One the first reviewI did was of the DELL XPS 13. I really liked that device but it wasn't powerful
enough for what I wanted in a deadly device. I wanted a quad-core processor and
wanted a bigger screen so I've been using a 15 inch Retina MacBook Pro but DELL
recently dropped this thing, the DELL XPS 15 and they've updated it with the Infiniti
display. It's kind of like the XPS 13 but everything has just been amped up, so
hear my thoughts. In this review there will be a sort of a comparison of the
DELL XPS 15 and Retina MacBook Pro 15inch. The main question will be, is the
Dell xps 15 a MacBook killer?
The top side is aluminium and it's got a really nice furnish
to it. The device feels premium, durable and it doesn't show fingerprints. On
the bottom we have two rubber strips for grip and they also hope to raise the laptop
for air intake through the big grills at the bottom. Just like the 13 inch it
has a flap at the bottom which is apparently there to hide the serial numbers
and the FCC markings. It can be opened up pretty easily when you remove some
screws. On the inside, we have a battery, upgradeable RAM and an upgradeable M2
SATA drive. The whole laptop is just really steady, the screen doesn’t have
much flex and the exterior edges are also really nicely machined, I think they
did a really good job on the aesthetics and built quality. Going around the
sides, on the right we have an SD Card slot, USB 3 port and a light up battery
indicator. On the left side we have a power port, another USB 3 port, HDMI 1.4
port, USB 3.1 type C with Thunderbolt port and a combo headphone and mic jack.
It comes in on a
bunch of different configurations starting at $1,000, but I'm reviewing the one
with the
Skylake Quad-core i7-6700HQ
2.6 GHz Processing
Speed
4K (3840*2160) Touchscreen
16GB DDR4 RAM
516GB M.2 NVME SSD
GTX 960M 2GB
This is currently going for around US$2100. It’s roughly the
same length as a 15 inch Retina MacBook Pro but it's noticeably shorter from
front to back. It's basically like 15 inch laptop in what feels like a 14 inch footprint.
It is 4.5 pounds which is the same weight as a 15 inch Retina MacBook Pro and because
it's a smaller footprint it just feels like a pretty dense package.
When you open the lid you get that awesome carbon fibre, I'm
a sucker for this stuff and I really think that DELL does carbon better
than any other laptop company now. The keyboard is decent, the layout is nice
and it's actually one of the better lives I’ve seen. Its strong, it’s subtle and coated with some
kind of like soft touch material so it’s comfortable to rest your palms on it. The
keyboard is decent and layout is actually one of the best I’ve seen. The three-stage
backlighting is good but typing on it feels pretty similar to the XPS 13 with relatively
short key travel approximately at 1.3mm. It's still good but it's not great. The
trackpad is nice, it’s glass, it's big and it works really well. It's still not
as good as a MacBook trackpad but its pretty close and it's probably one of the
best Windows trackpad right now. You will probably really like this thing.
The screen as a 15.6 inch IPS touch panel with a resolution
of 3840*2160 and its LED backlit and it's fantastic. The screen is super-thin
and it really lives up to the whole infinity edge trademark. The contrast is
great, viewing angles are great and the touch screen is really responsive. It
has a DELL utility to adjust the colour profile of the screen on the Adobe RGB setting,
this thing is really colour accurate for both print and web. The screen is
really nice, it doesn't have the anti-glare coating that MacBook Pros have but
it's such a bright screen that it's still very usable in brightly lit rooms or outdoors.
Just like the XPS 13 the camera is on the bottom again which
I think is really unavoidable because of the super thin bezel. It’s not high
enough resolution for the Microsoft Hello. The speakers are okay, they are kind
of forward-facing but they are underneath the keyboard and I noticed you can feel
the vibrations of the sound on the keys whilst playing games. It’s not bad or
anything but I haven't experienced anything like that before. The sound is a
little off maybe because of the location the speakers but they're not bad and
they get pretty loud.
The thermals are also good, nothing too hot and there's no crazy
hot spots on the keyboard or anything. I think DELL did a really good job on
thermal and noise management. It has 130watt charger and it that glow thing at
the tip so you can find it in the dark and it’s reasonably small for a 130W. When
the battery is low, light at the front of the laptop changes to orange and then
changes to when it is charging. It takes about two hours for a full charge. The
battery life is a little complicated, this unit has a 4K screen and an 85W
battery. You can get a 1080p screen with a same size battery and you can also
get a 1080p screen with a smaller 56w battery and that's for configurations
with a disk drive instead of the SSD. So on my configuration I was getting
around 6 hours of regularly use with screen around 75% brightness. Playing games
I was getting around two and a half hours. Supposedly on the 1080p model with
84w battery, you can get double the battery life. From my use, the 4K screen is
pretty important and the battery life isn't that bad.
A recap XPS 15: Awesome build quality, aluminium exterior,
carbon fibre chassis, 4K touch screen is outstanding, it's really bright, colour
accurate with super thin bezels. The keyboard is comfortable, not the best but very
usable. The trackpad is glass and its one of the best Windows trackpads right
now. On the inside we have the Skylake Core i7, GTX 960M that’s really capable for
4K video edits and most games at 1080p. There a pair of upgradeable RAM slots
which is pretty rare these days and there's an upgradeable or downgradeable in
my case M2 SSD socket. Lastly there's an 84W battery that lasts around six hours
on the 4K touch screen.
There's a lot of good stuff going on inside the XPS 15 but I
don’t like that M2 SATA Drive, it's a little bit slower than I'd like it to. Aside
from that I think all the hardware choices they went with were really good. The
battery life isn't amazing but it's kind of expected when you have a 4K screen
in something that has this kind of footprints, I mean you can only put in so
many battery cells into a device this size. Is it a MacBook killer? I would
consider this a better buy the MacBook unless you need like a really long battery
life or unless you need OS 10. I would consider this a better purchase because
it's a better performer but aside from that I think there's no other notebook
right now that is this calibre. It's really well built, it's a great performer
and it looks awesome. I hope you guys like this review. Let me know of your
opinions in the comments
No comments:
Post a Comment