Dell Precision 7540

amazon Dell Precision 7540 reviews

The Dell Precision 7540 is the fastest mobile workstation we’ve tested. It’s also one of the most expensive — while a stripped-down model was $1,339, my review unit was $5,227, thanks to its powerful eight-core Intel Xeon processor, Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000 graphics flagship, and a beautiful 4K (3,840 x 2,160 pixels) display. That last one may fall short of the 4K DreamColor display of another recently reviewed 15.6-inch mobile workstation, the HP ZBook 15 G6 – it lacks that system’s built-in color calibrator – but Dell’s excellent performance propelled it past the Lenovo ThinkPad P53.

Hello, IGZO

The base model has a quad-core Core i5 CPU, integrated Intel graphics, a 1080p display, 8GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive. Spending nearly four thousand dollars more will get the Xeon E-2286M 2.4GHz (5GHz turbo processor), 64GB ECC memory, 512GB NVMe SSD, 16GB Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000 graphics chip ready for real VR virtual reality, Windows 10 Pro for Workstations, and 4K non-touch displays rated at 100 percent of the Adobe RGB color gamut.

If you want a touchscreen, you’ll have to settle for 1080p. Dell doesn’t offer the ultra-high-contrast OLED technology found on Lenovo’s ThinkPad P53 4K, but my Precision panel’s IGZO transistors deliver faster response times and lower power consumption.

The lowest memory is 128GB of standard or ECC DRAM. Memory can be expanded to 6TB using three M.2 SSDs or two M.2 drives plus a 2.5-inch HDD.

My test device has a facial recognition webcam with a sliding security shutter in place of a fingerprint reader for Windows Hello login, although the latter is an option. So does LTE mobile broadband, to complement the Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and Bluetooth wireless standards.

The Precision 7540 is designed in silver-gray aluminum with a slightly heavyweight of 2.5 kg and dimensions of 0.98 x 14.9 x 9.9 inches, almost matching the ThinkPad (2.49 kg, 1.2 x 14, 9 x 9.9 inches) and slightly lighter than the ZBook (2.6 kg, 1 x 14.8 x 10.4 inches). It has passed MIL-STD 810G torture tests against shock, vibration, and extreme temperatures and humidity; There’s barely any flex if you grip the corners of the screen or squeeze the keyboard.

Two Thunderbolt 3 ports with SD reader and SmartCard are on the left side of the laptop. You’ll find two USB 3.1 Type-A ports, an audio jack, and a security lock slot on the right. The power connector, Ethernet port, and HDMI and Mini DisplayPort video outputs are on the rear.

The keyboard has both a small trackpad and an embedded pointing stick. Both work seamlessly, and each has three soft-to-touch mouse buttons, including the center button popular with independent software vendor (ISV) applications for Apple-assisted design computer (CAD) and other workstation jobs.

There is a numeric keypad with the calculator and media control keys above it; dedicated Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys; function keys in the top row include volume controls, keyboard backlighting, microphone mute for video conferencing. The Escape and Delete keys are small but feel very comfortable to type on – a bit flexible but reasonable and solid.

The 720p webcam takes above-average pictures, is noisy but bright enough, and has good focus and colors. Sound from the bottom speaker of the front edge isn’t particularly loud, but there’s no crackle or distortion even at maximum volume; The bass is minimal, but the highs and mids are clear, and it’s easy to distinguish overlapping tracks. A utility MaxxAudio Pro, listed twice in the Start menu, allows you to edit the equalizer and enjoy 3D effects with headphones.

Other pre-installed utilities include Dell’s SupportAssist, which provides drive updates, performance tuning, and network optimization, and Power Manager monitors battery health and allows you to adjust power usage and heat settings. There’s also the Precision Optimizer, which can maximize the performance of about two dozen popular ISV applications. Designers are color-sensitive PremierColor, allowing them to switch between palettes and adjust palettes: photo (Adobe RGB), Internet (sRGB), cinema (DCI-P3), vivid or full (default), SD or HD video, or two low blue light options. You can also specify color gamut for specific applications.

As I said, Dell doesn’t have a built-in color calibrator—the PremierColor option controls the X-Rite calibrator—but my test unit’s screen looked great even without it. There is abundant brightness (background is nicely white) and sharp contrast; fine details like crystal; colors stand out, with plenty of color saturation. Photos, videos, CAD, and rendering views all look great. I could give a smaller bezel for HP’s DreamColor panel, but Dell’s display is top-notch.

A declaration of workstation performance

For our performance tests, alongside the 15.6-inch HP ZBook 15 G6 and Lenovo ThinkPad P53 competitors, I pitted the Dell Precision 7540 against two 17.3-inch mobile workstations, the ZBooks. HP’s slightly older 17 G5 and MSI WS75.

