Dell Inspiron 27 7790

amazon Dell Inspiron 27 7790 reviews

If you live in a dorm room, apartment, or other small space, you may not have room for a full-sized TV.

A workaround? Buy a mainframe monitor and pretend it’s a TV. That might get you, but the Dell Inspiron 27 7790 presents a more elegant solution.

It’s an all-in-one PC with an HDMI input jack, meaning your Nintendo Switch or Roku streaming stick can plugin directly. It’s a gaming and streaming console right on your Windows 10 desktop. But the Inspiron 27 (starts at $849.99) looks good too, with a built-in soundbar and TV-like stand. Can it be enough for both PC and TV without sacrificing?

The small screen has grown.

The Inspiron has a nice silhouette, that’s for sure. Narrow, white 8mm bezels frame the 27-inch Infinity Edge display on three sides and a slightly larger chin at the bottom anchored by a silver speaker bar. At $849 ($999 in the configuration we reviewed), you’re essentially getting the equivalent of a $200 1080p monitor neatly packed into a space-saving PC in an all-in-one design in which the screen is placed on top of a display before installing a stand consisting of bent metal tubes.

As a result, the Inspiron has a similar look to the HP 24’s $499 all-in-one sculpted wire stand. Unlike the iMac’s aluminum stand, the metal wire design doesn’t feel premium, but it does make The Inspiron 27 becomes less impressive on the table.

The airy aesthetic of the Inspiron 27 stand comes at the expense of ergonomics. The base allows the monitor to recline, but you cannot tilt the panel forward nor rotate or raise or lower the monitor. There’s no VESA mount on the rear, nor can you mount the Inspiron to free up more desk space.

The desktop’s two-tone design extends to the silver curved rear panel. While there are four generous USB-A 3.1 Gen 1 ports located on the back towards the bottom, there are only two of them if you decide to go with Dell’s color-coordinated wired keyboard and mouse.

The show’s star is the HDMI input port, which turns the monitor into a gaming console TV.

Then there’s the star of the show: The HDMI input port. This simple connection allows gamers to plug in the console of their choice and use the desktop’s display as a TV monitor. I quickly grabbed my Switch and plugged it in with no problem. While I didn’t get a chance to test the Inspiron 27’s performance with an Xbox One or PlayStation 4, titles like Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild both look great. The built-in soundbar offers a rich sound profile, which is a step up from monitor speakers.

Switching between video input sources is also easy. The recessed video source switch is located on the bottom-right edge of the soundbar next to the power button, and you’ll get visual confirmation on the screen determining whether you’re in “PC” or “HDMI” mode.

There’s also a USB-C port, useful for connecting modern phones or a USB hub for additional connectivity, an Ethernet jack, a headphone jack, a lock slot, and an SD card reader. Unfortunately, the USB-C port is limited to data and power only, and it cannot route video signals.

Those who need a bigger screen experience can connect the Inspiron 27 to a projector or HDTV via the HDMI output port on the rear. At 22 pounds, it won’t be difficult to mix it up between offices and conference rooms to connect the Inspiron to a projector for impromptu PowerPoint presentations. An external charger powers the desktop with a case connector.

Not TV

While switching between video input sources is easy, adjusting the volume while in HDMI input mode was the biggest annoyance with the Inspiron 27’s setup. Unlike a standalone monitor, the Inspiron does not come with dedicated screen controls.

It also doesn’t come with any remote control. To adjust volume, brightness, or contrast, it will ask you to switch to PC mode first. From there, you’ll need to use Windows 10’s software controls or dedicated keyboard keys to make your adjustments.

A small remote will make this job less tedious and mimic the experience on traditional television.

Once these adjustments are made, gaming with the Nintendo Switch is a pleasant experience overall, as long as you don’t need to adjust the volume as often. As expected with regular PC games, I didn’t notice any tears or ghosting on the screen.

In addition to gaming on consoles, more serious PC gamers can even hook up a more powerful laptop or desktop to the Inspiron 27’s HDMI input jack, which can be useful for upgrading their console to the display with silicon inside. Although having a Thunderbolt 3 port and an eGPU will accomplish the same purpose.

