- It happens every time you get a beautiful XPS 15,
it's better than all the laptops
and then six years later it's the same damn thing.
Here's the new one.
Has it changed?
I don't know.
We're gonna find out.
It's actually only been three years
since the XPS 15 was completely refreshed
but in computer terms that's basically an eternity.
Okay, let's play a game here.
Play a game guys,
which one's the new one?
(laughs)
- [Bell] The left.
- Nope this is the old one.
(laughs)
- That's pretty unchanged.
Okay, let's see.
Can we spot any differences?
So the new one isn't covered in my fingerprints,
the carbon fiber on the new one looks a little bit different
and the texture is more,
has more of a weavy feel to it.
Updated windows key,
it's now a square instead of a not quite square, square.
One thing that I know is different is the camera.
Can I physically tell though?
Nope, none of that really matters though
because the XPS 15 is still essentially the best looking
and best feeling laptop you can buy except
for maybe a MacBook.
We also get for a charger, 130 watts.
That's I'm guessing the same, charger is the same too.
Do we just do the whole video just talking
about how it's exactly the same as the old one.
- It's better.
- It yeah, it is better.
Now the problem with the old XPS 15,
the XPS 13 Plus came out and the processor in that's faster.
It's just kind of embarrassing
for everyone that has one of these guys.
When someone can walk along
with a guy that's this big and be faster than you.
Like look at the size difference here,
so much smaller,
in a lot of ways kind of cooler looking.
If I'm honest like bit of a sexier machine.
So we're gonna test this one out.
We're gonna see just how fast it is.
Oh Dell, what are you doing?
They sent us a 16 gigabyte model.
So I personally rather have 32
'cause I use way too many tabs but whatever.
We also have Wi-Fi 6E,
oh I don't know if that's legal to use in Canada.
Maybe don't mention that.
We also have an RTX 3050TI and an i7-12700 H
so that's 14 cores, 20 threads.
I am a bit curious though,
4800 mega transfers per second.
Okay so this RAM has to be DDR5
that's probably a good little lift in performance there.
It feels like the hinge has a bit more grip
to it than before.
Oh, another thing, the audio drivers
on this XPS 15 have just been complete dog (beep) ever
since I've installed it in Windows 11.
If crab rave just runs on the new one and like sounds okay.
Excellent.
Okay, what I really wanna do here is set up all three
of these computers,
have a big old cinebench drag race.
But before that I need to tell you about dbrand
so you can tell which one's the new one,
also it'll probably make it 5% faster.
It won't, will it Mark?
- [Mark] Probably.
- Okay, what do we have here?
Oh, sweet Jesus.
Look at this.
Okay, so there's that.
Do we really not have any like semi reasonable ones?
- Nope, you gotta use naked Linus.
- I'm going to put this Linus on the old one
and give it to one of the new writers.
(laughs)
Okay that's not quite right either.
Sweet gibus.
I (beep) it up.
Now we get attempt number two.
Okay, this one's going way better.
Why a scorpion?
Is there a reason that there's scorpions?
- They're bad-ass
- Are they?
Okay, that one went on way better.
Yes, how do you attract a mate?
Oh, let me tell you.
So in case you've been hiding under a rock
for the past couple years,
dbrand makes very expensive stickers for your devices.
They'll support newer devices like the MacBook Air M2
and well I guess the XPS 13 Plus.
Is that what we have over here?
Yeah and instead of something like this,
you can get an actual good color like this
or they're grip cases.
I use that on my phone.
It's actually just like the best phone case.
Check them out down below at dbrand.com/ShortLinus.
One thing that I wanna shout out though,
you're able to plug in the charger on both sides,
right and left.
That can be just so great from time to time.
Like, you'll just want your laptop to be somewhere
on like a small desk when you're at a hotel or something
and it can be a mild convenience.
- The randomness makes it even funnier than the Linus one.
Just looking up and seeing the scorpion.
- I do kinda love it.
- Right? It's bad-ass.
- Thermals, ultra performance,
there we go.
All right, cinebench time.
We'll start the old 15 first,
now 13 and 14, are you both going?
I'm surprised even in ultra performance
that none of these have made a sound yet.
Oh, okay.
11,600.
10,700.
Okay so the old XPS 15 did quite well there
and the new one gets 10,900
which is yeah, it got beat by the old one.
Geez if the old one's faster
that'll be frigging embarrassing, BRB.
