Dell Inspiron 15 3000 3541
Dell Inspiron 15 3000 3541

Dell Inspiron 15 3000 3541 AMD-Based Cheap Laptop

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Description

Dell’s 3541 is AMD-powered version of the Inspiron 15 3000 notebook. It forms the 15 3000 entry-level 15.6-inch series together with the Intel-based 3542.

Both the 3541 and 3542 have the same simplistic design. It looks like Dell has tried to totally reduce all ornamentation and unnecessary bits. The result is an elegant look, which resembles appearance of business-use notebooks. The laptops are 1″ thin and both start at 5.3 pounds of weight. They have isle-style spill-resistant keyboards with optional backlight and fairly spacious trackpads with buttons integrated in the surface. Another way of interaction with Windows and programs is via the touchscreen. That feature is however optional.

While we are at the screen, it’s important to note that the resolution is 1366×768 pixels. That’s an expected pixel count for a budget laptop. If you want to go 1920×1080 Full HD you’ll have to go for some other notebook series than the Inspiron 3000. And obviously have to shell out more cash. One of the examples is the Inspiron 7000.

Processor choices are the AMD E and A4 / A6 series from the latest Beema CPU family. These are power-efficient chips for thin laptop and tablet designs. Performance is a bit watered down in order to fit in thermal constraints of thin notebook cases. Intel does the same with their popular Pentium and Core “U” series CPUs. However, both have sufficient speed for all the tasks of the average user. You can expect Beema processors to run a bit faster and cooler than the 2013 AMD Kabini precursors and slower than the Intel Core-series. Benchmarks of the new AMD CPUs are not available yet. Generally, the E-series AMD are the very basic CPUs similar to the Intel Atom, while the E4 and E6 perform similar to the Intel Pentium. As aside note, AMD laptop processors are usually cheaper than their Intel counterparts, so overall prices of AMD-based laptops tend to be cheaper.

The updated chips also bring new integrated graphics with them. These are not 3D gaming solutions. They’re rather designed just to manage the display and some light 2D games. For those in need for more graphics muscle, Dell will add the AMD Radeon HD R5 M230 dedicated video card option at a later date. That’s however just an entry level video card.

Hard drive and RAM sizes in the available configurations is 500GB and 4GB respectively. Both can be upgraded by the user pretty much easily, since Dell has provided upgrade doors on the bottom of the chassis. The system also contains a 4-cell 40Wh battery that is user-replaceable. Keep in mind that the Dell Inspiron 15 3000 3541 has only one RAM slot.

The rest of the feature set is admirable. It includes a DVD burner, stereo speakers, webcam, HDMI video connector, a total of three USB ports, and combo audio jack. For networking, the 3541 provides Wi-Fi, while Ethernet LAN is available on select configurations. Bluetooth interface is also present.

0 responses to “Dell Inspiron 15 3000 3541 AMD-Based Cheap Laptop”

  1. Hi, I got this laptop with Ubuntu. I removed it and installed Windows 8, but can’t get Wi-Fi working. Tried to install drivers from the support page, no success. Please help.

    Reply

  3. My Dell 3541 Review

    Dell Inspirion 15 3000 3541

    I’ve been using the Dell Inspiron 3000 3541 for a couple of day now and here are my impressions:

    The display is pleasant on the eyes, although there are some flaws. Colors are not too vibrant, but rather realistic, which is a kind of nice. It could have been brighter on maximal brightness. In this regard it’s less bright than many competitors. Backlight isn’t uniform. There’s backlight leakage visible on the edges, especially for instance in dark movie scenes. The finish is a glossy one so it reflects ambient lights a lot.

    The keyboard key travel is short, but the same issue is present on the vast majority of modern laptops. The keys are a bit on small side for my taste and the space key is short, so I often accidentally press the right ALT button instead of space.

    The trackpad by Synaptics works nice in terms of cursor navigation, multitouch gestures, and scrolling and the left and right click buttons integrated in the surface provide an OK tactile feedback. But, if you try to do a right-click by pressing the right button area close to the center, right-click will be sometimes recognized as a left-click. So, you should rather use lower corners of the trackpad for clicking. The main issue I have with the trackpad are short left and right sides, so I often accidentally tap the deck area below the trackpad when I want to perform left and right clicks. It requires a bit of time to get used to it.

