Hey everybody, in this article I am reviewing the Dell Precision 5680, the 16-inch mobile workstation. There is no XPS 16, but this might be the closest we have. It’s a professional-grade mobile workstation with a 16-inch OLED display, UHD Plus 3840×2400. It has a touch layer on it, and it is absolutely gorgeous. The CPU and GPU are powerful; here we have the Core i9 13900H paired with the Nvidia RTX 5000 Ada Lovelace Graphics. In this article reviewing Dell Precision 5680 for 2023.
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Design and Build Quality Build
Inside the box we get some documentation, power cord, and the 165-watts power adapter and it is USB Type-C, it’s pretty compact. And you get a USB-A to USB Type-C adapter and then of course you get some documentation. The Dell Precision 5680 isn’t a beauty right so this is like a graphite color it’s actually pretty nice, the build seems really rock solid very solid all metal design you get some Dell branding there and you can open the lid with one finger.
Dell Precision 5680 Ports and Connections
The port selection of Dell Precision 5680 on the left side we have an HDMI 2.0 port, a 3.5 millimeter microphone headphone combo Jack and two USB Type-C Thunderbolt 4 ports that are full function supporting data charge and display out, and the smart card reader. as well over the right side a full size SD card reader and the cards stick out a little bit not quite as much as other laptops but it does stick out about a quarter inch of the way. You get a standard USB Type-C port not Thunderbolt-4 and then finally a Kensington Lockport to round out the ports on this workstation. Keep in mind dell also ship it with a dongle for the USB type-A because there is no type a port on the laptop itself, so they give you that dongle in the Box. The Port selection is pretty decent although, I would have liked to have seen a full-size USB-A port on this unit and it would have been nice to have ethernet as well but they wanted to keep it thin and as light as possible so we don’t have that.
Internals and User Upgradeability
Thhe Precision 5680, when open it up you’ll immediately notice the presence of two cooling fans for thermal management. While we’re inspecting the internals, you’ll also observe the inclusion of Vapor Chamber Cooling. Furthermore, you’ll come across a notably large 99.5 watt-hour battery. In terms of memory options, they span from 16 gigabytes up to a whopping 64 gigabytes of DDR5 6000 megahertz RAM, configured in Quad Channel mode. My review unit boasts 32 gigabytes of RAM, which is proving to perform admirably. However, it’s worth noting that there are no visible SODIMM slots here, indicating that the RAM is soldered onto the motherboard, rendering it non-upgradable by end-users. The laptop design choice likely aims to maintain a slim profile, minimize weight, and ensure compactness.
Moving on, my review unit incorporates two SSD slots operating in RAID 0 configuration, the remarkable read and write speeds showcased here are a testament to the blazingly fast performance this RAID setup provides. Concerning wireless connectivity, the Precision 5680 features Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. This combo card is soldered onto the motherboard and isn’t user-upgradable. However, both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth perform exceptionally well, with no issues experienced on either front.
Dell Precision 5680 Display
Now, there are a few display options, and we have the 16-inch OLED display with UHD+ resolution, measuring 3840 by 2400. it boasts a 16:10 aspect ratio. Additionally, it supports multi-touch, which is a valuable feature, especially for content creation tasks that require precise interaction, such as pinch-to-zoom. It’s also convenient for scrolling and other finger-based actions. They claim a brightness of 400 nits, and I measured it slightly below that at 389 nits. However, it’s certainly close enough. Glare isn’t too problematic; while it’s a glossy display, reflections aren’t overly distracting. Keep in mind that this may vary based on your lighting conditions. With an OLED display, you get deep blacks, super vibrant colors, high contrast, and colors that truly pop. All of these qualities are present here.
The color gamut coverage is outstanding, as is the color accuracy. This is a boon for content creators and professional video editors. Whether you’re working in Lightroom, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, or other software, this panel performs well. The accurate colors and broad color gamut coverage really make a difference. When you’re not working on content creation or professional tasks, and you’re looking to unwind with a movie, this panel truly shines. It supports HDR content, and watching HDR movies on platforms like Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube is a spectacular experience. I have no complaints in that regard.
One point to be aware of is that this Dell Precision 5680 display has a 60Hz refresh rate, there’s no option for a higher refresh rate, likely to preserve battery life. Dell seems to have aimed for a balanced compromise between performance and longevity, particularly for the mobile professional who needs to work while on the move. Sacrificing battery life for a higher refresh rate wouldn’t have been a priority, especially considering the target audience.