All of these workstations messed up our benchmark tests and are ridiculously overkill for Word, PowerPoint, and Chrome. So the fact that it has won several contests clears all doubts — from an everyday applications point of view, if your average laptop is a gecko, this is Godzilla.

where can you get a Dell Precision 7540 online

Dell Precision 7540 Mobile Workstation – 15.6″ FHD IPS – 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7-9850H 6-Core – 32GB DDR4 – Quadro T1000 4GB GDDR5 – 512GB SSD – Windows 10 pro: Buy it now

Dell Precision 7540 Mobile Workstation – 15.6″ FHD IPS W/ IR Camera – 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5-9400H Quad-Core – 8GB DDR4 – 256GB SSD – Quadro T1000 4GB GDDR5 – Win10 pro: Buy it now

Dell Precision 7540 Laptop, 15.6″ FHD (1920×1080) Non-Touch, Intel Core 9th Gen i7-9850H, 32GB RAM, 512GB SSD, NVIDIA Quadro T1000, Windows 10 Pro: Buy it now

Test productivity, storage, and media

PCMark 10 and 8 are overall performance suites developed by the PC standards experts at UL (formerly Futuremark). The PCMark 10 test we run simulates various real-world productivity and content creation workflows. We use it to evaluate the system’s overall performance for office-focused tasks such as word processing, spreadsheets, web browsing, and video conferencing. Meanwhile, PCMark 8 has a storage sub-test to gauge the system’s boot drive speed. Both yield an exclusive score; a higher number is better.

We consider 4,000 points an excellent PCMark 10 score, so Dell’s 6,850 is almost enough for you to understand its power. Using the Precision 7540 for office productivity is like buying an Aston Martin to drive. The PCMark 8 storage test results are comparable, as we’ve seen many times with the high-speed NVMe SSD.

Next is the test of Cinebench R15, which handles Maxon’s CPU, fully threaded to take advantage of all available cores and threads. Cinebench emphasizes CPU rather than GPU to render a complex image. The result is an exclusive score that shows the PC is suitable for processor-intensive workloads.

Anything over 1,000 points is great for 3D rendering or video editing tasks; six-core systems are more than standard, while eight-core workstations are almost the nuclear bomb.

In our Handbrake video-editing benchmark, we set a timer on the systems to transcode a short from 4K to 1080p. It is also a tough test for multi-core, multi-threaded CPUs; Lower time is better.

Times of ten minutes or less are rare in our benchmark logs Dell and MSI dominated the event.

We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing standard. Using a version of Photoshop Creative Cloud released in early 2018, we apply a complex series of 10 filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image. We time each activity and finally add up the total (the lower the time, the better). The Photoshop test emphasizes the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can also use most GPUs to speed up the filter application process.

HP and 15.6-inch Lenovo and the 17.3-inch MSI come in basically second in this competition, while the Precision finishes well at the front. Between super speeds and a stunning display, it’s a great platform for content creation.

Specific Workstation and Graphics Tests

3DMark measures relative graphics engine by rendering sequences of highly detailed gaming style 3D graphics with an emphasis on particles and light. We ran two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike. Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but the Sky Diver is more suitable for mid-range laptops and PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and allows high-end PCs and gaming devices to enhance their quality.

Judging by the challenging Fire Strike subtest, Dell and Lenovo shared the silver medal, significantly behind MSI. 3DMark is really for gaming GPUs like Nvidia’s GeForce rather than the Quadro series, but you can certainly game on these systems if you want.

In addition to our CPU measurement, Cinebench R15 has an OpenGL exercise that uses that popular vector graphics application programming interface (API) to hit the GPU for the hardware-accelerated rendering of an animated short about the car chase. Results are displayed in frames per second (fps); a higher number is better.

We also use the POV-Ray 3.7 benchmark. Persistence Vision Raytracer is a freeware program that floats the processor and its floating-point device during offscreen rendering of a complex scene.

One of these benchmarks emphasizes the GPU and the other CPU; Precision won both.

Finally, there’s SPECviewperf 13, the most realistic and challenging workstation benchmark we ran and the one we give the most weight. This test uses views from actual ISV applications to render, rotate, and zoom in and out of wireframes and solid 3D models, with results listed in frames per second (the higher, the better). The viewers we used are from PTC’s Creo CAD platform, Autodesk Maya modeling and simulation software for movies, TV, and games, and Dassault Systemes’ SolidWorks 3D rendering package.

With their flagship Quadro RTX 5000 GPU, Dell, and Lenovo managed to win. They pair up with Creo and Maya, but the Precision beats the ThinkPad in SolidWorks, making even high-octane competitors like the ZBook 15 G6 with its RTX 3000 look weak.

Check battery time

After fully charging the laptop, we set it up in power-saving mode (instead of balanced or high-performance mode) if available. We made some other battery-saving tweaks to prepare for the check of our unplugged video recap. (We also turned off Wi-Fi, putting the laptop on airplane mode.) In this test, we looped a video — a locally stored 720p file of the Blender Foundation’s Tears of Steel short film — with screen brightness is set at 50 percent and volume at 100 percent until the system exits.

Battery life isn’t critical for a mobile workstation — the only time it’s away from a desk is for a short trip to a conference room or customer’s office — but Dell’s short runtime is still disappointing. With powerful components and a sunny 4K display, even a massive 97 watt-hour battery can’t last half a workday.

There are no losers in this contest.

Any of the top three 15.6-inch mobile workstations will serve you well; in fact, it’s great. The HP ZBook 15 G6 has an octa-core Xeon E-2286M available, but not the flagship Quadro RTX 5000; The Lenovo ThinkPad P53 is available with the RTX 5000, but only with a six-core CPU. The ThinkPad scores its optional OLED display, ZBook for DreamColor display, and optional color corrector and design can serve its users. (Opening the bottom panel gives you access to the battery, memory, and two of the four RAM slots.)

If you need to handle heavy workloads and power through huge data sets, Precision is a formidable choice and our choice for high-end mobile workstations.