If you need to bite via big datasets or address large CGI rendering jobs with Dell’s most excellent 15.6-inch cellular laptop, you need the Precision 7560.
But what in case you’d like some thing a bit simpler to hold than that five.42-pound juggernaut? The Precision 5560 (begins offevolved at $1,839; $four,195 as tested) is primarily based totally on Dell’s fashionable XPS 15 (9510) chassis and weighs best four.three pounds. It cannot in shape the 7560’s height strength—max RAM is 64GB in preference to 128GB, for example—however it packs greater processing cores and quicker photographs than its rival the HP ZBook Firefly 15 G8.
The trim Precision replaces the Firefly as our Editors’ Choice winner amongst light-weight computer workstations.
Two-Thirds of the Way Up the Ladder
Like all genuine workstations, the Precision 5560 contains unbiased software program vendor (ISV) certifications for specialised apps.
It’s pleasant acceptable for 2D or mild 3-D computer-aided design (CAD) in place of strenuous 3-D rendering, digital reality, or records technology because the 7560 and its fellow flagships are, however it outstrips the ZBook Firefly 15 through imparting an eight-middle as opposed to quad-middle processor and an Nvidia RTX A2000 expert GPU that is 3 steps above the Nvidia T500 withinside the HP.
Of course, you will pay for such potency. Dell’s base version 5560 is $1,839 however has best an Intel Core i5 CPU and lowly incorporated photographs (we might not even practice the term “laptop” to a PC with out a discrete GPU).
Our check unit become a miles extra funding at $four,195 with an eight-middle, 2.5GHz (four.8GHz turbo) Core i7-11850H processor, the 4GB RTX A2000, 32GB of memory, a 2TB PCI Express Gen four strong-kingdom drive, and the best to be had show—an IPS contact display with barely taller 16:10 in place of the acquainted 16:nine issue ratio and three,840-through-2,four hundred-pixel decision.
The widespread panel is 1,920 through 1,2 hundred pixels; the Firefly gives best a desire of 1,920-through-1,080 monitors.
Dell’s spec sheet says the Precision 5560 may be had with Intel’s Core i9-11950H or Xeon W-11955M, aleven though on the time of this writing in mid-November 2021, I could not configure a unit with one of these CPUs online. Two M.2 slots permit as much as 4TB of storage. There’s no flex in case you draw close the display corners or press the keyboard deck.
Clad in aluminum and magnesium alloy, the 5560 measures 0.seventy three through 13.6 through nine.1 inches, making it fractionally trimmer however a piece heavier than the HP ZBook Firefly 15 G8 (0.seventy six through 14.2 through nine.2 inches and three.seventy four pounds). For comparison’s sake, the Precision 7560 makes room for beefier additives at 1.08 through 14.2 through nine.five inches.
A face reputation webcam and fingerprint reader constructed into the strength button provide you with methods to pass passwords with Windows Hello.
Like its XPS 15 sibling, the Precision 5560 skimps on ports, with simply 3 USB Type-C ports—one USB-C three.2 port at the proper and Thunderbolt four ports at the left. The AC adapter has a USB-C connector, and Dell gives a tiny USB-C dongle with one USB Type-A port and one HDMI video output.
You’ll additionally locate an SD card slot and an audio jack at the proper and a safety lock slot at the left. Wi-Fi 6 (now no longer 6E) and Bluetooth cope with wi-fi communications.
A Screen Worth Seeing
The 5560 would not provide an OLED show alternative because the XPS 15 does, however in case you choose the three,840-through-2,four hundred contact display you might not omit it: The high-decision panel gives exceptional brightness and contrast (rated at 500 nits and 1,600:1 respectively), wrapped in a number of the thinnest bezels around—Dell cites a 92% display-to-frame ratio.
Viewing angles are wide, aleven though reflections at the contact glass are available in at intense perspectives, and best information are razor-sharp.
White backgrounds are brilliant, and hues pop with shiny intensity and richness. I want the display tilted returned a bit further, however that is my best complaint.
Side-slit audio system pump out loud and clean sound, with highly sturdy bass and no harshness or distortion even at pinnacle quantity.
It’s smooth to make out overlapping tracks. A Dell Optimizer software consists of a fake 3-D audio toggle and conference-name settings for a quiet room, noisy office, or a couple of voices.
The webcam has the same old fuzzy 720p decision and no privateness shutter; it captures moderately well-lit and colourful pictures freed from noise or static.
The backlit keyboard commits the HP fake pas of arranging the cursor arrow keys in a row, with half-sized up and down arrows stacked among left and proper, and calls for the Fn key paired with arrows for Page Up and Page Down despite the fact that there are actual Home and End keys.
It has a flat and shallow in place of snappy typing feel, however with a piece of exercise you could hold a brisk pace.
The touchpad is massive and glides and faucets smoothly, taking simply a piece of strain for a quiet click on, however it has no buttons, not to mention the center button utilized by many ISV apps.
(Windows acknowledges a -finger faucet as a proper-click on and helps you to configure a 3-finger faucet as a center click on.) Dell’s computer workstations do not provide a keyboard pointing stick as Lenovo’s and HP’s do.Dell Precision 5560 keyboard
The abovementioned Dell Optimizer software program can best-music overall performance settings for man or woman apps, prioritize community bandwidth for videoconferences, and use the webcam as a proximity sensor to fasten the laptop while you go away and wake up it while you return.
