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Jul 25, 2023

Dell Inspiron 24 5420 All

Flaunting a slick off-white design built around a 24-inch—okay, 23.8-inch—1,920-by-1,080-pixel touch display and one of Intel's latest 13th Gen Core i5 processors, the Dell Inspiron 24 5420 All-in-One

Flaunting a slick off-white design built around a 24-inch—okay, 23.8-inch—1,920-by-1,080-pixel touch display and one of Intel's latest 13th Gen Core i5 processors, the Dell Inspiron 24 5420 All-in-One (starts at $679.99; $1,090 as tested) is a well-rounded midrange all-in-one desktop. With 16GB of memory, a 512GB solid-state drive, and Intel integrated graphics, it provides sufficient performance for everyday use as a home or schoolwork PC. The desktop's screen is crisp and bright enough for most pursuits, and its 5-watt stereo speakers produce punchy audio. The Inspiron 24 is well-suited as a space-saving entertainment machine, but we'd more readily recommend an all-in-one with a higher-resolution display, such as the 24-inch Apple iMac or 27-inch Lenovo IdeaCentre AIO 5i, if you plan to spend long stretches looking at text or spreadsheets.

The Inspiron 24 All-in-One is highly configurable, with both AMD and Intel processor options available. The AMD-based model 5415 starts at $580, with the Intel model 5420 seen here starting at $100 more. Both AMD's and Intel's full range of CPUs are on the menu: Ryzen 3, Ryzen 5, and Ryzen 7 for AMD fans; and both 12th and 13th Gen Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 for Intel lovers. Our $1,090 test unit combines a mid-grade Core i5-1335U chip with an upgrade from a non-touch to a touch screen. It also doubles the base memory and storage to 16GB and 512GB, respectively.

Dell's 13th Gen Intel models include a dedicated graphics option in the admittedly modest Nvidia GeForce MX550 GPU, though our review system stuck with the CPU's Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics. Oddly, AMD buyers can opt for a 1TB SSD, while internal storage peaks at 512GB on the Intel side.

As with any Dell consumer PC, you need to keep an eye on the company's ever-changing sales and discounts. Our Inspiron 24 test sample is officially $1,090, but it can often be found for as little as $910.

Regardless of the CPU you choose, Dell's design remains the same, which is definitely a positive. The desktop is compact (16.2 by 21.4 by 1.6 inches, HWD) with thin bezels on three sides of the screen and a speaker bar below it. The color scheme is a pleasing off-white with matte gray accents, with the enclosure made of dense plastic.

The system rests on two triangular feet that Dell calls altogether an Isosceles Stand. It provides a steady base and allows for tilt adjustment but limits placement. An all-in-one with a one-legged base or even a tripod stand with two front and one rear foot lets you place the PC in the corner of your desk or kitchen counter. You can't do that with the Dell and must find a more centered spot where each foot can find purchase.

All of the Inspiron's ports, save one, are located around the back. You'll find useful connections in a neat row at the bottom rear: HDMI-in-and-out ports, four USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, an Ethernet jack, a headphone jack, and a full-size SD card slot. A lone USB Type-C port is located on the right edge of the display. These ports plus standard Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth ought to satisfy nearly any user, but I wish the audio jack joined the USB-C port on the right side, where it would be more easily accessible.

Dell bundles a generic wireless keyboard and mouse with the Inspiron 24 All-in-One. Both share the system's soft, off-white color scheme. If you're fine with bog-standard peripherals, these should be fine, but of course, you have the option to bring your own.

As mentioned, the Inspiron 24 All-in-One, like the Apple iMac, features a 24-inch-class display. While I wish our system's upgrade to the touch screen also included a bump up to, say, 1440p instead of 1080p resolution, even that would be miles shy of the 4,480 by 2,520 pixels of the iMac's Retina Display. I do like that Dell's touch panel doesn't come with a glossy coating that might result in disruptive glare and reflections while accumulating finger smudges; its antiglare coating keeps images looking clean.

