Fortunately, Dell has taken that criticism in stride and is now offering a new version of the laptop, with a 256GB solid state drive (SSD), for just another $50. While this means sacrificing a lot of storage space — the base model’s hard drive has 1TB — the SATA SSD will improve day-to-day performance and reduce game load times.
The best part about this option is that it’s an option. The original $800 model, with the 1TB hard drive (HDD), is still available, and for just a few hundred dollars more ($1,200) you can have both the SSD and the HDD.
That $1,200 model also offers a more powerful Core i7 CPU from the same Skylake generation as the i5 in the $850 model and bumps the display resolution to 4K (3,840 x 2,160).
Just focusing on storage though, having both an SSD and HDD in that set up would certainly be preferable for a lot of users. While 256GB is plenty of space for the operating system and a few games, it could become full quite quickly if you installed just a handful of AAA games on it, or are a big media consumer and want to store your collection of films and shows on there.
For those that don’t plan to do that though, or don’t need a lot of storage space, the $850 model is going to be a much more cost effective route to take and certainly preferably over a larger, much slower hard drive solution.
Better yet, if you order one now using Dell’s financing system, you can get a further $80+ off of your purchase as cashback, and free shipping.
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