folks meet the new xps 15 9500 this is one of the first notebooks
that we've ever considered to be a true hybrid basically it can do pretty
much anything with asterisks of course you see this
one was a bit difficult to evaluate against the competition because if you
look at the majority of the notebook content that we publish on the channel
most of them are catered towards gamers because
they are gaming laptops in the first place and so when i switched over to the
xps 15 i almost wondered like is this thing a
productivity device or gaming notebook or an ultra portable
laptop like it could be all of those things but it
also could be none of them at all dell has
focused really hard on reducing noise to make the xps 15
really easy to live with so that means they're gonna be some performance
sacrifices but does that make it the perfect
all-around notebook or does the jack of all trades approach
also make it a master of none well it's pretty expensive so dell needs to get a
lot of things right but i do have some concerns as well so
let's talk about that after a quick message from our sponsor
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coolers by lee lee down below alright so before i get into my full
review i definitely have to talk about some of the issues that users have been
experiencing with the current xps 15. if you go onto
reddit or youtube you can find some of the issues for
example there's been problems supported with the trackpad not registering clicks
and my friends randomly turned itself off every few minutes or so
and so he had to return it i've also seen a lot of negative feedback about
the screen's auto brightness feature and the fingerprint sensor not working
after the notebook wakes up the sample that i have over here
is from a later batch and i haven't encountered any of those
but with that being said let's start with the price the base model retails
for twelve hundred and fifty dollars and for
that you get a core i5 processor eight gigs of ram a 256 gigabyte ssd
no discrete graphics and a 1080p or a 1200p
ips 500 display if you want a discrete graphics card
you'll have to step it up to the core i7 model and a 1650ti
for about 1650 us dollars the sample that we have in hand comes with twice
the memory twice the storage uh the same gpu and
the display and it goes for about 1850 us dollars
that's expensive but when you look at the overall package
it's actually not too bad now mike and i have been using this thing for
the past couple of weeks and he's drooling all over it he loves everything
about this machine and i guess i can sort of fall into that
category because there are a lot of reasons
to like uh the xps 15 and kicking soft with the design and build quality it's
an absolute masterpiece guys if you recall watching
my xps 13 review i was raving about the incredible
craftsmanship by the engineering team over at dell
it is the gold standard for what an ultrabook should be well if i switch
gears to the xps 15 think of it as a super-sized xps 13
without making any compromises so that means you're getting a robust
hinge that doesn't wobble you can also open the lid with just one
hand and unlike the xps 13 the lid is magnetic so you don't have to
worry about that gap between the lid and the main body
however i did notice that the middle section doesn't say
flush but that's just me being picky the interior space is a breath of fresh air
having used a variety of gaming notebooks
you're getting a standard layout which i'm sure a lot of you would appreciate
dell has made the keys bigger compared to last year's model
the power button acts as a fingerprint reader the keys feel
excellent there's a good amount of travel distance so they don't feel
shallow they're way way better than my razer
blade 15 advanced because you get proper feedback i love
the phone choice i think dell has utilized the space
efficiently especially with the arrow keys and the shift keys
there is one thing that bothered me just a little bit and that is the backspace
key on my sample felt a bit loose compared to the rest of keys but
other than that it's a fantastic keyboard it's also led
backlit and i didn't have any problems viewing it at night the cherry on top of
this is the carbon fiber inspired palm rest
i think dell has nailed this in terms of giving users a superior
comfortable typing experience it just feels like pillows for my palms
i'm not sure if that made sense but this is one of my favorite features of
the xps 15. now moving on to the trackpad
it's big it's really big guys it's bigger than my razer blade 15.
it's the biggest track pad that i've ever encountered on a windows
notebook and it's amazing you've got a glass surface with support for windows
drivers uh the finger navigation it's just super
smooth it's very responsive i loved using this trackpad every single
day now my sample did not have any of those
wobbling issues that other users have reported
so take that for what it is so that's why i really enjoyed it
now there is one thing that i do have to point out and that is the middle click
because the primary left and right buttons are integrated and they do sound
really good uh here's a quick sound test
so it's really nice the only thing is that there is a middle click
that basically has no function it's kind of like a dead zone so if i'm trying to
drag and drop files from my explorer to the desktop
it doesn't work out so definitely keep that in mind personally i think that the
trackpad might be a little bit too big but hey if it's a bigger trackpad if
that's something that you're looking into
this is great and palm detection was also really good too so that's awesome
this is the webcam test now i've recorded this thing probably like five
or six times because uh randomly there is some crackling
noise happening in the background with my vocals
in some cases in some of my recordings i didn't notice any of them but in other
cases i did notice some of them so it might be present in this recording or
might not i'll see if i can roll a clip this is the webcam test on the xps 15.