Other additions to the Windows 10 Pro preload (I become presented the replace to Windows eleven all through trying out) encompass Dell PremierColor, which helps you to pick vibrant, low-blue-mild, SD or HD video, internet (sRGB), photo (Adobe RGB), or cinema (DCI-P3) shadeation gamuts; and Dell Power Manager, which video display units battery fitness and helps you to pick cooling settings primarily based totally for your tolerance for fan noise.
I ran our benchmarks in Ultra Performance mode besides for our battery check in Optimized.
Testing the Precision 5560: Thick and Thin Workstations Collide
For our benchmark charts, I as compared the Precision 5560 to 4 different 15.6-inch cellular workstations. Its light-weight competitor, the HP ZBook Firefly, lamentably hasn’t finished our new trying out regimen, however the HP ZBook Power G8 is that company’s maximum low-priced access and comparably prepared to the 5560.
Productivity Tests
The predominant benchmark of UL’s PCMark 10 simulates plenty of actual-international productiveness and content material-advent workflows to degree average overall performance for office-centric responsibilities together with phrase processing, spreadsheeting, net browsing, and videoconferencing. We additionally run PCMark 10’s Full System Drive check to evaluate the burden time and throughput of a computer’s storage. (See greater approximately how we check laptops.)
Three benchmarks attention at the CPU, the use of all to be had cores and threads, to fee a PC’s suitability for processor-in depth workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 makes use of that company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complicated scene, even as Primate Labs’ Geekbench five.four Pro simulates famous apps starting from PDF rendering and speech reputation to system learning.
Finally, we use the open-supply video transcoder HandBrake 1.four to transform a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p decision (decrease instances are higher).
Our very last productiveness check is laptop maker Puget Systems(Opens in a brand new window)’ PugetBench for Photoshop, which makes use of the Creative Cloud model 22 of Adobe’s well-known photo editor to fee a PC’s overall performance for content material advent and multimedia applications.
It’s an automatic extension that executes plenty of widespread and GPU-elevated Photoshop responsibilities starting from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an photo to making use of masks, gradient fills, and filters.
We do not forget a PCMark 10 rating of four,000 factors to suggest first rate productiveness for Microsoft Office or Google Workspace; those machines are simply idling all through Word and PowerPoint duty. The Precision 5560’s Core i7 held its very own towards Core i9s in our CPU checks, and the gadget is an extremely good desire for extreme Photoshop work.
Graphics Tests
We check Windows PCs’ photographs with DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark, Night Raid (greater modest, appropriate for laptops with incorporated photographs) and Time Spy (greater demanding, appropriate for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs).
We additionally run checks from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench five, which stresses each low-degree workouts like texturing and high-degree, game-like photo rendering.
The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Car Chase checks, rendered offscreen to house one-of-a-kind show resolutions, exercising photographs and compute shaders the use of the OpenGL programming interface and hardware tessellation respectively. The greater frames consistent with second (fps), the higher.
The 5560’s pinnacle photographs alternative, the RTX A2000, is best Nvidia’s fourth quickest expert GPU, however for the maximum component completed higher withinside the Dell than withinside the ZBook Power G8.
It’ll fulfill if now no longer always thrill CAD and CGI designers and after-hours gamers.
Workstation-Specific Tests
We run extra applications to simulate laptop applications. The first, Blender, is an open-supply 3-D suite for modeling, animation, simulation, and compositing.
We report the time it takes for its integrated Cycles direction tracer to render photo-sensible scenes of BMW cars, one the use of the gadget’s CPU and one the GPU (decrease instances are higher).
Perhaps our maximum critical laptop check, SPECviewperf 2020, renders, rotates, and zooms inside and outside of strong and wireframe fashions the use of viewsets from famous unbiased software program vendor (ISV) apps.
We run the 1080p decision checks primarily based totally on PTC’s Creo CAD platform; Autodesk’s Maya modeling and simulation software program for film, TV, and games; and Dassault Systemes’ SolidWorks 3-D rendering package. The greater frames consistent with second, the higher.
Kudos to Dell—the Precision 5560 crowned the ZBook Power, even as the Core i7- and RTX A4000-prepared Precision 7560 held its very own towards the Core i9- and RTX A5000-primarily based totally ZBook Fury and ThinkPad.
The 5560 would not faux to be the quickest cellular laptop at the market, however it is a very well succesful rig.
Battery and Display Tests
We check laptops’ battery lifestyles through gambling a domestically saved 720p video file (the open-supply Blender film Tears of Steel(Opens in a brand new window)) with show brightness at 50% and audio quantity at 100%.
We make certain the battery is absolutely charged earlier than the check, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting grew to become off.
We additionally use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite screen calibration sensor and its Windows software program to degree a computer display’s shadeation saturation—what number of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 shadeation gamuts or palettes the show can show—and its 50% and height brightness in nits (candelas consistent with rectangular meter).
Not the Fastest, But One of the Finest
Two or 3 greater ports could be nice, however the Dell Precision 5560 without problems earns an Editors’ Choice award as a first rate cellular laptop. It gives you overall performance best a step at the back of bulkier flagships in a particularly thinner and lighter package, with one of the pleasant-searching monitors withinside the computer game. Like its XPS 15 archetype, it is a winner.