    After reading many complaints about weakness of the built-in speakers, I was surprised with those in my review unit. They’re actually quite good in my opinion. Loud enough to fill an office with sound, without noticeable distortion. You can’t hear deep bass sound, but trebles are quite clear. For sure, the Inspiron 3000 doesn’t lag behind the competing budget notebooks in this regard. Or the unit I got, at least.

    Heat and noise are minimal. The fan is very quiet and doesn’t need to turn fast, since the CPU is fairly cool running. Temperatures of the CPU are between 40 on idle and 50 under stress.

    Battery life? In my web surf test on the tested configuration with the low-power AMD E1-6010 processor, the battery lasted 4 hours and 50 minutes. That’s from the fully charged battery to 5% fullness, after which the laptop hibernates. I browsed the web via Wi-Fi, with screen brightness set to 50% and a couple of tabs opened.

    Build quality is solid, without excessive bending of the keyboard deck area under pressure. The lid bends a bit more, but not worse than on the competing notebooks. The surfaces are matte and thus easy to keep clean of fingerprints. On the lid there’s a nice looking relief texture.

    Lack of HDD indicator light could annoy some users.

    Hard drive and RAM upgrades are easy on the Inspiron 3541. The upgrade panel on the bottom is held by only one screw.

    Another plus is the user-removable battery.

    The unit I have is with the AMD E1-6010 processor which is OK for websurf, light applications, and movie playback, but nothing more than that. It’s currently the slowest laptop processor on the market and it shows weakness when put under stress. For instance, it can’t handle Minecraft game properly and the Radeon R2 integrated graphics can’t help here. It runs at only up to 20fps, even on the lowest resolutions. For some other games which more rely on the GPU such as Counter Strike GO, the frame rates are acceptable – 20-30fps – with settings on minimum and 1280×720 resolution. I’ll post by the end of the week a full review of the E1-6010, but for now I would like to tell you you should avoid it if you plan to purchase the Inspiron 3541. Get an AMD E2, A4 or A6 version or any Intel-based 3542 configuration instead.

    Here are high-res images of the laptop I’m talking about:

    Reply

  4. hi,

    any idea how to disable the touchpad when using the mouse to avoid cursor movement while typing. this on Dell Inspiron 3000 the same laptop

    Reply

  5. I just bought Inspiron 15 3000 series Touchscreen with AMD technology.
    The sound quality seems terrible. Anyone with same issue or any way to solve this issue.

    Thanks guys

    Reply

    • You can check in Control Panel > Sound > Properties > Speakers > Levels if the level set is to maximum, 100%. Also, under Speakers > Enhancements, try to tweak settings for the best results. The last, because of location of the speakers, the best sound is when the notebook is on a flat surface, ie table instead of bed.

      Reply

    • I find PassMark CPU scores to be pretty much accurate. If you take a look at PassMark scores as well as gaming-oriented 3D Mark score in the link you provided, you’ll see the gap is big in favor of the i7. However, if you plan to use your laptop for non-demanding tasks like web surfing, Office document editing, casual games, and movie and music playback, the difference won’t be extremely noticeable. On the other hand, the i7 will show its advantage in more intensive tasks like video file conversion, editing of high-resolution images, and similar.

      Reply

  7. Dell support is worthless!

    I bought the i3541 for my Pre_Med student daughter on Black Friday as Christmas gift.
    She has been brought to tears with the WORTHLESS amateur support.
    What was supposed to a joyful Christmas gift has turned into a nightmare

    Reply

  8. Help !!!!!!!!!!!
    Just purchased a Dell Inspiron 3541 AMD A6-6310 APU with AMD Radeon R4 Graphics and i noticed that at both start up and shut down, it makes a loud noise 5 times before the the operation completes. this sounds strange to me. What could be wrong?

    Reply

    • I am having the very same issue with mine, and I am not finding any definitive explanations anywhere; not even in Dell forums.

      Reply

    • As it turns out, the issue was pretty “simple”. I replaced the CMOS battery, and the beeping went away. It is still a bit strange that it should require a new coin cell battery so soon, but at lest the annoyance is gone.

      Reply

  10. I bought this computer and I was wondering if I could upgrade the RAM It currently has 4GB but I want to upgrade it to something higher.

    Reply

  11. Hi Team,

    I am using Dell Inspron 15 3541 from last one year, i want increase my laptop RAM size, what is the last size of this laptop , it will be help full form, if it is support 16gb RAM, i want to install that only(16Gb).

    Reply

    • What processor your laptop uses? There’s only one slot, so you can put in 16GB only if you have a single 16GB stick. These are hard to find on the market. Also, it is possible that your CPU / motherboard don’t support singe 16GB RAM modules.