All right, let's try that again.
11,600 to beat.
CPU's currently running at 2.9 gigahertz,
kind of wish it was a bit faster than that.
There we go.
All right, 13,480 absolutely killed the other two.
That's fantastic 'cause I thought I was going to have
to have a really awkward phone call with Dell there.
Glad we avoided that.
(laughs)
- First of all, it's a little bit on the heavy side.
I believe it's 4.2 pounds.
Is that correct Bell?
- Yeah.
- The iO also is not amazing but very livable.
So on the left side we have two Thunderbolt 4 ports,
over on the right side, we have headphone/microphone combo,
SD card reader, this one's super fast,
love it.
And also a USB type C over on the side,
it's not Thunderbolt.
I personally think that the track pad on this is best
if you disable enhance pointer position.
So that's getting rid of your mouse acceleration
and then we'll go to touch pad,
take the cursor speed from five down to four.
This thing is really nice and big
so you don't need to have like the highest sensitivity ever
on your track pad.
It's large enough, you're not gonna run outta space anyway.
(keyboard typing)
- As for the keyboard, it's probably the best keyboard
that's on laptop right now.
Just hands down like compared to the one that's
on the XPS 13 Plus, this one right here is pretty good.
Yeah, I just prefer the keyboard on the XPS 15 compared
to the 13.
The 13 you kind of have to like think a little bit
because there's no space between the keys.
They did dish it well.
This is a good keyboard but I just like the one
on the 15 more.
Do you know what display this is?
I'm guessing based on just the blocks
and stuff that this is the 4K OLED.
- Is the OLED, yeah.
- 3456x2160, it's such a strange resolution.
So I guess that's 4K but instead of extending it
because it's a 16x10 display,
they just cut off the sides.
It's odd.
One thing Dell does with the XPS 15
that I absolutely love is include this little dongle here.
It's just simple HDMI and USB type A
but it comes in just such a nice little form factor.
Very easy to huck in your bag,
love that it's included.
One thing I'm really curious
about this OLED display is the gaming performance.
The LCD on the old one was just really slow.
Like it was very clear
that it was tuned to give you the best picture possible
at the expense of some latency.
Okay, how do we think this is gonna do
1080p medium settings in Valheim.
I'm hoping for 45 FPS.
Do you guys think it'll get it?
- I say 20.
- You're saying 20 Mark.
Have some faith, look at this sticker.
You can't only get, okay I'm getting 15 FPS.
Oh, it's in 4K right now.
That would do it.
Okay, let's drop the yeah.
This is not a 4K gaming machine that is for sure.
There we go, 42 FPS while we're screen recording.
Oh man, OLED displays like for gaming especially just looks
so frigging good.
Like the way that I have detail down here in the grass,
I can see like all the individual strands
and then like we have these super bright little bits
of light and all of it just,
ugh it looks so good.
It also demolishes your battery.
If you have like, you know bright stuff
on your display, 4K it'll absolutely destroy it.
But at the same time, you know
looks real good while doing it.
This also just feels so much better than the LCD display,
like I don't know that I would love to game on this
but I could which is more than I could say before
in a lot of situations.
This is legitimately very good though for a business laptop
especially one that is screen recording at the same time.
Do we try Horizon five?
- Continue with free set.
- All right, high settings.
Let's see how this goes.
(computer reading the screen)
- Why is it reading out the menu?
I half regret last time that I got an XPS 15 asking
for the LCD.
It just can look like crap because the sub-pixels
and the digitizer don't quite line up
and you get this really weird screen door effect.
Whereas this right here if I open up a notepad, yeah
I can start seeing the sub-pixels like right here
and no one uses the laptop like that.
As a bonus I believe that the OLED on the XPS 15 also
gets a tiny bit more battery than the 4K LCD.
Oh, of course,
if you really want battery life,
get the 1080p model.
It just is so much better for battery life.
Okay Jake, you've been using that Apple liquid retina (beep)
for a while,
come and take a look at this.
Now let me know if you think it's comparable
'cause I believe that one's way brighter.
Yeah, that looks good.
It's a very nice display.
All right, here we are 1080p, high settings.
We're getting 63, 58 FPS right around 60.
I am honestly very surprised that it's doing this well
given, you know,
it's just a 3050 TI in here.
It's a good card but sometimes it doesn't do great.
The VRAM can really be a problem in games like Forza.
That lets us know that this display is fricking incredible.
