Without a whole lot of fanfare—or any fanfare, really—Dell has gone and updated its Inspiron 17 5000 line of 17.3-inch laptops with a couple of AMD mobile Ryzen processor options, which combine Zen CPU cores with Radeon Vega graphics.
AMD introduced its mobile 'Raven Ridge' chips last October. At the time, AMD called them the "world's fastest processor[s]" for ultrathin laptops, and several OEM partners lined up to implement them into new notebooks, including Acer, HP, and Lenovo. Dell, however, said it would debut mobile Ryzen laptops in early 2018.
Here we are, and so are the promised laptops from Dell. Pricing starts at $680 for the lowest end model with a Ryzen 3 2200U underneath the hood. The Ryzen 3 2200U is a 2-core/4-thread chip with a 2.5GHz base clock and 3.4GHz boost clock, and 4MB of L3 cache. For graphics, it has three Vega CUs clocked at 1,100MHz.
The rest of the configuration is equally lightweight with 8GB of DDR4 memory and a 1TB hard drive (5,400 RPM). Other than the OS, nothing is customizable, though Dell sells a slightly higher end model with 12GB of RAM for $730.
There are two other SKUs available, both built around a Ryzen 5 2500U processor. The Ryzen 5 2500U is a beefier 4-core/8-thread option with a 2GHz base clock and 3.6GHz boost clock, also with 4MB of L3 cache. It also has more graphics muscle with 8 Vega CUs running at the same speed as the lower end model (1,100MHz).
Pricing here starts $900 and gets you 16GB of DDR4 memory and a 2TB hard drive. The other SKU costs $1,000 and comes with Dell's "Premium" support service, but has the exact same hardware configuration.
The chassis for all of these SKUs measures just under an inch (25mm), with weight checking in at 6.55 pounds. That's a bit hefty for an ultraportable, though relatively light for a gaming laptop. Not that these are true gaming laptops—they're mostly suitable for lighter duty gaming.
