Dell XPS 15 Laptop Review: A Powerful and Portable Workhorse

If you are looking for a laptop that can handle your professional and personal needs, you might want to consider the Dell XPS 15. This laptop is one of the most popular and well-reviewed 15-inch laptops on the market, and for good reasons.

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It offers a sleek and sturdy design, a stunning display, a fast performance, and a long battery life. In this review, we will take a closer look at the features and specifications of the Dell XPS 15 laptop, and see how it compares to its competitors.

Design and Build Quality

The Dell XPS 15 laptop has a premium and elegant look, thanks to its all-aluminum exterior and carbon fiber keyboard deck. The laptop is also very thin and light, measuring just 0.71 by 13.6 by 9.1 inches (HWD) and weighing 4.2 lbs. This makes it easy to carry around and fit in any bag. The laptop also has a solid and durable feel, with a high-precision aluminum chassis that can withstand the wear and tear of everyday use.

The laptop has a generous selection of ports, including a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port with DisplayPort, two Thunderbolt 4 (USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2) ports, a headset (headphone and microphone combo) port, and a full-sized SD card slot. However, it does not have a USB Type-A port or an Ethernet RJ45 port, so you might need to use an adapter or a hub to connect some devices and accessories. The laptop also comes with a 720p webcam, which is not very impressive, but it does have an infrared sensor for Windows Hello facial recognition.

Display and Audio

One of the highlights of the Dell XPS 15 laptop is its display, which is a 15.6-inch 3.5K (3456 by 2160p) OLED touch screen. The display has very thin bezels, giving it a 92.9% screen to body ratio and a 16:10 aspect ratio. The display is also very bright, with a 400-nit brightness level, and very colorful, with a 100% DCI-P3 color gamut.

The display delivers stunning visuals, with deep blacks, high contrast, and vivid colors, making it ideal for watching videos, editing photos, and working on creative projects. The display also supports HDR and Dolby Vision, enhancing the picture quality even further.

The laptop also has a good audio system, with two 2.5W speakers and two 1.5W tweeters. The speakers are tuned by Waves MaxxAudio Pro and support 3D audio with Waves Nx. The speakers produce clear and loud sound, with decent bass and treble. The speakers are also well-positioned on the sides of the keyboard, avoiding any muffling or distortion.

Performance and Battery Life

The Dell XPS 15 laptop is powered by the 13th Gen Intel Core i7-13700H processor, which has 14 cores, 24 MB of cache, and a turbo boost of up to 5.00 GHz. The processor is paired with 32 GB of DDR5 RAM, running at 4800 MT/s, and a 1 TB PCIe NVMe SSD. The laptop also has a dedicated graphics card, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070, which has 8 GB of GDDR6 memory.

The laptop delivers a fast and smooth performance, handling multiple tasks, applications, and tabs with ease. The laptop can also handle more demanding workloads, such as video editing, photo editing, and 3D modeling, with no lag or slowdown.

The laptop also supports some gaming, thanks to its graphics card, which can run most games at medium to high settings and decent frame rates. However, the laptop is not a gaming laptop, and it might struggle with some of the latest and most graphics-intensive games.

The laptop also has a long battery life, lasting for up to 14 hours on a single charge, according to PCMag’s test. This is impressive, especially for a laptop with such a high-resolution display and powerful components. The laptop also supports fast charging, reaching up to 50% in 30 minutes.

Comparison with Competitors

The Dell XPS 15 laptop faces some tough competition from other 15-inch laptops on the market, such as the Apple MacBook Pro 16, the HP Spectre x360 15, and the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4. Here is a brief comparison of their features and specifications:

Feature	Dell XPS 15	Apple MacBook Pro 16	HP Spectre x360 15	Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4
Price	Starts at $1,299	Starts at $2,399	Starts at $1,599	Starts at $1,849
Processor	Intel Core i7-13700H	Apple M1 Max or M1 Pro	Intel Core i7-1165G7	Intel Core i7-11800H
RAM	16 GB or 32 GB DDR5	16 GB, 32 GB, or 64 GB unified memory	16 GB DDR4	16 GB or 32 GB DDR4
Storage	512 GB, 1 TB, 2 TB, 4 TB, or 8 TB PCIe NVMe SSD	512 GB, 1 TB, 2 TB, 4 TB, or 8 TB SSD	512 GB or 1 TB PCIe NVMe SSD	512 GB, 1 TB, or 2 TB PCIe NVMe SSD
Graphics	Intel Arc A370M or Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050, 4060, or 4070	16-core, 24-core, or 32-core GPU	Intel Iris Xe or Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Ti	Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti or 3060
Display	15.6-inch FHD+ or 3.5K OLED touch screen	16.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR mini-LED display	15.6-inch FHD or 4K OLED touch screen	15.6-inch FHD, 4K IPS, or 4K OLED touch screen
Battery Life	Up to 14 hours	Up to 21 hours	Up to 13 hours	Up to 10 hours

As you can see, the Dell XPS 15 laptop offers a great balance of performance, display quality, and battery life, while also being more affordable than some of its rivals.

The Apple MacBook Pro 16 might have a slight edge in terms of processor and graphics performance, but it is also much more expensive and limited by its macOS operating system.

The HP Spectre x360 15 and the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 are also good alternatives, but they have lower-resolution displays and shorter battery lives than the Dell XPS 15.

The Dell XPS 15 laptop is a powerful and portable workhorse that can handle your professional and personal needs. It has a sleek and sturdy design, a stunning display, a fast performance, and a long battery life.

It also has a reasonable starting price and plenty of configuration options. It is one of the best 15-inch laptops you can buy, and we highly recommend it.