Dell Inspiron 15 7501 Vs Apple Macbook Air: Which One is Better to Buy?

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BUY NOW	BUY NOW
Dell Inspiron 15 7501	Apple Macbook Air
PROS	PROS
Great performance. Upgraded features.	Really fast performance. Exceptional battery life. Intel-based apps work well.
CONS	CONS
Average battery life.	Still 720p camera is used here. Same design as before. Macs would be better with touchscreens.

SPECIFICATIONS

DESIGN

Dell Inspiron 15 7501

One of the main selling points of the Inspiron 7590 was that the starting weight was around 1.7 kgs. I think the starting weight of 1.9 kgs makes this computer a bit less interesting to begin with. This is actually a heavier laptop than the last year’s model and it’s quite annoying because that was one of the main unique selling points for it. It has a bit of a different chassis as well where it’s kind of rounded edge in the back which is also part of this to make the hinge lift the computer up a little bit and let some more air in from the bottom.

In this laptop, we have a thermal system that they have a hinge that puts the laptop a bit more of an angle which means that they can get a bit more airflow coming in under it, that would be able to work a bit with the different issues that have been around temperature and make the laptop run a little bit cooler than last year’s model.

Apple Macbook Air

The design is classic MacBook Air although it has gained a little bit of thickness because they’ve added that new scissor-style keyboard that’s sort of new but old again. We have this wedge shape which is really nice, pretty typical at this point of many laptops.

It is a little bit heavy but not necessarily as heavy as an iPad Pro with a keyboard for example but it’s not much different than the MacBook Pro if you’re looking for size compared to the 13-inch version. Now, the overall build is a typical MacBook Pro; it’s very strong. They removed the light-up logo from most MacBooks and replaced it with just stainless steel, so it looks pretty good but you won’t have that light that’s classic Mac.

Now inside, this is where this makes the biggest difference as far as using a MacBook. So, if you’re familiar with the butterfly keyboard that we had for about four years, Apple replaced it in 2019 with the MacBook Pro with a revised scissor switch and if you’re someone that really didn’t like the old keyboard, you’ll probably love this keyboard. It has great travel on all of the keys, they work great, they’re backlit and for those that touch type, this will be fantastic. So, just pressing the keys like normal, they sound pretty good. It sounds pretty quiet compared to the butterfly keyboards, it’s much nicer to type on, it has great feedback. When you’re pushing down you have good resistance and just in general this is a great keyboard.

Now, one of the things I like most about this keyboard is not just the feedback that we get from the keys but also the physical buttons at the top. So, we’ve got our adjustment for everything from the keyboard to the backlight of the display and our volume, it’s just super easy to use and then, of course, we have touch ID which is great. Then, it has a huge trackpad which works just like the trackpads on any other MacBook at this point.

DISPLAY

Dell Inspiron 15 7501

In the screen options, they all seem to have the same full HD non-touchscreen, so that’s quite interesting because the previous model would have that 4K 500 nit screen and this one doesn’t seem to be available. 

Apple Macbook Air

The display does go fairly bright but it’s not as bright as others and I wish they would add a lot of brightness, so you could comfortably use this while you’re outside. It does work fine but it’s not as bright as some others when you’re outside.

It’s a Retina display, it’s just as high-quality as any of the other Mac books but it doesn’t have all of the color gambits that you get with the MacBook Pro as far as variable refresh rates and all those things. For a MacBook Air user coming from the previous MacBook Air to this one, the display will look phenomenal but if you’re coming from a 2016 MacBook Pro to this, it’ll look about the same, you probably won’t notice much of a difference but it isn’t as good as the newer MacBook Pro but most people will be fine with this display.

FEATURES & PERFORMANCE

Dell Inspiron 15 7501

The most common specifications are pretty much the same if we compare it to the Inspiron 7590 and there’s not too much there where we can see a difference compared to last year’s model. It has been upgraded to the 10th generation intel core H processors and you can choose between an i5 and an i7 processor. You can now get it with up to GTX 1650TI which is different from last year when it was only up to GTX 1650. You can then get it with a one terabyte hard drive and 16 gigabytes of memory which is similar and that is also upgradable.

The cheapest option of this model is got 8 gigabytes RAM and 256 gigabyte SSD, its starting weight is 4.18 pounds which is roughly 1.9 kilograms. The more expensive models come with the i7 processor and this is the 10750H processor. They both come with the same processor and the same amount of RAM and the big difference there is that one come with 512 gigabyte SSD and one come with one terabyte SSD but since this computer still comes with an extra slot for another SSD for more storage, so you don’t worry about the storage problems.