I said "clean"—not "crisp," however. Full HD resolution suffices for watching streaming videos and casual web surfing, but text appears fuzzy when you are seated close to the screen because you can make out the individual pixels. A higher-res display is hugely helpful if you plan to use an all-in-one as your everyday work machine reading documents and emails for much of the day. But for an entertainment system or a secondary home PC, the Inspiron's 1080p resolution is acceptable.

Dell doesn't advertise a brightness rating for the screen, but we measured peak brightness at almost 300 nits, appreciably brighter than the 250-nit panel on the HP All-in-One 24 I just tested. And, as you'll see in the next section, the Inspiron's color reproduction is better, too. Where the HP's screen looked like an economy model, the Dell display produces the brightness and color accuracy of a mainstream AIO.

As it should, this system features a 1080p webcam that produces crisp images with accurate color and skin tones, and it's less noisy than its HP rival's shooter (which looked more grainy despite equal resolution). Plus, the Inspiron's camera supports Windows Hello IR face recognition for swift, secure logins. When you aren't using the webcam, you can push it down behind the screen to preserve your privacy.

The Inspiron 24 All-in-One produces impressive sound for an affordable AIO. The PC features a pair of 5-watt speakers that produce fairly robust audio output. I could hear some separation between high and middle tones, and even detected a bit of bass. I caught myself actually enjoying music playback, which didn't happen with the flatter, muddier sound from the HP's 2-watt speakers.

As mentioned up top, our Inspiron 24 5420 All-in-One test system features an Intel Core i5-1335U CPU. This laptop-grade mobile processor prioritizes efficiency over raw performance, and it's a decent fit for a compact all-in-one because it permits the system to operate smoothly and in near silence. The cooling fans kick in under heavy loads, but I found that to be a rare occurrence, and the fans weren't obnoxiously loud even then.

To put the Inspiron's performance in perspective, we compared its benchmark results with those of other 24-inch all-in-ones from Acer, HP, and Lenovo along with Dell's larger Inspiron 27 All-in-One (model 7710). These competing systems feature Core i3 and i5 CPUs from Intel's 12th Generation line as well as an AMD Ryzen 5 5000 mobile series chip.

We run the same general productivity benchmarks across both mobile and desktop systems. Our first test is UL's PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance and also includes a storage subtest for the primary drive.

Our other three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Geekbench 5.4 Pro from Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).

Finally, we run PugetBench for Photoshop by workstation maker Puget Systems, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe's famous image editor to rate a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.

The Inspiron 24 All-in-One landed at or near the back of the pack in our application and multimedia benchmarks, roughly matching the Inspiron 27's results. Its best result was a third-place finish in Photoshop. Overall, it has enough power to run Windows 11 smoothly and handle everyday multitasking and even dabble in occasional media editing, but you'll get faster and more reliable content creation performance from a system with an AMD Ryzen 5 or an Intel H-series CPU.

For general-use laptops, we run synthetic graphics rendering benchmarks. This includes two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for systems with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). Next up is the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which we use to gauge OpenGL performance. Two different GFXBench tests are rendered offscreen to accommodate different native display resolutions; more frames per second (fps) means higher performance.

These tests were a flop nearly across the board, with several systems including the Inspiron 24 balking at one or more of the benchmarks. All these PCs rely on humble integrated graphics that borrow resources from the CPU and system RAM; none is suitable for fast-paced gaming or demanding visual applications.

We use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure an AIO screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).

As mentioned, we measured the Inspiron 24 All-in-One's brightness at nearly 300 nits, putting it a head above your typical budget panel. (Looking at you, HP.) It also scored better in our color saturation tests than its peers. It's no photo or video editing workstation, but the Inspiron 24 All-in-One is definitely a step up in the display department from the typical low-priced all-in-one.

The Dell Inspiron 24 5420 All-in-One represents an excellent value, especially if you can find it at a discount. It's capable of sufficient performance, and the desktop features a large enough display with decent color and brightness for use as an everyday, space-saving PC. Better yet, its surprisingly robust audio makes this desktop ideal as a home entertainment PC. For more office-oriented work or bigger budgets, we recommend the larger 27-inch Lenovo IdeaCentre AIO 5i or the superior 24-inch Apple iMac.