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Laptops · Dell Precision

Dell Precision 5520

9owners with an opinion
62%of verdicts positive
1/2positive/negative since 2024
5 yrslongest happy owner
1happy after 3+ years

Praised for battery and repairability; criticized for comfort and build quality.

What owners wrote

Doesn’t like itOwned 5 years
I got a Dell Latitude 5520 about five years ago. I chose it because it seemed pretty repairable/upgradeable, with two NVME SSD slots, two RAM slots and an easily replaceable battery. And those features have indeed served me well. But I have been quite disappointed in the build quality of the laptop itself. The thing is literally falling apart. A lot of paint is chipping off both the keyboard and the body, and there are two sizeable cracks in the side of the laptop which don't currently affect operation but which are getting bigger over time. Lately the touchpad has started to give me issues as well. I use my laptop a lot but I'm not particularly hard on it - it occasionally moves from my home desk to my sofa, basically never leaves the house. I also have a different laptop for work. In hindsight I think maybe I should have gotten a Thinkpad, but when I was looking around I remember the newer Thinkpads only having one free RAM slot with the other soldered in which turned me off. Also I quite like larger laptops and numpads which limits me somewhat.
Likes itOwned 5 yearsStill going
I'm a happy owner of a Dell Precision 5520 that is already 5 years old. It shipped with a Ubuntu LTS by default and I took a 3-year next day repair warranty that I used once for a swollen battery. I cannot express how happy I was to have my laptop repaired in less than an hour in my kitchen by a Dell certified technician. Given how dependent I am on my computer for work, if I had to send it I would have lost at least a week of productivity. Instead, it was just a minor inconvenience. Sh*t happens, but I would pay for this peace of mind every time. For my next laptop, I'm waiting for Framework to open shipping to Switzerland. It won't come this kind of warranty but its full repairability will make up for it.
Doesn’t like it
You are right... I personally own a T480s and it is a remarkable device, which can be repaired just like the framework (although most parts are no longer available new). I added a glass trackpad (which is way better than the original) and ordered a WQHD Display + Cable to upgrade from FullHD to WQHD (2560x1440?). Batteries can be replaced, RAM can be upgraded (in a way, part of it is soldered) and everything has a unique part number that can be easily researched. However, newer Lenovo Devices (like the Lenovo ThinkPad X9-15 Aura Edition which I would love to buy) are not that repairable any more. Sometimes I think it is for a reason, sometimes I think it may just be no longer reasonable. Even Framework claimed that their Desktop Ryzen 395+ RAM timings were to tight to allow using LPCAMM2 and if you'd like to get the last bit of performance out of a machine, short traces and soldered connections may be the only remaining option, even for SSDs. Additionally, OLEDs didn't make it into Frameworks notebooks yet and that might be a similar reason - harder repairability. Whatever the reason is, I like Frameworks philosophy of LISTENING to customers and maybe their success has changed the way bigger vendors produce there stuff (if only a little bit). I'm not expecting Apple to do this, but at least HP and Dell seem to have slightly changed their path of vendor locking to be more repairable again. I would bet that this story of a failed BIOS update reaches the support anytime soon and…
Likes it
Yeah MacOS is better with Battery life compared to Linux. But, compared to W11? I guess it depends a lot. My Precision 5520 got an extra hour of battery on the 9cell varient. Thats about a 20% uplift from W11; but thats an old Xeon laptop now.
Likes it
I close the lid of my MacBook and come back two days later: my MacBook has lost 3% of its battery. If I open my laptop within 24hrs then it is already ready by the time I finish opening the lid. This immediacy means I don’t lose my train of thought (ie; the reason I grabbed my laptop in the first place). I’m a hard Linux lover, and begrudgingly use a MacBook, but sleep has a lot of value, and the Mac stuff seems to work a lot more consistently than what windows is offering. (Linux too, in a number of circumstances: though my old precision 5520 never had an issue with suspend)
Doesn’t like it
> no issues with it, including battery life Depends on your definition of issues though, I prefer linux to be perfectly honest but the MacBook Air I have has changed my mentality about battery life. I literally do not look for outlets anymore; I use the machine for the whole day and I charge it at night like my phone. If that's what the competition is then the 5hrs I used to get with my 97Wh battery on my Precision 5520 is definitely "an issue", because 3.5hours in I start getting battery anxiety.
Recommends it
I use a Dell Precision 5520 as my daily driver and have been very impressed. The things I like about it are a good backlit keyboard that hasn't been forced too thin, a bright screen I can see in sunlight, and a good battery life that hasn't significantly diminished as I have owned the laptop. The only complaint I have is it will sometimes turn itself back on in my bag and drain it's battery. The Precision 55XX line is basically their XPS line with a Quadro card baked in. The new 5550 model has a few spec bumps and a slightly nicer webcam placement and would be my recommendation if you need a Quadro card. Otherwise check out the latest Dell XPS line.
Recommends it
Get either: The Dell Precision 5520 (or whatever the latest verison of that is) with Ubuntu pre-installed (you can easily wipe and reinstall with distro of your choice, but this guarantees maximum compatibility. Pros: - Premium hardware (better than Apple IMHO, and I love Apple's hardware) - Nice trackpad - Good compatibility with Linux (except the Nvidia Optimus stuff, so avoid that if you can) - Good warranty - Touch screen compatible (which works great with Gnome) Cons: - Price is better than Apple but definitely on the high end - Compatibility isn't perfect (tho it is really close) The Lenovo T{4,5}80 Pros: - More hardware for the buck (excellent value) - Super easy to self service (basically anything) - Highly compatible with Linux - Can get Nvidia card for higher-end graphics/gaming Cons: - Body is a little plasticky and looks cheap-ish - Bezels on the screen are kind of big - Intel graphics won't let you do gaming or video editing (although I do use Kdenlive on mine. It takes forever to render but I can edit just fine) I've had both and they are awesome. My current setup is Lenovo T580 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD running Fedora 30. It's flawless and worked out of the box (after running the Fedora installer).
Neutral
I have a Dell XPS 13 and a Dell Precision 5520 [1], both 2017 models. It feels like the XPS gets around 8 hours of battery life and the Precision gets around 4.5 (even with the discrete GPU turned off). I got the high-res screen option on both, I hear that going with the low-res option boosts battery life. I bought the Precision with very good specs, which may help explain why it gets worse performance than seems to be advertised. Its screen is also brighter than the XPS 13's. The reason I got the Precision is that the XPS 13 was too small and slow and I didn't feel productive on it. I find that small screens really hamper my productivity, and having a smaller palm rest beneath the keyboard also makes typing more difficult. System 76 laptops have very poor ergonomics and battery life, but great internals at a decent price. I bought a Gazelle Pro from them 6 years ago and it was basically unusable as a mobile computer; it got 1 hour of battery life out of the box and that declined to about 5 minutes after a year or so of wear (I'm not joking, it was bad). The keyboard was also terrible. I ended up using it as a portable desktop. That said, it was as powerful, if not more, than the XPS 13 that I bought 6 years later, and it cost slightly less too. ThinkPads are also really nice. They have great keyboards and good battery life (generally coming with swappable batteries). I bought one about 8 years ago and it was probably the best personal laptop I've owned. The reason I went Del
Recommends it
Dell Precision 15" with 4k and 97Wh battery. One of the few laptops that ship with Ubuntu if that's your thing. I personally own a Precision 5510 and use a 5520 everyday for work. Both run Arch with no issues other then minor display scaling issues that can be blamed on the state of Linux desktop environments, not the laptop.