Is Dell's Inspiron 13 (7390) 2-in-1 available with AMD Ryzen hardware?

How well does the Inspiron 13 2-in-1 perform?

We used the Inspiron 13 (7390) 2-in-1 "Black Edition" for a couple of weeks leading up to and following our in-depth review. The review model included an 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8565U "Whiskey Lake" CPU, 16GB of LPDDR3-2133MHz RAM, and a 512GB PCIe NVMe solid-state drive (SSD).

It was subjected mostly to productivity tasks associated with blogging, including word processing, heavy web browsing, video streaming, file transfers, light photo editing, and messaging. With ease, it cut through everything thrown its way, so if you're in search of a laptop for general work, you shouldn't have any problems.

With a brilliant and colorful 4K touch display packed into the tight chassis, the 52Wh battery managed about six or seven hours of life from a charge when going about the same productivity work. That was with a balanced battery plan and with brightness at roughly the halfway mark, but it's still not quite enough to get through a standard workday.

Other nagging issues were the buzzing speakers and limited configuration options, but for the most part, the Inspiron 13 (7390) 2-in-1 was a delight to use. The pen storage built into the hinge is a smart new way to keep the pointer nearby, keyboard and touchpad promote productivity, and decent port selection allows you to connect your most-needed peripherals.

Dell now also has an Inspiron 13 7390 "Black Edition" 2-in-1 model available with 10th Gen Core i7 "Comet Lake" CPU. The Core i7-10510U model is physically the same as the models with 8th Gen Intel CPU, including 4K touch display with pen support.

How does Intel hardware stack up against AMD?

The 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8656U CPU was put through the Geekbench 5 test as one of the first synthetic benchmarks in our review. It hit a single-core score of 1,111 and a multi-core score of 2,965. A Ryzen 7 3700U CPU doesn't quite match the single-core score of the i7-8565U, coming in about 100 or 200 points below, but it matches and even exceeds the multi-core score in many cases.

The Ryzen 5 3500U, which is AMD's answer to the Intel Core i5, even manages to come close in some instances to the Core i7's multi-core score, though again it doesn't quite match up to the single-core scores posted by Intel's hardware.

As for 10th Gen Intel hardware, the Core i7-10510U generally hovers between the 1,000 and 1,200 mark for a single-core score and generally manages to exceed 3,000 up to about 200 points. The 10th Gen Intel CPU should beat out the Ryzen 7 3700U, though you will pay more for the former hardware.

Why recommend the HP Envy x360 as an alternative?

HP's 13-inch Envy x360 convertible is a more affordable alternative to its Spectre x360 lineup, and it's also a great alternative to the Dell Inspiron 13 (7390) 2-in-1 if you're set on AMD's Ryzen hardware.

It's available with 3000 Series AMD CPUs, including the Ryzen 3 3300U, Ryzen 5 3500U, and Ryzen 7 3700U CPUs, all with four cores and varying levels of integrated Vega graphics. If you're interested in some light gaming with your laptop, the AMD Ryzen CPUs are going to offer an excellent experience.

The Envy x360 should deliver superior battery life thanks to the AMD CPUs and the lack of 4K display. It's touch-enabled, but there's no active pen support like you'll get with the Inspiron 13. For pen support, the 15-inch HP Envy x360 is available. With the Envy x360, you're getting a backlit keyboard and Precision touchpad, just like the Inspiron 13 2-in-1.

On top of AMD hardware, there are plenty more hardware configurations to choose from with the HP Envy x360, including up to a 1TB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD, display with integrated privacy screen, and 8GB or 16GB of RAM.