Dell Precision 5690 Review

Last September, the Dell Precision 5680 dazzled us as the first mobile workstation laptop we'd seen with one of Nvidia's "Ada Lovelace"-generation professional GPUs. The refreshed Precision 5690 (starts at $2,289; $6,500.55 as tested) teams the same RTX 5000 Ada graphics silicon with one of Intel's new AI-enhanced Core Ultra processors. It easily repeats its predecessor's Editors' Choice achievement as an outstanding platform for demanding tasks in design, CGI rendering and animation, engineering, and data science. It's half a step down in performance from our previous cost-no-object powerhouse pick, the HP ZBook Fury 16 G10, but it's more portable. So, this latest Dell Precision is well worth a look for professionals who need to carry high-end apps to conference rooms or client offices.The 5690 gives Dell a stable of three 16-inch laptop workstations: The Dell Precision 5680 is still available, but it and the deluxe 7680 (which holds up to 128GB of memory and three solid-state drives to the 5690's maximum 64GB of RAM and two SSDs) use Intel's previous 13th Gen processors instead of the Core Ultras included in the new model.

This starting $2,289 5690 settles for a Core Ultra 5 135H—with, like all CPU options, Intel's vPro IT management technology—and 16GB of RAM. With only a 256GB SSD and Intel Arc Pro integrated graphics instead of one of the five available discrete GPUs, it's embarrassed to show its face around real workstations.