Okay so this, is Dell's latest and greatest XPS 15 for 2019.
This is now the fourth iteration of this product.
And it's good,
it's REALLY good for what it was meant to be.
But it's not as good as what it COULD have been.
So when this thing first launched 4 years ago,
I think it was one of the best looking devices available on the market at the time.
I think a lot of people felt the same way,
it was just a really, nice looking 15 inch, powerful laptop.
And it was thin, it was light.
But 3 years later, it's not as unique of a product as it once was.
and because it's on its fourth iteration,
I'm not gonna go through the details of every single component.
A lot of it has not changed even compared to the first iteration.
Still has the same kinda design on the outside,
still has the carbon fiber keyboard,
it's a great looking device,
and it's a great performing device, for what it is.
But, I'm gonna focus this video on the stuff that has changed.
As well as, like a bigger picture discussion on
whether or not this device is for you.
Now, one of the main features they've added this year
is the option for an OLED panel on the display.
And it's a really nice looking display.
Now this isn't the first OLED panel I've reviewed on this channel.
I've talked about a couple of other devices,
mostly gaming devices.
But they all use the same panel.
These all use the Samsung panel,
OLED, 4K, really nice image.
and it's particularly noticeable in media consumption.
Like if you're watching stuff that supports HDR,
or just stuff that has a lot of colour,
and can show off the vibrancy,
and the benefits of an OLED screen,
this thing looks AWESOME.
But I have to say,
in comparison to the previous 4K panel
they had available,
and they still have that option of like,
just the 4K, regular IPS panel.
It's not THAT much better.
It's not to say that the OLED panel doesn't look amazing,
it's just that the original 4K panel
that you could've gotten with the XPS 15 last year
was such a nice looking panel to begin with.
Now if you're worried about OLED screen burn-in on a laptop,
I've talked about this in previous videos,
but I feel like I should mention it here as well.
I've done a couple tests,
I've had a screen that just had a static image
for over 30 days,
and there were no issues with it.
So I feel like, for these particular panels,
the Samsung OLED panels that we're seeing a lot of this year,
they're perfectly fine for OLED longevity.
Okay, I wanna talk about performance.
This is a device that's running
the 9th Gen i9, so it's an eight-core CPU,
as well as the GTX 1650,
a reasonably powerful GPU from Nvidia.
When this device launched 4 years ago,
it had thermal limitations.
Because they're trying to put some powerful stuff
into a relatively thin, and light device.
4 years later,
it still has very similar thermal characteristics
to the original model from 2016.
Now, some people look at this device
as a kind of business laptop,
or kind of like a workstation laptop,
that is powerful, and looks relatively good,
in a thin and light package.
But there are a lot of people and, myself included a few years ago,
that look at this device,
like a nice looking gaming laptop.
You should be able to play games on it
because it is so powerful.
Because it is running an Nvidia video card.
It is NOT a gaming laptop.
And this is something that I think a lot of people
just have to drill into their minds
when it comes to the XPS-branding device.
This, is not a gaming laptop.
As much as we want it to be,
as much as it SHOULD be
because it has great hardware in it,
it cannot play games properly
to the full extent of what this hardware should be capable of.
So this device runs hot,
it doesn't throttle as aggressively as last year's model,
but it still has a very distinct thermal limitation.
Now just some anecdotal story here,
3 years ago, when OverWatch first launched.
It's a game that I play a lot, if you follow my channel,
you'll recognize that name.
It's a game that's not super demanding on your system.
But I used to play OverWatch on the original XPS 15,
and I went from Bronze to Masters on that device
with a 60 hertz screen.
And, three and a half years later,
we have the fourth iteration of this device,
and the gaming performance is not THAT much improved.
You can play some lighter titles, like OverWatch,
but the moment you play a game
that's taxing on both the CPU and GPU,
like something like Apex,
it will throttle and your game will stutter.
Now, I get it, you can do stuff like undervolting,
and you can lower the boost wattage on your system,
like, there's a lot of things you can do to work around those issues,
But for the average person, they're not doing that.
Like if you're looking at buying this system,
chances are you just wanna pick it up,
and go and do its thing.
If you do understand that this is still
a thermally limited chassis.
Now there's something that I thought was a little bit strange.
This device does not have an undervolted CPU.
We've seen companies like Acer
and Razer and even Apple,
they all undervolt their CPUs
to get the best possible thermal performance
on their devices,
Because this is such a thin and light chassis design,
I would've thought that they would've just taken the opportunity
to undervolt it as well.
Because I manually undervolted it
and you do get better performance when you do.
Uh, other things.
Oh the insides, so not a lot has changed internally,
but they do have better VRM cooling.
One of the issues that they've had
with all the XPS chassis,
before, they did not cool the VRMs properly.
This year they have a heat sink on top of them.
The rest of the inside hasn't really changed,
it's now running a new WiFi card,
still a Killer card, but
at least it's got WiFi 6.
and the battery is also unchanged,
it's still a very large battery,
but on the OLED screen,
it's a little bit less than last year's
so last year I was getting over eight hours of battery life,
I got seven running the exact same test, seven and three minutes ?
On the same battery test as the previous generation.
So still a solid battery life,
but not as good as the regular IPS panel.
Also, the webcam.
So it's now moved up to the top,
this is a big thing for a lot of people
it used to be down at the bottom, the nose-cam,
a lot of people complained about it for years.
it's now at the top.
I actually think it's cool that Dell spent the time and
resources to do this.
This is actually one of the few thin-bezel laptops
that has a webcam up at the top.
Okay, I think that basically wraps up the
kinda physical changes with this device.
And I wanna talk about the value proposition
you're getting with the XPS 15 right now.
If you're on the market for an XPS 15,
chances are you're looking for a device that's relatively portable,
but also relatively powerful.
And the other device that may have popped up
on your radar is the Razer Blade 15.
This is my personal device.
Now I'm not saying that I like the Razer Blade over the X-
That's a lie. ( chuckles )
I DO like the Razer Blade more than the XPS 15.
But I'm not saying it's the better choice for everyone.
I play a lot of games, this is why I go for it (Razer).
If you play games,
and you actually want to get a device with the intent
of playing games regularly,
DO NOT get the XPS 15.
You'll be disappointed.
Like the amount of money you spend on an XPS 15
can be spent on a bunch of other devices
that are just better for playing games.
But if you want something specifically for video editing
or photo editing,
or just want something that is powerful
for I don't know, development.
But you don't play games,
this is still a great option.
The thermal issues are way less pronounced this year.
And if I did not play games,
I would choose the XPS 15 over the Razer Blade.
One of the things I liked the most about the Dell device,
is the keyboard and the keyboard deck.
I love the carbon fiber,
I love how it feels,
I like how it ages,
so it doesn't get gross and bad over time.
It just stays really clean
over the years,
As long as you wipe down once in a while.
And the keyboard layout is good,
but I never loved the keyboard layout on the Razer Blade.
It's a really good device,
overall, except I really wish they would fix the thermals.
It's weird that even after four years,
they couldn't engineer themselves out of this thermal issue ?
But that's what we have.
Now I don't think that they'll be using this design,
and this chassis, going forward.
I feel like next year's device is probably gonna have
a completely new redesign.
Which would be good, in my books.
Like I feel like they've reached the limitations of this thing.
So, time to move on.
But if you're interested in picking
this particular year's model up,
I still think it's a solid device.
Just, temper your expectations.
Understand that it's not a gaming laptop,
but more of a just, workstation,
just powerful, productivity device.
Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this video,
thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it,
see you guys next time.