FHD IR Webcam and Mics
The camera on the Dell Precision 5680 mobile workstation 2023 a fantastic laptop so far fantastic workstation that I’m super impressed with now 1080p video 30 frames per second, it has Auto framing that always keeps you in frame. You get the eye contact that means you’re going to always keep looking at your subject and there’s the background blur effect all those work pretty well on Precision 5680 and it’s really an excellent camera. If you are going to do Zoom calls or do hybrid work work from home this is definitely a very usable camera 2023. Color science looks good everything looks really accurate and I look I like that a lot it’s also an IR camera that means you can log in with face recognition with Windows hello.
Performance, Benchmarks and Gaming
| PCMARK 10 | 7,904 |
| GEEKBENCH 6 Single-Core | 2,678 |
| GEEKBENCH 6 Multi-Core | 14,507 |
| CINEBENCH R23 Single-Core | 1,988 |
| CINEBENCH R23 Multi-Core | 15,435 |
| 3DMARK – Fire Strike | 27,361 |
| 3DMARK – Time Spy | 13,677 |
Dell Precision 5680 is running the Intel Core i9-3900h A45 watt CPU from Intel with 14 cores that’s eight efficient cores and six performance cores. And as you can see above Benchmark results excellent single and multi-core performance excellent job, for Microsoft Office, email, web browsing, everyday tasks everything handled with a breeze here excellent results.
| Asus ZENBOOK Pro 16X OLED Core i9-13905H, RTX 4080 | ……1:32 |
| Dell Precision 5680 Core i9-13900H RTX 5000 Ada | ………1:39 |
| Dell XPS 17 9730 Core i7-13700H, RTX 4070 | …………1:47 |
| HP ENVY 16 (2023) Core i9-13900H, RTX 4060 | ……………1:55 |
| Apple Mac Studio M1 Max | ………………1:57 |
Now of course you could do content creation this is one of the reasons professionals will look at this in Photoshop Lightroom, video editing in Premiere Pro and in DaVinci Resolve. In DaVinci Resolve when I rendered a three minute h.264 4K video it took one minute 39 seconds to render that video, now not quite as good as the Asus Zenbook Pro 16x OLED that I looked at that took one minute 32 seconds to render that same video but it outpaced the Dell XPS 17, the HP Envy 16 and the Apple Mac Studio M1 Max, that I have here that did one minute 57 seconds. So overall excellent results. If you’re going to do high-end 4K video editing or even above you certainly could do it with precision 5680 workstation that’s for sure and it took one minute 35 seconds to render an h.265 video for that same video clip so that is a really good result as well.
When it comes to gaming I think you need to keep in mind Dell Precision 5680 is not a gaming laptop let’s be clear about that this is a professional mobile workstation but of course because of powerful CPU GPU combination you can certainly play games and get some really playable frame rates on your downtime that is because of the RTX 5088 graphics. and as you can see above table results you could certainly get good playable frame it’s on some of the more popular titles.
Thermals, Surface Temps and Fan Noise
Now Dell’s Engineers did a really nice job in the internals especially when it comes to the vapor chamber cooling that they’re employing to help with the thermals, and the really good thermals are evident by the fact that it got a passing score of 97.7 percent on the time spy stress test. To see if this would thermal throttle under heavy load getting that passing score means it detected very little if any thermal throttling good job on that front and I was pretty Amazed by how cool it stayed even under heavy load never getting overly hot. In fact precision 5680 only stayed about lukewarm when I was running some pretty intensive benchmarks that’s pretty impressive. And when it comes to Fan noise in the ultra performance mode under heavy load reaching 5152 decibels which is noticeable, so you definitely will notice that fan noise under heavy load. But when you’re in the bounce mode doing everyday tasks the fans don’t come on all that much and when they do they’re not really too distracting.