the video quality is not really the greatest compared to some
of the other notebooks i've encountered i'm not really sure what's up with that
but it's definitely something to keep in mind when you plan on using this thing
for business meetings or casual
conversations over skype or zoom now the speakers on the xps 15 were
amazing guys i legit watched netflix for hours
on this thing and i didn't really have the need to plug in
my headphones or an external set of speakers on this laptop because
they were great there's proper stereo separation
or stereo imaging because you've got two front facing speakers with great
projection uh there's also speakers on the side as
well and you also get a bit of bass response the trebles don't sound harsh
honestly this is a fantastic multimedia machine
moving on to the display man oh man this is yet another area
where dell hit a home run just like the xps 13 the xps 15 has
shifted to a 16 by 10 aspect ratio typically you'd find notebooks with a
resolution of 1920x1080 but in this case you get an extra 120 pixels vertically
so that will give you more room to work within applications
which is really nice it's an ips display and as we ran our display analysis test
i was blown away by how color accurate it is
it covers 100 srgb 81 adobe rgb and 88 dci b3 i was watching some of my old
videos on the channel and i compared it to my 4k
thank you display and guys i couldn't tell the difference this is
like a dream panel for creators like myself because i can comfortably
edit videos photos whatever it is not to
mention it's also a really bright display it gets as far as 500 nits so
you can take this thing outdoors without a problem you can also
opt for a slightly color accurate 4k option
but i prefer the 1080p or the 1200p display because
it's matte and i just prefer having that non-reflective display over something
that's glossy the io is unfortunately an area where you'll need to make
compromises because you're not getting a whole lot of options
so on the left hand side you get a kensington lock and two thunderbolt 3
ports switching to the left you get an audio
jack a full size uh three card reader and a usb 3.1 type
c port so here's where i stand with the port
situation i completely see what dell's doing
here with the current xps lineup the xps 13 doesn't have a lot of io
the xps 15 it's all mostly usb-c and i think they're trying to future proof
their lineup for the next generation of accessories
but if you look at the current situation there's not a lot of accessories that
come with usbc wireless adapters or usbc cables if you
want to connect other accessories you'll definitely need
a type a port which surprisingly you can use because they do include
this usb usb-c uh hub that comes with a full size type a port and a full size
hdmi port so that's something i guess it's a lifestyle change that
you'll sort of have to adapt but unless and until if you absolutely
need usb type a for everything that you do
maybe it's not the right time to switch in terms of upgradability
this laptop surprised me for its form factor
as you can see you've got two ram slots that can be accessed right over here
maximum supported memory is 64 gigabytes the primary nvme ssd is right over here
and there's an extra m.2 slot for storage expansion which is awesome
but interestingly they don't provide any screws
for mounting that second drive so tell i don't know what's up with that
the primary nvme ssd is fast guys it's the fastest that we've ever come across
on a notebook both in terms of read and write
performance especially on a notebook this thing dell's power
manager is a really deep program that's worth a while to check out but it
could actually be a bit too complicated for most everyday users
you can select when the battery is most likely to charge which extends battery
life peak shift allows you to manage when
charging happens so you can lower your consumption
during peak times when the utility may charge more for electricity
thermal management is more about comfort than anything else for example
both cool and quiet modes prioritize surface temperatures by using a network
of sensors dell has placed through the chassis the
xps can then increase the speed of either one of its fans or both
to reduce temperatures in areas that would most affect you
for example in the palm rest area and keyboard
now how does that translate to battery life well
this is again a solid win for the xps 15. during our light load test
this laptop lasted for more than 16 hours and it's by far
the longest lasting notebook within uh this caliber which is just amazing
when i switch over to the heavy load test it does take a bit of a hit lasting
for about only an hour and 11 minutes i
guess this is a good time to move on to some temperature results starting with
the surface heat and it looks like dell's doing exactly
what they promised the keyboard area only gets to around 50 degrees celsius
at its hottest point even with the system under full load
it's also nice to see all the hot air going out the back so your mouse hand
or lap isn't going to get too toasty heat on the bottom chassis is also
really well managed here just to give you some idea of how cool this thing
runs the top and bottom temperature hot spots
on the xps are a good 10 to 15 degrees lower than many of the
other notebooks that i've reviewed considering how slim it is and the kind
of specs this thing's running that's seriously impressive guys and how
does that translate to noise well at idle the xps 15 is dead
silent and even under full load when the fans are spinning at higher
rpms it's still one of the quieter high performance notebooks around
but what does all that focus on surface temperatures and reducing noise
mean for overall performance well let's check out clock speeds over time and
i'm going to go a little more in depth here and compare the xps 15
to the msi gs66 another notebook that uses the core i7 10750h processor
starting off with cpu temperatures under a full maya workload
and like every other intel based notebook the first 10 minutes or so
of the test sees the spike to 100 degrees
then there's a real quick dip down to a more manageable temperature of between
80 to 85 degrees until the end the odd thing is even when hitting the
100 degree peak the xps fans don't seem to have an
