Device notes and configuration under Linux for the Inspiron 16 2-in-1 (7620) 4K OLED variant.
Everything works of the box in Linux v6.0 (including touchscreen, rotation, fingerprint scanner, SD-card reader, both top and bottom firing speakers).
- Intel i7-1260P (Alder Lake)
- NVIDIA MX550 (Turing)
- Samsung PM991a M.2 2230 SSD (1x M.2 slot, supports M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4)
- Samsung SDC4164 4k OLED 3840x2400 400 nits 283ppi
- 87Wh battery
- 2x SODIMM (supports up to 64GB, DDR4)
- HDMI 1.4 only
- Hardware for Linux probe
- Notebookcheck review
- reminiscent of MacBook Pro 16 design wise, marginally heavier, slightly thicker
- acceptable speaker volume, poor bass response
- portability and tablet mode hampered by the size and weight
- touchpad mylar layer prevents capacitive grounding "vibration"
- both USB C ports are on the same side - minor annoyance depending on desk set up
- no stylus included (in most markets)
- anecdotally quieter fan than Framework
- excellent OLED display with 283ppi - ideal for HiDPI, running at 2x (integer) scaling
- unfortunately this unit has grey uniformity issues
- only visible in a dark room with dark grey backgrounds, e.g. hex #111111 (coincidentally, the default for the foot terminal) and #0f0f0f
- common downside for OLED
- best to use a pure black background for power saving
- GUI-based UEFI
- can set custom charge limit
- can’t disable dGPU
- partial Linux support via
libsmbios
smbios-battery-ctl --get-charging-cfg
smbios-thermal-ctl --get-thermal-info
- NVMe RAID mode set by default for all modern Dells regardless of number of M.2 slots
- Intel Rapid Storage Technology
- aka FakeRAID
- requires
vmd
kernel module vmd
can cause high power usage- switching from RAID to AHCI
- no "legacy" S3 deep sleep option
- audio requires
sof-firmware
- getUserMedia / getDisplayMedia Test Page - useful for testing webcam/screensharing
- S3 sleep unsupported
- S0ix supported, reaches S0i2.0
- consumed ~4.7% battery in ~12 hours
- Full RTD3 Power Management supported
- CUDA supported
Test environment:
- idle
- 30% brightness
- sway
- Firefox open
- WiFi connected
- Bluetooth enabled
- tlp, thermald daemons running (default configs)
Verify PCI state via:
cat /sys/class/drm/card1/device/power_state
Driver | Power Consumption | PCI state |
---|---|---|
nvidia | 6.7W | D3cold |
nvidia-open | 10.8W | D0 |
nouveau | 6.7W | D3cold |
(blacklisted) | 6.73W | - |
- requires
ibt=off
to boot sway --unsupported-gpu
- PCI utilisation: 100%
- ~7W in vconsole
- ~3W for NVIDIA alone
- using uDev rules
- not in the PCI tree
Testing near-idle performance via two open foot terminals, one running powerstat
with the following flags:
powerstat -d 0 -c -H 1 480
... the other running a bash one-liner:
while [ 1 ]; echo 'foo'; do sleep 1; done
Test environment:
- idle
- Wayland only (XWayland disabled)
- 40% brightness
- WiFi connected
- tlp, thermald daemons running (default configs)
- Linux 5.x
Comparing GNOME and sway with roughly equivalent helpers to provide a basic "desktop environment".
- sway without a bar (
swaybar
not running) swayidle
swaybg
gammastep
State | C10% | Power (W) |
---|---|---|
sleep 1 | 99.63% | 6.08 |
- sway
waybar
with modules:- sway/workspaces
- sway/mode
- sway/window
- network
- battery
- tray
- clock#date
swayidle
swaybg
gammastep
State | C10% | Power (W) |
---|---|---|
sleep 1 | 98.32% | 6.81 |
gnome-shell --no-x11
gdm3
gnome-settings-daemon
State | C10% | Power (W) |
---|---|---|
idle | 99.69% | 5.37 |
sleep 1 | 99.56% | 5.48 |
sleep 0.1 | 98.64% | 6.51 |
sleep 0.01 | 90.6% | 9.36 |
- Linux 6.2.13
- GNOME 43.5
gnome-shell --no-x11
gdm3
gnome-settings-daemon
State | C10% | Power (W) |
---|---|---|
idle | 99.67% | 5.64 |
sleep 1 | 99.65% | 5.76 |
Test environment
- Linux 6.1.9
- Geekbench 5.5
- Thermal mode: performance
- TLP: AC
- thermald: 2.5.2
BIOS | Single core | Multi core | Governer | thermald | Run |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1.8.0 | 1753 | 7897 | powersave | adaptive | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/20246870 |
1.8.0 | 1742 | 7897 | performance | adaptive | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/20247395 |
1.9.0 | 1736 | 7961 | powersave | adaptive | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/20247880 |
1.9.0 | 1750 | 7885 | performance | adaptive | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/20247785 |