Dell Precision 5680 Battery Life
| Laptops | PCMARK10 Modern Office | PCMARK 10 Video PlayBack | PCMARK 10 Gaming |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dell XPS 17 9730 97Wh | 8 hours 44 minutes | 9 hours 07 minutes | 1 hours 07 minutes |
| Dell Precision 5680 99.5Wh | 9 hours 42 minutes | 9 hours 53 minutes | 1 hours 40 minutes |
The battery life on Dell Precision 5680 workstation supports a 99.5 watt hour battery just below the 100 watt hour legal limit to take on an airplane. and as you can see above table the PCMARK 10 modern office result 9 hours and 42 minutes, which is about an hour more than the Dell XPS 17 9730 got with a slightly smaller battery and 97 watt hour battery that did well by the way. And the PCMARK 10 video playback test very similar result again with the Dell XPS 17 getting 9 hours and 53 minutes versus the 9 hours and seven minutes on the XPS 17 all told pretty decent battery life, especially for the power this is packing so all in all pretty nice battery life. And with the 165-watt USB type-C power adapter taking about 90 minutes or so to full charge laptop.
Hinges, Keyboard and Touchpad
As for the hinge you can open the lid with one finger, and the screen goes back as far as. As far as those hinges they’re on really well, I saw very little if any screen wobble. When I was typing I don’t like screen wobble and I didn’t detect it on dell precision 5680.
And as far as the keyboard itself is concerned I like it the keyboard feels really good very comfortable for typing especially long documents, or emails I never felt like my fingers were going to bottom out, the feedback was good, the key travel was good all do a really nice job. I’m a big fan of this keyboard now it does have a multi-stage backlight that allows you to get work done in a dark room or a dimly lit environment that worked really well. Precision 5680 has such a good implementation of a haptic touchpad probably one of the best ones I’ve seen so far, as far as scrolling as far as the gestures everything very precise very responsive and they have to engine gives you the nice feedback that you want really a great job overall.
Audio Quality
The Precision 5680 Supports a total of 8 watts of power in terms of the audio quad speakers, two woofers, two tweeters. And I think the overall sound is Rich full decent volume, good mids and there was some bass.
Dell Precision 5680 Full Specs
| Display | 16″ OLED touch, 3840 x 2400, 60Hz, 400 Nits brightness. |
| CPU | 13th Gen Intel Core i9-13900H vPro. 24MBcache, 14 cores. |
| Graphics | NVIDIA RTX 5000 Ada Generation DDR5 16 GB memory. |
| Memory | Up to 64GB, 6000Hz, DDR5, Non-ECC SoDIMM memory. |
| Storage | Raid 0 with 2 x 512MB M.2 2280 Class 40 HDD. |
| Battery | 6-Cell 99.5Whr Lithium battery |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi 6E + Bluetooth 5.3 |
| Camera | FHD RGB IR Camera, Fingerprint Reader |
| Audio | Dual array microphones 4x speakers (grade A) |
| Ports | (2) Thunderbolt 4 ports, Universal Audio jack, SD-Card slot, Wedge-shaped lock slot, HDMI 2.0 with a additional USB Type-A Dongle. |
| Build Quality | Chassis Aluminum |
| Price | $6,648.58 |
Final Thought
To be honest Dell Precision 5680 mobile workstation 2023 pretty phenomenal I like what they bring here especially 16-inch stunning UHD plus, OLED display, it is pretty awesome. it’s got good battery life, strong performance, good single, multi-core performance, no throttling detected under load. The two Thunderbolt 4 ports give you a lot of Versatility super fast raid zero configuration regarding the SSDs, the responsive spacious haptic touchpad is an excellent implementation it worked out really well. A nice comfortable keyboard for typing out long documents and emails and the full HD IR camera has been amazing in terms of the color science and the overall image. As well as internal mics they’ve been really good. As for the negatives while there’s no high refresh rate option although this target audience is really not going to be too concerned about that in the end of the day, and then the noticeable fan noise under heavy load is nothing to be too concerned about just you will notice it I wanted to point that out. And it is expensive for the average consumer although when you look at similarly priced out Apple Mac Pro devices and so forth or others in this category as far as workstations, this is certainly on par as far as pricing and nothing outrageous when you look at it from there and keep in mind companies tend to buy these in bulk. when it’s all said and done the Dell Precision 5680 checks all the boxes making this a highly recommended mobile workstation here for 2023.
The Dell Precision 5680 checks all the boxes making this a highly recommended mobile workstation here for 2023.
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Design10
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Hardware10
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Ports9
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Display10
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Performance10
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Keyboard9
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Touchpad10
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Thermals / Fan Noise9
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Webcam10
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Audio9
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Battery Life9
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Price Value6
