewed at distance equal to or greater than 60cm (24″) (from this distance one’s eye stops differentiating the separate pixels, and it is normal for looking at a laptop).

Viewing angles are excellent. We offer images at 45° to evaluate image quality.

Also, a video with locked focus and exposure.

The measured maximum brightness of 261 nits in the middle of the screen and 259 nits as an average for the whole area, with a maximum deviation of 5%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen is 6590K – slightly colder than the sRGB standard of 6500K.

In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. In other words, the leakage of light from the light source.

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. The contrast ratio is good – 1100:1.

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to 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 on HDTV and 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 Vostro 15 3510’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 Vostro 15 3510 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 = 33 ms.


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 Vostro 15 3510’s backlight does not flicker only when the brightness slider is at its maximum. On the bright side, the frequency of the pulsations is not super low, which reduces their negative effect. Nevertheless, you can completely eliminate this issue with 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.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Dell Vostro 15 3510 configurations with 15.6″ FHD IPS BOE N39X1-NV15N3D (BOE097D).

*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.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


Sound

Dell Vostro 15 3510’s speakers produce a sound of decent quality. Its low, mid, and high tones are clear of deviations.


Drivers

All drivers and utilities for this notebook can be found here: https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/vostro-15-3510-laptop/drivers

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with the 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. This laptop’s 41Wh battery lasted us for 7 hours and 5 minutes of Web browsing, or 6 hours and 30 minutes of video playback.

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.


CPU options

This notebook comes with a ton of processor options. This includes the Celeron 6305, Pentium 7505, Core i3-1005G1, Core i5-1035G1, Core i3-1115G4, Core i3-1125G4, Core i5-1135G7, and Core i7-1165G7.


GPU options

In addition to the integrated graphics cards, you can pair this device with the NVIDIA GeForce MX350 (2GB GDDR5).


Gaming tests

cs-go-benchmarks

CS:GOHD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Medium (Check settings)HD 1080p, MAX (Check settings)
Average FPS169 fps86 fps62 fps

DOTA 2HD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Normal (Check settings)HD 1080p, High (Check settings)
Average FPS140 fps112 fps63 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 frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

Intel Core i7-1165G7 (15W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Dell Vostro 15 35103.21 GHz (B+15%) @ 99°C @ 34W2.85 GHz (B+2%) @ 99°C @ 27W2.18 GHz @ 76°C @ 18W
Dell XPS 13 93053.49 GHz (B+25%) @ 99°C @ 43W3.08 GHz (B+10%) @ 99°C @ 32W2.26 GHz @ 74°C @ 17W
ASUS ZenBook 14X OLED (UX5401, 11th Gen)3.76 GHz (B+34%) @ 94°C @ 53W3.46 GHz (B+24%) @ 94°C @ 43W3.31 GHz (B+18%) @ 94°C @ 39W
ASUS ExpertBook B1 B14003.67 GHz (B+31%) @ 87°C @ 51W3.38 GHz (B+21%) @ 93°C @ 39W3.26 GHz (B+16%) @ 94°C @ 34W
HP ZBook Firefly 14 G83.24 GHz (B+16%) @ 90°C @ 45W2.92 GHz (B+4%) @ 74°C @ 30W2.25 GHz @ 61°C @ 18W
Dell Latitude 14 54203.80 GHz (B+36%) @ 98°C @ 51W3.27 GHz (B+17%) @ 98°C @ 35W2.78 GHz @ 96°C @ 26W
HP EliteBook x360 1040 G83.43 GHz (B+23%) @ 98°C @ 40W2.84 GHz (B+1%) @ 88°C @ 27W2.43 GHz @ 69°C @ 17W
HP Elite Dragonfly G23.17 GHz (B+13%) @ 98°C @ 34W2.34 GHz @ 76°C @ 18W2.14 GHz @ 73°C @ 16W
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro (14)3.90 GHz (B+39%) @ 85°C @ 61W2.57 GHz @ 69°C @ 26W2.37 GHz @ 57°C @ 20W
HP Pavilion 14 (14-dv0000)3.08 GHz (B+10%) @ 91°C @ 40W2.79 GHz @ 89°C @ 29W2.13 GHz @ 71°C @ 18W
Acer TravelMate P4 (TMP414-51)2.99 GHz (B+7%) @ 94°C @ 33W2.66 GHz @ 93°C @ 27W1.86 GHz @ 68°C @ 16W
Acer Swift 3X (SF314-510G)3.74 GHz (B+34%) @ 95°C @ 45W3.45 GHz (B+23%) @ 95°C @ 37W3.09 GHz (B+10%) @ 85°C @ 28W

Interestingly, the Vostro 15 3510 performs worse in this test than its 13-inch sibling, the Dell XPS 13 9305.