This one also comes with Intel UHD graphics, so this is not with a dedicated graphics card and this is quite new compared to last year as well because there was no model available without dedicated graphics in the previous model. So, this is a new option where if you want to go a bit cheaper, you’re able to remove the dedicated GPU and get a bit of a cheaper machine. So far, there are no big problems with the computer just looking at specifications.

The Dell Inspiron 7501 has come from three USB 3.1 ports to two USB 3.1 ports. I think one of the really big upsides about the Dell Inspiron 15 7000 7590 from last year was that you had both the USB-C Thunderbolt port, the three regular USB-A ports, and an HDMI port. Now, they are skimping down a lot on the port selection and we’re starting off to see that it only has two USB-A ports. It has an optional 3.2 gen-1 Type-C port with display port and power delivery, so it’s not a Thunderbolt 3 port for the options with integrated graphics and GTX 1650. I find this to be really bad as a decision from Dell. You actually have to go for the top model to get that Thunderbolt port. It also has an optional HDMI 2.0 port but only for the discrete graphic card option. It has an HDMI 1.4 for the integrated graphics card option. It has a universal audio jack and DC-in port, so they’re not moving to USB-C only.

In last year’s Inspiron even in the cheaper model, we have expandable memory up to 32GB but now the cheaper models with only eight gigabytes integrated memory will not be upgradable to 32 gigabytes, you will still have that extra SSD possibility but the starting weight of 1.9 kilograms without having any new extra feature that makes this laptop actually worth it and then removing thunderbolt in everything but the top model, it’s not impressive. There are some solid upgrades in the wireless department. We have both wi-fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.

Apple Macbook Air

It has an M1 chip processor with a 7 or 8 core GPU and 16 core Neural Engine. This processor makes this laptop perform really well. It also has 8 GB memory which is configurable up to 16 GB and for storage, it has 256 GB or 512 GB SSD which is configurable up to 2TB. These all in a package gives a great performance without any issue. The heating and fan noise and everything will be under control, so you don’t have to worry about anything.

We have a 3.5-millimeter headphone jack on one side. On the back, we don’t have anything else and then we have two Thunderbolt-3 ports. They are full Thunderbolt-3 ports so that you could use them with a display, or you could use them with an eGPU and game, some graphics performance if you wanted to edit some video on this or something like that.

The speakers are pretty good, they’re not as good as the 16 inch MacBook Pro but they have a phenomenal sound for what they are and they go nice and loud. I think they sound phenomenal. They go nice and loud enough that they’re too loud for most people to listen to sustain, so they’re great that way.

When I tested the laptop, it gets warm but that’s the very normal thing. If you some heavy work, then it gets work done by getting a little bit warm. Also, the clock speed it gets is higher than it’s advertised. When we extremely use the Macbook, the fan sound is not super loud. It’s definitely noticeable but it’s not super loud. It will get warm in the center on the bottom but probably not for sustained periods of time.

BATTERY

Dell Inspiron 15 7501

The battery is still with the options of a 3 cell 56-watt hour battery or a 6 cell 97-watt hour battery. The Dell XPS 15 2020 model has changed from a 97 watt-hour battery as a max capacity to an 86 watt-hour battery. So, it’s quite nice to see that Dell Inspiron 15 is staying on that 97-watt hour battery.

Apple Macbook Air

In terms of battery life, you can get what Apple advertised under a specific scenario. So for example, if you’re using Wi-Fi and you’re using Safari with one page and you’re at about 70 percent brightness, then you might be able to achieve the optimal battery life.

Most people are going to get about eight hours maybe nine hours with this depending on what they’re doing. If you’re using pages and just typing, you’ll probably get pretty decent battery life. If you’re watching just a movie that you’ve already downloaded, then maybe you’ll get that advertised battery life but if you’ve got multiple applications open such as Safari or Mail, and messages, and the App Store, and all of these things open like many people use the computer, you could get around six hours of battery life. So, it just depends on what you’re doing.

WHICH TO BUY?

Both the laptops are good to buy and the price is also very neck-to-neck. The performance of both the Inspiron 7501 and Macbook Air is really good but the features are a little bit different like the display size and some additional features. So, here, it will be your choice that on what design and size you want, otherwise both the laptops are good in performance. Maybe the Apple Macbook Air will suit many people and it will run for many years comparatively.  

Jaskaran Singh

Jaskaran, a tech enthusiast from childhood, inspired by his father, began his tech journey by rooting Android phones. He now writes on various tech topics, aiming to simplify complex ideas for a broad audience. His writing is direct, concise, and flows effortlessly, making tech topics accessible and engaging.