College students looking to replace a standalone TV with this 27-inch screen will find the Inspiron a mixed bag. Connecting a set-top box like an Apple TV or Amazon Fire TV Stick works fine – I tested this on both a pre-4K Apple TV and a Fire TV Stick 4K – and you should be fine watching content from the TV service online like YouTube, Netflix or Hulu.

I want the Inspiron to ship with a dedicated remote for some basic TV-style controls.

Live sports content, like football, is streamed when viewed via ESPN on AT&T’s TV Now service using the Fire TV Stick 4K. The game I watched showed only occasional choking, likely due to the service’s buffering and streaming limitations rather than the Inspiron’s hardware.

However, without a coaxial input jack, you won’t be able to connect a cable box or a signal from a university video source. If you hate wire, you can use the remote from your Fire TV or Apple TV to change channels and switch between different streaming services.

Given that the ads on AT&T TV’s service sometimes play louder than the actual show, the inability to easily change the volume can be frustrating. If you connect wired or Bluetooth speakers, you can get around some of the Inspiron 27’s limitations with volume control.

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DELL Inspiron 7790- 27 Inch All In One FHD Touch, Intel Core i7, 16GB Memory, 512GB Solid State Drive + 1TB, Windows 10 Home (Latest Model) – Silver: Buy it now

Dell Inspiron 27 7790 Touch All in One 2TB SSD 32GB RAM Extreme (Intel 10th Gen Core i7 Processor Turbo Boost to 4.90GHz, 32 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD, 27″ Touchscreen FullHD IPS, Win 10) PC Desktop Computer: Buy it now

Dell Inspiron 27 7790 AiO – 27″ FHD Touch – i7-10510U – 12GB – 512GB SSD – Silver: Buy it now

Dell Inspiron 27 7790 Touch All in One 2TB SSD 2TB HD 64GB RAM (Intel 10th Gen Core i7 Processor Turbo to 4.90GHz, 64 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD + 2TB HD, 27″ Touchscreen FullHD, Win 10) PC Desktop Computer: Buy it now

A laptop disguised as a desktop.

But again, the Inspiron 27 is more than just a screen. It is also a full desktop.

With 10th Gen U-series processors and more anemic GeForce MX110 graphics, the Inspiron 27’s spec sheet doesn’t read like a standard desktop. It uses all the laptop components, similar to some other all-in-ones like the HP Envy series. While this means performance can be limited, these laptop components help keep the chassis small, just over an inch thick.

Don’t expect to run as demanding applications or games as you can on a more powerful desktop chip.

I found the quad-core Core i5-10210u processor inside our review unit to be fast enough for general productivity tasks, like browsing the web and working in Office documents. That’s the same performance as what you get on a Dell XPS 13 or other premium laptops. Just don’t expect to run as demanding applications or games as you can on a more powerful desktop chip.

It’s a similar story with graphics. Don’t expect to start up Jedi: Fallen Order at maximum settings, but older titles should work just fine with the settings down. Both Call of Duty: WWII and the Honor 4 looked good in my tests with very little stuttering, and Fortnite is certainly playable when throttled to 720p using the game’s lowest settings. If you don’t need discrete graphics, Dell offers a cheaper model with integrated graphics.

The system also comes with 8GB of memory, alongside a 256GB SSD and a 1TB hard drive for extra storage, all of which are upgradeable and maintainable.

Unfortunately, Dell didn’t add a Thunderbolt 3 port on this device to power the external GPUs. Even if you use the monitor with a more powerful gaming PC, you’ll still be limited to 1080p resolution and a 60Hz refresh rate. That is not a proper gaming monitor in that respect.

Our review unit didn’t come with a touchscreen but can be picked up with an upgraded configuration, but the touch features probably won’t work with HDMI input sources.

For privacy-conscious dorm dwellers, webcams lined up at the top can pop up when needed or out of sight, a trend that’s more prevalent on laptops and computers. Upgraded configurations of the Inspiron 27 can also be equipped with an IR module along with an FHD cam for Windows Hello passwordless logins.