Dell XPS 15: The Gizmodo Review

Dell XPS 15: The Gizmodo Review

The most noticeable characteristic of the XPS 15 is its extraordinary display. With almost no bezel around the screen, 4K resolution, above average brightness, viewability from almost any angle, and superb colour, it feels markedly more immersive than Retina displays — to the point where colour flaws on web pages and low-resolution installation wizards become hard to look at. Dell’s togglable PremierColor feature pushes the display’s palette to its limits, and looks stunning in the right applications.

All Images: Bryan Menegus/Gizmodo

The guts of the XPS 15 are also impressive. The Intel Core i7 (6700HQ Quad Core) has power to spare. Anything above the base model comes with a NVIDIA GTX 960M (with 2GB GDDR5 memory), and the top of the line version has 32GB of system memory. I played Team Fortress 2 at the highest possible resolution — while Chromecasting a tab from Netflix, playing music on Spotify, and with Photoshop open — and saw no noticeable lag while 12-year-olds repeatedly shot my character to death and mocked by utter lack of skill.

Those two features — and they’re big, meaningful features — are where the good aspects of this machine begin and end.

Dell XPS 15: The Gizmodo Review
It’s also pretty thin!

It’s also pretty thin!

That luxurious display means an utterly miserable battery life. PremierColor is a power suck, as is the touchscreen. From a full charge I clocked a pitiful 2 hours and 27 minutes while continuously streaming video with all the bells and whistles turned on, and a little over 3 hours on a second attempt.

Like many Windows machines, the trackpad feels fussy and insensitive. The highest spec versions also come with a touchscreen. Unlike a tablet where touch features replace more traditional IO options, the keyboard isn’t removable. With a foot of matte black hardware between you and the screen, prolonged use is uncomfortable, and unless you own a separate stylus it has no meaningful functionality with Photoshop.

Sound is also supposedly one of this machine’s selling points. Cross checking between my Macbook and the XPS on a pair of Grado SR80s, I detected few if any noticeable differences on lossless files — perhaps a slight boost in higher frequencies on the Mac, but certainly nothing anyone at a consumer level would care about. Without headphones, the situation is even more dire for the Dell. Despite Apple products’ reputation for being tinny and quiet — and to be fair, the Dell is markedly louder — the MBP 15 at least has its speakers pointed up towards the user instead of down, resulting in muddy, muffled playback. Twice over the week I spent with the XPS, the sound stopped working entirely, requiring a restart.

Dell has replaced the plastic shells of old XPS laptops with aluminium chassis, but the XPS 15 is inexplicably coated in a goopy-feeling carbon fibre composite. When my Macbook becomes the inevitable victim of dirt or food spills, I feel confident subjecting it to some fairly strong solvents. That confidence does not extend to whatever covers the body of the XPS. This material does a reasonably good job of dissipating heat around where you’d logically rest your palms, but high temperatures are still an issue at the back of the keyboard and underside of the chassis.

Along with the XPS 15, Dell also sent along their Thunderbolt dock, which purports to connect multiple displays at workstations through any number of available video connections. Unfortunately, what should be a plug-and-play experience turned into hours of hassle, and in the end it didn’t really work. Displays flickered or turned off and some monitors were completely incompatible. At its best, the Thunderbolt dock netted one more display than simply using the onboard HDMI output, which doesn’t seem like a strong enough case for spending $US299.

Dell XPS 15: The Gizmodo Review
What does it do? We may never know…

The XPS 15 is thin, light, powerful, and has a downright gorgeous display. But the effort Dell put into sound will likely go unnoticed by most users, and even its terrific performance, bolstered in no small part by a discrete GPU, will be too powerful for casual users but not nearly robust enough for serious gamers.

README

  • A display so pretty it will make you cry
  • I keep trying to move the cursor and nothing happens
  • Excellent performance to handle your tab addiction
  • Never unplug the charger

SPEC DUMP

  • Price: From $2499 AUD at Dell Australia

  • Processor: Intel Core i7
  • Storage: 500GB — 1TB HDD or 256 — 512GB SSD
  • Memory: 8GB — 32GB
  • Battery: 56 or 84Whr
  • Display: 1920×1080 — 3840×2160
  • Touchscreen available
  • GPU: Intel HD Graphics 530 — NVIDIA GTX 960M (2GB GDDR5)
  • Ports: 1 HDMI, 2 USB 3, 1 Thunderbolt 3, SD card reader, headphone out

The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.