Lori Grunin/CNET
Dell’s XPS 15 laptops proceed to be crowd-pleasers. With its eye-catching, slim new design and photo-editing-friendly efficiency, show and have set, the most recent 15-inch mannequin can maintain its personal as a much less highly effective — less expensive — different to a 16-inch MacBook Pro ($2,399 at Apple). It’s nicely value a glance if that is the way you roll, although you may wish to think about the brand new 17-inch XPS 17 as an alternative for the larger display. Both are nonetheless premium-priced, and sure not definitely worth the cash if all you want is a fairly work clamshell, not a severe workhorse.
LikeImpressive management over shade administration for a shopper laptopTwo USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 connectionsGood efficiency and battery life, all issues thought-about
Don’t LikeCan run hotOnly USB-C connectorsSoft, rubberized keyboard deck feels tremendous however scratches simply
The configuration we examined runs about $2,255. If you do not want shade accuracy, need higher battery life and might stay with out the slightly-better-than 4K UHD decision, it can save you virtually $300 by going for the lower-resolution possibility. The base configuration prices about $1,300 and comes with an Intel Core i5-10300H, 8GB RAM, a 256GB solid-state drive and the 1,900×1,200-pixel show. That’s a reasonably large vary for a single laptop computer mannequin. Something in me cringes on the thought of paying $1,300 for a system with solely 8GB RAM and built-in graphics, although, so for those who’re leaning in direction of that I counsel you think about one thing just like the Lenovo C740. The processor is way much less highly effective, however it would not make lots of sense to pair a robust CPU with so little reminiscence. You can get an in any other case comparable configuration of the C740, which can also be modern and about the identical weight, for nicely beneath $1,000.
Dell XPS 15 9500
Price as reviewed
$2,254
Display
3,840×2,400-pixel 15-inch touchscreen
CPU
2.3GHz Intel Core i7-10875H
Memory
16GB 3,733MHz LPDDR4x
Graphics
4GB GDDR6 GeForce GTX 1650 Ti
Storage
512GB SSD, SD card reader
Ports
3x USB-C (2x Thunderbolt 3), headphone
Networking
Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650s (802.11ax), Bluetooth 5.1
Operating system
Microsoft Windows 10 Home (1909)
Weight
4.5 kilos (2.1 kg)
If you are contemplating it for something past informal photograph enhancing, although, do your self a favor and spring for 32GB RAM and an i7 CPU. My constant expertise is that if it is advisable to multitask, then operations like mass thumbnail technology, which takes benefit of excessive core counts, can turn out to be bottlenecked by reminiscence (at the very least on Windows). And functions like Adobe’s Lightroom Classic will use all of the cores you may throw at it for some operations.Dell redesigned the XPS 15 (and launched a brand new 17-inch mannequin) for 2020 to align extra with the XPS 13, largely. For one factor, which means the XPS 15 ditched its 4K OLED possibility. It will get slightly sophisticated after that. The XPS 13’s show has a 16:10 facet ratio, which suggests each the XPS 15 and 17 comply with swimsuit. The drawback is that normal OLED panels solely are available in normal 4K UHD 16:9 facet, so the XPS switched to a nonstandard 4K “UHD Plus” (3,840×2,160 pixels) and a base “FHD Plus” (1,980×1,200 pixels).I just like the UHD Plus display greater than the OLED, although, particularly for photograph enhancing, which is arguably the artistic work that this method is optimized for. It has higher shade consistency and tonal vary within the shadows, and as examined it covers 100% of Adobe RGB somewhat than P3, which continues to be a good 94%. (We take a look at screens utilizing utilizing Portrait Displays’ Calman 5 Ultimate and an X-Rite i1Display Pro Plus.) If you do not know what all this shade gamut speak is about, this is probably not the laptop computer for you.
The greater touchpad is nice, however I do not like that the facility button/fingerprint reader within the higher proper nook is deliberately left a thriller. Plus, I just like the mushy, rubberized keyboard deck, however it appears vulnerable to scratching (as you may see on the fitting speaker grille).
Lori Grunin/CNET
A wealth of professional photo-editing optionsOddly, Dell would not promote accuracy as one of many virtues of the display, and out of the field it wasn’t, regardless of the inclusion of PremierColor, Dell’s shade administration software program. But with some simple tweaks to the brightness and gamma settings in PremierColor, I used to be in a position to get it to to straightforward goal values of two.2 gamma, delta E for grayscale and shade lower than or equal to 2 and white level of 6,500Ok. It cannot hit the successfully zero nits black (and subsequently infinite distinction, since that places zero within the denominator of the distinction calculation) however its roughly 1,560:1 distinction is sweet for an IPS (non-OLED) display. It additionally helps HDR, although with a most brightness of roughly 465 nits it will not actually wow you. And playback of 4K HDR content material actually taxes the built-in graphics; I could not efficiently pressure it to make use of the GTX 1650 Ti on a regular basis.More notably, in contrast to many shopper calibrated shows, Dell’s manufacturing unit calibrated profiles truly clip the gamut boundaries to the colour house; in different phrases, though the show can produce colours nicely outdoors sRGB, it will not for those who’ve opted to make use of the sRGB shade profile. That’s actually useful if it is advisable to verify out-of-gamut colours. You can create customized profiles with a calibrator utilizing PremierColor as nicely, however solely with the favored X-Rite i1Display Pro; it would not even help the Plus but, so I could not take a look at it. (If you wish to calibrate it utilizing your personal software program and a unique calibrator, bear in mind to show PremierColor off.)