Real-life gaming

NVIDIA GeForce MX350GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)
Dell Vostro 15 35101034 MHz @ 73°C964 MHz @ 72°C
Acer Aspire 5 (A515-56G)1155 MHz @ 67°C1029 MHz @ 67°C
Acer Swift 5 Pro (SF514-55GT)752 MHz @ 60°C747 MHz @ 60°C
ASUS ZenBook 14 UM4331050 MHz @ 67°C1062 MHz @ 74°C
HP Envy 13 (13-ba0000)584 MHz @ 63°C528 MHz @ 63°C
Lenovo Ideapad 5 (15)1493 MHz @ 66°C1493 MHz @ 66°C

For no longer than 15 seconds, the MX350 here manages to run at 1400+ MHz. Then, the frequency drops to about 1000 MHz, before it settles at 964 MHz at the end of the test.

Gaming comfort

What is more worrying is that the external temperatures of the device are very high. The middle of the keyboard reaches more than 50°C, which is not very comfortable, as you can imagine. Moreover, the bottom panel heats up significantly, while the bottom part of the screen, where the hot air is being blown at, is warmer than 55°C. This can’t be good in the long run.


Verdict

The first thing we want to discuss is the cooling. Our tests showed that the laptop prefers to stay cool on the inside, thus dropping the frequencies quite massively. However, the insulation material is practically nonexistent, which makes the keyboard really warm. What is even less impressive, is that neither the VRMs nor the graphics memory chips are cooled, which makes them prone to overheating if you plan to play games on this laptop.

Of course, this is by far not a gaming device, but having a dedicated GPU might be tempting. And why not? Games like CS:GO and DOTA2 are no match for the MX350.

In addition to the cooling, the build quality is another letdown. The plastic shell is super flexy, which makes the laptop feel unreliable. We highly doubt that it is going to break in normal use, but you have to keep in mind the lack of structural rigidity in mind.

Dell Vostro 15 3510’s IPS panel has a Full HD resolution, comfortable viewing angles, and a good contrast ratio. Unfortunately, this unit has a limited color coverage (51% of the sRGB gamut), and uses PWM for all brightness levels, except for the maximum. On the bright side, our Health-Guard profile takes care of the latter.

Now, there are a couple of pleasant surprises. Both input devices, for instance, are comfortable to use and offer a good user experience. Furthermore, you have the option of a fingerprint reader.

The I/O is also pretty decent, as there is an SD card reader, an HDMI connector, and a LAN port. Interestingly, the models that lack a dedicated GPU won’t have a USB Type-C port, while those who come with one, will only allow you to use it for data transfer.

On the inside, is where you will find most of the good stuff. There are two SODIMM slots for memory upgrades, as well as an M.2 PCIe x4 slot for storage expansion. A 2.5-inch SATA drive bay is also available, but only for devices that come with the smaller of two battery options – 41Wh (vs 54Wh).

Our unit, which was equipped with the 41Wh unit, lasted for 7 hours of Web browsing, or 6 hours and 30 minutes of video playback. This is not a stellar result, but we can certainly live with it.

Generally, we don’t think the Vostro 15 3510 has what it takes to be your daily driver. There are just too many things that are wrong with it (in our view). However, you can check out the Lenovo IdeaPad 3 (17″, 2021), or the Dell Vostro 15 5515, which are both more expensive than the laptop we tested today, but are significantly better choices.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/dell-vostro-15-3510-discrete/

Pros

  • Upgradability is on point
  • Affordable
  • Has an SD card reader
  • Good input devices
  • Has comfortable viewing angles and good contrast ratio (BOE N39X1-NV15N3D)


Cons

  • Covers only 51% of sRGB (BOE N39X1-NV15N3D)
  • Uses aggressive PWM for brightness adjustment (our Health-Guard profile deals with the issue) (BOE N39X1-NV15N3D)
  • Questionable build quality
  • Externals get really warm during heavy load

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