Holy geez.
Now we just need crab rave
(upbeat music)
- Sounds quite good.
Compared to the old one.
(upbeat music)
- The new one sounds just a tiny bit better and I'm 90% sure
that's because the drivers and Windows 11
have been just God awful on this thing right here.
Let's see OLED versus LCD display.
If I'm honest, they look pretty much identical.
So on camera the OLED looks way better.
- Yeah , way less glare. Way better.
- Uh well, I'm curious though.
Can you, can you bring your MacBook over here?
- Yeah.
- Oh we can see what Jake's recommendations are here
on YouTube.
I've been thinking of retiring.
(laughs)
- You guys tell me which one you think this is?
(upbeat music)
- I think that the MacBook might just have a V curve.
I don't even know if it's actually better.
Let's see here.
Can I go in and just base boost this?
(upbeat music)
Oh, nevermind.
Okay yeah, the MacBook's better.
(laughs)
- What I'm really surprised of though is that the screen
on the XPS is just very noticeably much more better.
Like look at this,
the color tone isn't quite the same between the two.
The XPS just has so much more color
and detail and dark scenes like holy frig.
I played around with it a little bit,
Dell has their premier color app
and I would highly recommend going in here instead
of leaving it on vibrant taking it to either cinema
or photo, even at 9 300 kelvin the Mac is still
a little bit bluer but I'm just shocked
by the colors of the XPS compared to the MacBook
'cause this thing's supposed to be
what like a 1000 nits.
The XPS is 400 nits.
If I'm honest, I was expecting for the max display
to be just especially judging
from the specs noticeably better.
Whereas the XPS, I like it more.
I think it's a better display.
I'm shocked.
I'm glad we tested that.
Webcam oh, that's one thing that they did.
Apparently they fixed it a little bit.
Oh yeah, it's definitely better.
The difference in the webcam quality
between these is just remarkable.
So they are both 720p webcams,
the difference is that on the old XPS 15,
they only had a single camera for IR and video recording.
So in order to have your windows facial recognition,
it has IR blasters that like, you know
3D scans your face or whatever,
it uses the IR camera for that.
On the new one, they broke it out.
So they have an IR camera and a normal camera.
Now every digital camera is technically an IR camera
except that you put a filter over it to filter out
those wavelengths and just toss 'em away
'cause you don't need them
and it can lead to some pretty strange stuff.
So like you can see here,
there's kind of like a bunch of blotchiness
and also in some spots kind of like weird purplely noise.
Whereas the colors are just so much better
on this one right here that has a simple IR filter on it.
It looks so much better.
Holy freak.
But one thing I'm really sad about
with this XPS 15 is that it only has 16 gigabytes of RAM
and for me personally, that's not enough.
Let's change that, actually we're not gonna be able
to change it.
We don't have any DDR5 SODIMM around here
but I'll show you that you can change it.
Ugh.
- Don't try this at home.
- Nah, try it at home.
Go for it.
How much is this thing?
- 2949 Canadian.
- Oh Canadian, whatever.
2253 USD that's pretty reasonable.
Look at this piece.
All aluminum do be careful.
If you open one of these up,
you can actually cut your fingers on it
'cause they have it machined so nicely.
Look at that.
SK Hynix, DDR5 SODIMM.
Oh (beep) I don't think I turned this off.
It's probably not very happy right now.
You have your two RAM slots right there.
You can put two SSDs in here.
We have our nice big cooler.
I do really wish that Dell would swap it to a vapor chamber.
That would be the difference
between this being like yeah, to being like oh yeah.
We also have our 86 watt hour battery.
Your mileage will vary.
My biggest problem with the battery
in this is the Windows modern standby.
It is one of the worst things that Windows has ever done
and that's like saying a lot.
This is not a Dell exclusive problem,
I've had it in the Lenovo laptops, HP laptops, ASUS laptops,
they've had the problem as well
where it's just like a 2016 razor blade
and you take it outta your backpack
and it's hot as the sun and your battery's dead
and you're really mad about it.
Microsoft, you haven't made a good laptop
in such a long time.
Like come on you improved Windows so much
when you started the surface devices
and now you've just kind of left everyone
out to dry with modern standby so bad.
That's my rant about it.
Otherwise the XPS 15, great laptop.
I love it.
I'm probably gonna use this one,
once crucial sends us some more memory
and I can upgrade to 32 gigabytes.
Have a good evening, bye.