aggressive enough profile so even with the cpu sitting near its thermal limit
they just sat there and didn't increase their speed until the 66 second mark
you can also see that at other times fan speeds dropped off
and that caused temperatures to rise again either way
they stayed below the gs66 stealth for msi
the clock speeds stayed below the msi notebook as well
by a good 300 megahertz and they aren't nearly as stable either
there's frequent dips to under three gigahertz and those line up perfectly
with those areas where temperatures started to increase
so i guess that's the sacrifice that you'll need to make for a notebook
that's quiet and runs pretty cool a lot of the
temperature and clock speed modifications are being controlled by
changing the i7 10 750 h's input power on the fly
i mean sure it starts out pretty high but then dell's algorithms cut back to
just 47 watts with a few areas lowering to only 40
watts this is actually right in line with
intel's configurable tdp numbers so it's not like we're seeing
throttling here as a matter of fact this is more in line with how the cpu should
behave whereas msi seems to have their gs66
cell configured to the upper end of intel spec moving on to actual
performance results and because of the xps 15's initial bursts of high speed
shorter tests like cinebench we see it edging out the msi gs66 but that's not
really what happens in the real world so as the tests get longer we get to see
a lot more realistic territory with longer processing workloads
and here's where the xbox 15 falls further and further behind
but that doesn't mean it's slow this is still a super fast notebook for its size
as a matter of fact it's between 50 to 75 percent faster than a similarly sized
thin and light notebook like the zenbook 15 that i tested just a
few months ago so it's all about perspective meanwhile
the discrete gtx 1650 ti gives some pretty decent performance
uplifts in adobe premiere and resolve which is good news for anyone who wants
to use the xps 15 as a portable rendering machine also
remember the rest of the notebooks in these
charts have much higher in gpus too winrar shows some respectable
performance too which will be pretty important for people who need
to quickly load or process files from their internal drive and now
on to gaming now before i get into the results i do want to emphasize something
very important this laptop is not designed for gamers in fact the 1650 ti
is more of a mid-range card rather than a really high-end fast gpu and it's
really meant to accelerate programs that require gpu
accelerations like premiere or resolve or any other applications that would
take advantage of the extra cuda cores but other than that
you know it's not really a gaming beast i'm just the reason why we're doing some
gaming benchmarks is just show you the fact that it has a
little bit of horsepower to play some titles
at respectable frame rates so that's just something that you
definitely need to keep in mind if we see how the processor reacts in gaming
over time temperatures and clock speeds are
managed a lot like when we hit the system with a full cpu load
that means a huge spike in temperatures and frequencies
at first followed by an epic dip and then both
everything pretty much levels off again the only difference here is since all
the cores are partially loaded 3.8 gigahertz was the overall average as
for the 1650 ti well for the first 30 seconds i was a
bit worried with those high temperatures but
like we saw in the last test that's the time it takes
for the fans to actually realize that they need to turn on i really think dell
needs to change this i mean look i'm testing it in the
highest performance mode and it would be so much better
if the fan algorithm was load-based instead of it being so slow to respond
that way temperatures could be managed before they get high
and maybe clock speeds won't fall off a cliff for a few seconds
once things finally stabilize the gpu is running right within nvidia specs at
under 80 degrees so there's nothing to worry about here
so how does that translate into actual gaming results well uh the xbox
15 might be sitting at the bottom of the charts but in a few cases
it actually comes within five to seven percent
of the bravo 15 from msi with an rx 5500m
so basically i classified this as a good fit for medium level gaming
don't expect ultra details but if you turn down the settings a bit
you'll get playable frame rates in almost any game at 1080p
or the xps 15's native resolution of 1920x1200
that's really not all that bad for a notebook like this
so i guess the question comes down to who
is the xps 15 catered towards i think if you're someone who's into
stock trading or if you're someone who uses programs like matlab or autodesk
maya or applications that need just a little bit
of gpu acceleration but also need some of that cpu horsepower without
sacrificing on battery life and you value design build quality and
you just want a premium notebook for that
it's worth checking out because it's amazing it really does excel in that
department but i do want to mention that i wouldn't
blame anyone if they completely skipped the xps 15 because of all the issues
that are really well known within the community like the track pad
the wobble the wobble issue and of course
people have issues with the display not to mention my friend had to go through
the random bsods and the freeze aspect as well which
again these are all red flags and that is definitely a quality control issue
that dell certainly has to address personally
i really want to ditch my razer blade 15 and switch over to the xps 15
just because of the beautiful bright color accurate display the speakers the
track pad the i guess the battery life and most
importantly the fact that it's just built really well and it's so
refined there's just so many good things to like
about the xps 15. but i have to send it back dell wants it
back so there's there's that i might end up buying one
for myself but anyways i hope you were able to take something
from this video let me know what you guys think about the xps 15. i mean even
after all these issues like would you still actually consider
picking one up curious no i'm here with hardware canucks thank you so much for
watching and i'll talk to you guys in the next
one