Dell Inspiron 13 7373 i5-8250u w/3 year protection plan or Dell XPS 13 i7-8550u for $120 more?

Korbi

Honorable
Jun 12, 2013
2
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10,510
Hello all, so let me give a little background on my situation. I am a college student, huge gamer and love tech. I have a pretty sweet gaming rig and a MacBook Pro 15 inch, so I have a pretty powerful setup. I have used and preferred to do my programming/work on macOS, but I have been getting a little tired of carrying a 15 inch laptop around and so I was searching for something a little smaller. I was looking in the 11inch range, and I was interested in a MacBook with an i5/M3 and 256GB, but I dont have $1300. I have owned a MacBook M3 before, I know the processor isn't great, but when I owned it I loved it and got the job done, for a 2lb laptop with macOS. And unfortunately, I couldn't find a really powerful 11 inch that wasn't $400 with a celeron or M3 on windows, so I thought of looking at 13 inches.

So, with working at a retail electronics store and getting an employee discount, I thought I would take a look at our computer deals at the time. My goal was to get a nice PC, with fast storage, for $600-900. So we had the Dell Inspiron i7373 i5-8250u, 256GB SSD, and 8GB DDR4 @ 2400MHz for $150 off, from $849 to $699. To me this was a sick deal, with how powerful and improved the new low power i5's are with 4 cores. So I bought it, and with my employee discount, I was able to get a 3 year accidental protection plan that covers water spills and drops. So after taxes, everything turned out to be $840, which I was fine with especially how quick the laptop is and how sleek it is.

With the past couple weeks I have been contemplating getting the i7 model with 16gb of ram, only if its on sale. However, I took a look at Microcenters website for laptops since I have shopped there before and built my gaming desktop there. I found an XPS 13 that was $350 off, from $1249 to $899. I was extremely interested in this deal, because it has the i7-8550u, 256GB SSD, and 8GB of LPDDR3 @ 1867MHz. And I also love the XPS line, and I would have gotten one originally if it wasn't so expensive for my current budget.

So I have been considering returning my inspiron for the XPS recently, however I am having a hard time deciding. One way, I spend around $100 for an XPS and an i7 (after taxes), BUT I lose the protection plan. Also, I have done a fair bit of research between the i5 and i7, and when I would usually just sided with the i7, I noticed from benchmarks that the i5 to the i7 isn't as big of a gap in performance as it usually is. From what I have seen, the i7 is only 10%-20% more powerful generally. Already, the i5 is incredibly powerful for its price point, and the fact that its a quad core with hyper threading makes it even more desirable. So the i7 is nice, but it really isn't that much more powerful over the i5. If the i5 didn't have hyperthreading, I probably wouldn't even post this and just have gotten the XPS.

On one hand, I am thinking of keeping my inspiron. Its an incredibly sleek machine, and I got a great deal on it, as well as being fast and having accidental coverage on it for 3 years. However, an i7 is always nice and the XPS line is just a beautiful laptop.

Money is obviously a big portion here. I lose the protection plan and get a more powerful laptop, but not by much, with being $100 over the Inspiron. I am leaning towards keeping my Inspiron and my protection plan since I will be taking this laptop everywhere I go, but what do you guys think?

Should I spend the extra $100-110 on the XPS and lose the protection plan, or keep my Inspiron and my accidental coverage?

FYI: I am completely pleased with my Inspiron, only reason why I am even bringing this up is the sale on the XPS. Thanks guys!

 
Solution
I would stick with what you have because of the 3 year protection plan.

From my own personal experience, the first thing to go bad is the battery which the warranty should cover. Naturally, you can buy a new replacement battery, but if you want an "official battery" rather than some knock off, they can be pretty expensive. Knock-offs are cheaper, but they may not be as good as an "official battery" which means battery life could be shorter and they may be of cheaper quality and die somewhat quickly.

Sure... the i7-8550u is more powerful than the i5-8250u but do you really need that extra performance and do you do anything that can take advantage of Hyper Threading (HT) which allows the i7 to execute up to 8 streams of instructions /...
I would stick with what you have because of the 3 year protection plan.

From my own personal experience, the first thing to go bad is the battery which the warranty should cover. Naturally, you can buy a new replacement battery, but if you want an "official battery" rather than some knock off, they can be pretty expensive. Knock-offs are cheaper, but they may not be as good as an "official battery" which means battery life could be shorter and they may be of cheaper quality and die somewhat quickly.

Sure... the i7-8550u is more powerful than the i5-8250u but do you really need that extra performance and do you do anything that can take advantage of Hyper Threading (HT) which allows the i7 to execute up to 8 streams of instructions / data? The program(s) would need to be designed to take advantage of HT though.
 
Solution