PremierColor offers you the usual set of shade profiles, together with Rec 709 (HD) and Rec 601 (SD), in addition to settings for particular shade temperatures and relative scales for gamma, distinction and black degree. It additionally permits you to select from totally different viewing circumstances, similar to daylight or incandescent mild. A draw back to the ever-shrinking display bezels is it’s important to watch out when adjusting the show. For occasion, whereas looking for the proper angle I by chance touched the touchscreen and closed Chrome. I believe a touchscreen is pointless right here, anyway. And I’d gladly commerce a millimeter extra of prime bezel for a greater webcam.Another trade-off of the brand new, thinner design is swapping USB-A and HDMI connections for all-USB-C/Thunderbolt 3. The XPS 15 has two Thunderbolt 3 connections, which is helpful. But dropping a show connection on the discrete GPU bus means you sacrifice some flexibility. It does (fortunately) retain the SD card slot, although. Dell grew the touchpad and moved the audio system to both aspect of the keyboard, each welcome adjustments. I do not just like the unlabeled, unilluminated energy button: It has a fingerprint reader inbuilt, however in the dead of night it is only a clean spot and appears to scream, “Why do you want to turn me off?”The Dell XPS 15 9500 (prime) has roughly the identical footprint because the Razer Blade 15, however it’s thinner. Plus, the sloping profile makes it appear thinner than it’s.
Lori Grunin/CNET
One factor Dell did not sacrifice is pace, kind of. It caught with the Intel H collection processor the place lots of slim rivals use the lower-power (and subsequently slower) U collection. But it additionally tops out with the GeForce GTX 1650 Ti; bumping it as much as a 6GB 1660 Ti GPU, just like the Surface Book 3 has, might need given it the additional 2GB reminiscence wanted to let it higher run some skilled graphics functions or slightly further wanted oomph for video enhancing. It does let Dell differentiate between the XPS 15 and the bigger XPS 17 for one thing apart from measurement, although.The battery life is stable relative to the remainder of its class at slightly over eight hours, at the very least for streaming video. It additionally held up fairly nicely beneath my extra punishing real-life workload, lasting about 5 hours of lively use (although no imaging apps). That’s a fairly very long time for me, although it ran too sizzling to maintain it on my lap for that lengthy.The new design for the XPS 15 acquits itself nicely, and Dell did not make any main errors with it (alongside the traces of the now-retired XPS 13 bottom-dwelling webcam). But as a general-purpose work laptop computer, it isn’t tremendous mild, would not have an excellent lengthy battery life, is not tremendous skinny, tremendous quick or tremendous low cost. It’s not a piece laptop computer superhero, only a premium workhorse.Geekbench 5 (multicore)
Microsoft Surface Book 3 (15-inch)
Lenovo Yoga C940 (15-inch)
Apple MacBook Pro (16-inch)
Note:
Longer bars point out higher efficiency
Geekbench 5 (single core)
Lenovo Yoga C940 (15-inch)
Apple MacBook Pro (16-inch)
Microsoft Surface Book 3 (15-inch)
Note:
Longer bars point out higher efficiency
Geekbench 5 (Vulkan)
Lenovo Yoga C940 (15-inch)
Microsoft Surface Book 3 (15-inch)
Note:
Longer bars point out higher efficiency
Cinebench R20 CPU (multicore)
Microsoft Surface Book 3 (15-inch)
Lenovo Yoga C940 (15-inch)
Apple MacBook Pro (16-inch)
Note:
Longer bars point out higher efficiency
Video playback battery drain take a look at (streaming)
Apple MacBook Pro (16-inch)
Lenovo Yoga C940 (15-inch)
Microsoft Surface Book 3 (15-inch)
Note:
Longer bars point out higher efficiency (in minutes)
3DMark Fire Strike Ultra
Microsoft Surface Book 3 (15-inch)
Lenovo Yoga C940 (15-inch)
Note:
Longer bars point out higher efficiency
System configurations
Apple MacBook Pro (16-inch)
Apple MacOS Catalina 10.15.1; 2.4GHz Intel Core i9-9980HK; 32GB DDR3 SDRAM 2,666MHz; 8GB Radeon Pro 5500M/1,536MB Intel HD Graphics 630; 2TB SSD
Dell XPS 15 9500
Microsoft Windows 10 Home (1909); 2.3GHz Intel Core i7-10875H; 16GB DDR4 SDRAM 2,933MHz; 4GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Ti; 512GB SSD
Lenovo Yoga C940 (15-inch)
Microsoft Windows 10 Home (64-bit); 2.6GHz Intel Core i7-9750H; 16GB DDR4 RAM 2,667MHz; 4GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 with Max-Q design; 512GB SSD
Microsoft Surface Book 3 (15-inch)
Microsoft Windows 10 Home (1909); 1.3GHz Intel Core i7-1065G7; 32GB DDR4 SDRAM 4,267MHz; Intel Iris Plus Graphics and 6GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti with Max-Q design; 512GB SSD
MSI Prestige 15
Microsoft Windows 10 Pro (1909); 1.1Hz Intel Core i7-10710U; 32GB DDR4 SDRAM 2,667MHz; 4GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 with Max-Q design; 1TB SSD