Dell Inspiron 16" 5645 Midnight Blue 2024

The Dell Inspiron 5645 is a sub-$700 gem with a stellar keyboard, a punchy Ryzen 7, and upgrade options galore. Swap the Wi-Fi card and squint past the dim screen, and you'll love it.

The Dell Inspiron 5645 gets a lot right for the money, and then faceplants on a couple of small but annoying details. That Ryzen 7 8840U processor is an absolute champ for office work, the keyboard is one of the best you'll find in a budget 16-incher, and the whole thing is shockingly easy to open up and upgrade. But someone in product planning really skimped on the display and the Wi-Fi card. 250 nits is about as dim as modern laptop screens get, and the Realtek chip drops connections more often than it should.

What surprised us most is how effortlessly this machine handles heavy multitasking. We threw a dozen Chrome tabs, Slack, Spotify, and a 4K YouTube video at it and the Ryzen 7 didn't even blink. The fan does kick in audibly under load, but it's a low whoosh, not a hair dryer. Just don't plan on serious gaming. The integrated Radeon Graphics can handle older titles or esports at low settings, but anything modern will stutter. The SSD speeds are solidly middle-of-the-pack, not chart-topping but never frustrating.

At around $670 from Amazon, this is a screaming deal. You get a current-gen AMD processor, 16GB of RAM, and a full terabyte SSD. The price spreads wildly to absurd heights ($184,000? Yeah, right) but the real deal at $670 is the only one worth considering. If you can tolerate the dim screen and swap the Wi-Fi card, it punches way above its price. Skip any listing over $800, you're entering territory with much better displays.

The most obvious rival is the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro, which is lighter, has a gorgeous OLED panel, and includes a better port selection, but it'll cost you nearly twice as much. If you need a color-accurate screen for creative work, the ASUS ProArt PX13 is a clear step up, though again, at a much higher price. The Lenovo Legion Pro 5i offers actual gaming chops if you want a GPU, but it's heavier still. For a pure budget productivity machine, this Dell is hard to beat.

If you're after a vibrant, high-res display for anything creative, this isn't it. Go grab the ASUS ProArt PX13 with its OLED panel instead. And if portability matters, this 2.14kg slab will make you resent your commute. The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro is nearly a kilo lighter and has a vastly better screen.

If you need a cheap, powerful laptop for writing, spreadsheets, and video calls, the Inspiron 5645 is an easy recommendation. The CPU is fast, the keyboard is a delight, and the build quality feels reassuringly solid. Just know you're making two compromises: you'll want an external monitor for any serious visual work, and you should probably spend $25 on an Intel AX210 Wi-Fi card before you even set it up. Do that, and you've got a reliable workhorse that'll last years.