      Reply

  12. I’ve been using this laptop for a little over a year now, but I was wondering if I could upgrade the processor. My RAM is 8 gigs but I haven’t seen anything about a processor better tha 1.8 GHz. If anyone could help it would be greatly appreciated.

    Reply

    • Processors in the Dell 3541 series laptop models are soldered onto the motherboards and therefore not upgradeable. The same applies to all other notebooks on the market, except a few high-end notebooks with replaceable CPUs.

      Reply

  13. Is there any way I could take my computer the Insprion 3541 and get them to replace the CPU like undo the solder and put in a new CPU then solder it back?

    Reply

    • Theoretically, it’s possible, but hardly doable in real life since it requires great skills. CPU replacements in modern laptops in most cases means replacement of whole keyboards. Also, if you want to add a more powerful CPU, that will possibly require a different BIOS version and it’s questionable if the existing cooling system can handle a faster and hotter CPU.

      Reply

  14. I bought this computer Inspiron 15 3000 AMD A6 from Office Depot a couple of years ago From Office Depot…..it has basicly sits, nobody wants to use it. It is the slowest piece of junk for a excuse laptop I have ever bought. My cell phone is faster processing this this. Last Dell for me. JUNK JUNK JUNK.

    Reply

    • Any computer that you spend a hundred bucks on and get the economy model will be slow. You can get a $2,000 dell 7000 series that will blow anything else away. Reviews for 2018 best laptop are commonly dell.

      Reply

  15. Slowest piece of JUNK I have ever bought…..pull your hair out waiting for it to process anything, after the worlds slowest start up. Nobody wants to use it, cellphone is faster.

    Reply

  18. Games are working quite properly in my dell inspiron 15 E1 6010 with amd radeon r2 graphics I played lots of games working properly like call of duty,san andreas,bully,sleeping dogs,nfs carbon and most wanted all good

    Reply

  20. I bought this laptop for my wife. It came with 8 GB RAM (max for this model), AMD A6, 1 TB HDD, + Windows 10 installed. It WAS slooowwww–until I dedicated a flash drive for ReadyBoost to attach before start-up. [To get maximum available space for ReadyBoost, format the flash drive in NTFS. You can still use it for some amount of ReadyBoost using Fat 32 formatting.] Important in either case: use a good brand of flash drive; it’s much more likely to be accepted for this use than a cheaper brand (which may or not be accepted by your PCs’ system for this use). This helps with many budget laptops in this bracket, & others besides–FOR HDDrives only! ReadyBoost does not work with SSD’s–BUT it’s not needed with an SSD; the great speed-up in processing by a SSD makes ReadyBoost unnecessary for it. In fact, replacing the Hard Disk Drive in a PC of any kind with a Solid-State Drive is by far the best way to speed it up, and the difference can be spectacular (speaking from experience!).

    Reply

    • Gerry Hinson’s update to his above review: I swapped out the original 1 TB HDD, which was unusually slow even for a laptop HDD, for a SSD (SanDisk Ultra). HUGE upgrade!! Now boots very quickly. The touchsccreen still works well; best with a stylus (can be the simple one atop many pens). Our problem no longer is with this laptop–(BTW, I use a mouse, not the touchpad)–but with Windows 10 and its outrageously long system update process.

      Reply

  21. Hi
    I have the same laptop Dell Inspiron 15 3541 with AMD E1 6010, I have recently updated the windows version from 8.1 to 10, but since I have upgraded it to windows 10 it is working very slow, cursor freezes in every 2 sec is anybody else upgraded this laptop to windows 10?

    If so plz share the review if its working good.

    Reply

    • this version of laptop can run only win 8.1 pro properly if u want to upgrade then upgrade its processor but which is unremoveable which bit harressing in terms of upgrading, out here only a little bit of improvement you can see by removing HDD with SSD and if u want to then upgrade ram

      Reply

    • I had that same problem and tried everything to fix it… but couldn’t find the problem anywhere, until I had a Microsoft technician on the phone who found out my display adapter “driver” needed to be updated…In Start Menu type Device Manager…then find display adapter… Then AMD…highlight AMD Radeon, then on the left side on the red X on Menu is update device driver, I promise it will fix it!

      Reply

    • I am also facing the same problem as kanit k. But i want to know, if i will downgrade to win8.1 then it will run properly or not. Pls reply.

      Reply

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