Dell Vostro 5490 Review: Gorgeous Outside, Strong Inside

Dell is considered one of the manufacturers of laptops that focus on performance with durability and a high degree of stability. Today, we are going to acquaint you with the Dell Vostro 5490, which has a sophisticated refinement on the exterior and a powerful upgrade in the internal configuration. Do you want to know more about the machine? Let’s see our Dell Vostro 5490 review in detail.

Design

In recent years, Dell has started focusing more on monitors and bringing in more attractive sleek design styles. With the Dell Vostro 5490, the company designed the silver-tone as the main color and is made largely to catch the eye. The center of the back still has the shiny Dell logo.

Compared to the previous generation, the Dell 5490’s style doesn’t change much, especially the finishing on the surrounding edges. You will find that the laptop has soft, rounded edges, the back of the laptop is flat and the bottom is curved to create a more user-friendly feeling.

Dell understands that the user needs a suitable product that can be used for many different types of work, so the Dell Vostro 5490’s lines are somewhat simpler and closer. Dell still uses a combination of metal cover and plastic keyboard surface, creating an indescribable harmony.

The size of the laptop is not very large so you can easily keep it in your bag and carry it easily. However, due to the metal material, one hand grip will feel heavy, we think you should use it on a table to be more stable. Most importantly, the durability of the laptop has not decreased.

Regarding the connection ports, the Dell 5490 is equipped with a completely separate port, with a power port, HDMI, two USB, and one USB Type-C ports on the left. Meanwhile, on the right side, the laptop has a lock port, LAN, one more USB port, MicroSD card slot, and 3.5mm audio jack.

In addition, the heat sink is located behind the keyboard for good heat dissipation. More information about heat dissipation we will talk about in the performance section below.

Display

For the display, the Dell Vostro 5490 owns a screen with a 14-inch size, Full HD resolution that brings clear and sharp pictures. Dell Vostro products have optimized edges around the screen, only the bottom edge is slightly thicker and the Vostro 5490 also has this design.

After more than a week of experience, we appreciate the ability to display good colors and this is an important factor for people who do graphics work. At the same time, the screen also offers high contrast and glare, making it more convenient than ever to use in outdoor conditions.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The first plus point is that the Dell Vostro 5490 has a backlit keyboard, allowing you to use it in a variety of environmental conditions. We do not know how important it is for you, but for us, backlighting is very important because we often have to work in low light so it becomes an important aspect.

The experience of pressing the keys on the laptop is quite comfortable and enjoyable. We like the response speed of keystrokes quite a lot, so we don’t have the problem of inconvenient operation with high speed. Above all, the touchpad on the laptop also greets us very well, thanks to lower latency and a smooth surface, making operation smoother and more efficient.

Performance

We have used a lot of Dell Vostro products ourselves and have found the efficiency and stability to bring these devices. Even with the experience of the latest-generation Dell Vostro 5490, we expect the same success as the previous Dell’s devices. Before evaluating the performance details, let’s take a look at the laptop’s hardware parameters:

• Display: 14-inch screen, Full HD, 60 Hz refresh rate
• CPU: Intel Core i7-10510U
• RAM: 8 GB DDR4 (On-Board + 1 slot)
• Storage: 512 GB M.2 PCle SSD, supports SATA HDD slot
• Discrete graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce MX250 2GB

First, we used Geekbench 5 software to measure the performance of the CPU and Dell Vostro 5490. The results are as follows:

• CPU measurement: single-core 1,023 points, multi-core 2,690 points.
• Performance measurement: Geekbench 5 gives a performance of 10,933 points.

With a performance score of over 10,000, Dell Vostro 5490 deserves to be a valuable partner to help you create graphics and work with a variety of tasks.

We are not a professional designer, but in our work, we also sometimes use software like Photoshop, Lightroom every day. Speaking of which, we realized that CPU processing power is effective when allowing us to run two Adobe software at the same time with three open tabs in the Chrome browser.

With light cases like Excel, PowerPoint, you can be relaxed as applications run very smoothly. Giving smooth performance not only makes the experience more enjoyable but also allows for better multitasking.

Continuous use of heavy functions will cause the device to malfunction, but with the Dell Vostro 5490, we did not experience this phenomenon. Only when you open more heavy games like League of Legends or CS: Go, then the device starts to get tired. Speaking of which, the Dell Vostro 5490 is also equipped with NVIDIA GeForce MX250 2GB discrete graphics. This graphics card provides a decent level of performance which is sufficient for gaming on a medium-high configuration.

We have always seen League of Legends games with a high average graphic level, with FPS ranges from 45–62 FPS. Although FPS dropped 29 FPS from time to time, this did not happen during the match. Actually, we do not place too much emphasis on the gaming capability of the laptop, as the Dell Vostro 5490 graphics belong to the second line of laptops.

One of the factors that impact more or less on performance is heat dissipation. We use many of the above tasks and do not forget to test the CPU temperature via Real Temp and the number we got after more than 1 hour of use is 65 degrees.

This heat level is not very hot and the experience is the same. The Dell 5490 also owns a 512 GB M.2 PCle SSD, and also supports a SATA HDD slot to expand storage space. We used the Crystal DiscMark software to measure the read and write speeds of the device:

Battery

In terms of battery life, the Dell Vostro 5490 offers both flexibility and good battery life, making us feel satisfied. We often work with our laptop and rarely carry a charger, only when the laptop is around 40%, we put the charger in our backpack.

To bring the most objective view, we used the BatteryMon software to measure the battery life of the Delmostro 5490. As you can see above, the BatteryMon results in a laptop time of 5 hours 42 minutes. To get the above results we had 100% screen brightness, battery saver was not on, 5 Chrome tabs were open, Photoshop was also open, and some test software such as Geekbench 5, Crystal Diskmark.

Audio

The last part we want to talk about in this article is sound. The Dell Vostro 5490 has a speaker design that is located under the laptop to create a vivid surround sound effect to provide a more enjoyable experience for users.
The Dell Vostro 5490 uses Realtek High Definition audio technology to bring louder and clearer sound, which is the ability to amplify sound to a decent level. Realtek high definition audio is not a new technology, but efficiency is still trusted by electronics manufacturers and applied in mid-range products.

Final line

Although with a robust configuration, the Dell Vostro 5490’s design does not disappoint users. Dell has done a good job of being a caring producer, listening to the voices of its users, and above all, being outwardly considerate.

How do you think about this laptop? Do you want to buy it? It can be purchased on Amazon.com for around $970. So how did you like this Dell Vostro 5490 review, leave your comment below and tell us.