In late 2015 Dell came out with the first good-looking XPS 15
This was a time where most laptops were pretty unsightly. MacBooks looked good,
- but most Windows laptops looked honestly quite bad
They were plastic, they were thick, and if they were made of aluminum, they didn't look particularly good
That first XPS 15 was something special: it looked good,
It was thin, It was pretty powerful
But it had thermal limitations, and then the year later they came up with a 9560 same design
-but the same issues: It had thermal limitations. Three years later in 2018, we have
this: the 9570. And...
This is a different market right now. In 2018
There are a lot of good-looking thin and light powerful laptops.
So it doesn't really stick out as being the obvious choice for someone that wants something like this. Is it still good?
It is, but there are some issues that I have with it.
Now I'm not going to look a regular review on this, but I will give you kind of like a one-minute overview
It still has the best-in-class exterior build. For a 15-inch Windows laptop, I still think the XPS 15 is the leader
It has an awesome exterior, carbon fiber stuff feels nice. It's soft touch. It's durable holds up well over time
There's a decent port selection and the Thunderbolt 3 port finally supports four lanes of PCIe
So if you want to connect to port external GPU you're getting full bandwidth
It has an excellent track pad, good keyboard with white backlighting. It only has room for a single SSD slot
There is room for a secondary drive
It's like an optional kit, but it's a SATA drive
And you also have to use a smaller battery if you use that. The speakers are ok
They're also not in the best position, they are underneath the laptop. The webcam is still a nose cam
It's centered this year, but it still has that unflattering angle. It has an awesome battery life. With the screen at 215 nits
It's I'm getting a full eight hours of battery life. That's better battery than the previous generation. The screen
This is the 4k panel and I really like it. It's bright, its color accurate
It's excellent for content creation or for anyone that enjoys a high-res high-quality screen. I think this is its best feature
now
I'm going to focus the rest of this video on what I think is the most important feature about this device or both of these devices
It's the performance
So these devices have been upgraded from the previous generation
By a significant amount both the CPU and the GPU are strong performers
There's a few configurations for the CPU: the i5 and i7 are fast
The i9 is faster
The GPU in this one is a 1050 Ti and it pushes out really respectable frame rates for most modern titles right now at 1080p
And it's also great for Adobe content. The new XPS 15 is quite a bit faster in Premiere than last year's model
Now I want to talk about thermal performance
and I think this is a topic that I think really defines this whole product line the XPS 15 from even three years ago if
You push these devices hard for extended periods of time
You will run into thermal throttling. The i5 and the i7 throttle occasionally the i9 throttles a little bit more it honestly
questions why they even put the i9 into the XPS 15
because the thermal limitations of this chassis are quite pronounced and just when you stick in a
very powerful chip like the i9 into this it
just
You know
You're losing a lot of the value of that chip because of the thermal design of this laptop
So this brings up the question of whether or not this thermal stuff is a serious issue. So this is my take on it
there's basically
Two... well three ways you can kind of look at it. One way is to look at this thermal limitation and be like
You know what if thermal throttles?
Deal-breaker forget about it. Let's look at a different brand. The thing is I don't feel like that's a legitimate thing
There aren't really obvious alternatives to the XPS 15
There are devices that are similar like the Razer Blade the aro 15 GS 65
But none of them are quite like the XPS 15. This really is in a class of its own
None of them are built as well as this and none of them have the super long battery life like this
It's a unique product. So if you want to find something that's like this without the thermal throttling it doesn't exist
So there's really only two
Realistic options: number one, you deal with it by repai stting it and under vaulting it. I've done a video in the past
It's not the easiest thing in the world
It's a bit of a pain but it is a way to get better thermals on the 9570 if you want
The other option is to understand that the XPS 15 was not built as a gaming device
It's not built to run stuff at Full Tilt full-bore 24/7
It is a work oriented device. It's a thin and light quiet laptop
And if they wanted to they could crank up the fans it could this thing louder and have better thermal performance
But it would sacrifice a lot of what makes the XPS 15 what it is
So depending on what you want to do with this device, you kind of have to choose one of those two realistic options. Now
that being said I
Don't think that Dell gets a pass anymore
When they first launched this in 2015, sure. Last year is a little bit of annoying, but sure. Three years later
I feel like they should have found some kind of engineering solution to make this issue not even be an issue and
There are other devices out there now in 2018 that have very similar performance to this
like without thermal issues and
That's the thing. Now if you still want that really amazing build quality. You got to stick with this
But if you're just looking for raw performance, there are other options I've done reviews
I'll link them down below. But this is what it is. It does have thermal issues yet again and
It's getting a little stale Dell
It's getting a little stale