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Dell XPS 15 (9500) Review


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Update of Dell XPS 15 (9500)

The Dell XPS laptop line remains one of our favorites, and this year the 9500 model update to the 15-inch flagship version is unique. The 2020 XPS 15 (starts at $ 1,299.99; $ 2,299.99 as tested) has a new design business with a sculpted motorcycle and under-screen pixels, as well as the latest features from Intel and Nvidia. Our review unit is a 4K type of attractive touch screen, but Dell's wealth of setting options means you can wear this high quality design with a wide mix of features and features. We can say that we wish it were a little brighter, and its reliance on USB-C ports could be a challenge for some (even with adapters installed), but this laptop is also nearing the completion of a 15-inch premium desktop switch


New XPS 15 Design: Modern Updates

When I reviewed the previous version of the Dell XPS 15 last year, I noticed that the build, while solid, was starting to look like a day off. XPS 13 has seen a few updates, even on some of the models we already love, while its older sibling still needs to be updated. It has received updates now, with updates on its shape, size, and features


First of all, the XPS 15 is more compact than before, especially in its width. The current 9500 model measures 0.71 by 13.6 by 9.1 inches (HWD), which is lower than the previous version (0.66 by 14.1 by 9.3 inches). The building materials remain the same: The lid and chassis are made of aluminum, and the keyboard dashboard is soft carbon touch. This gives the XPS 15 a sense of status, though not the simplest 4.5-pound laptop. It sounds tense, so it might be best to lose weight. The 16-inch Apple MacBook Pro is lightweight (4.3 pounds), but that has a bigger display, and the intricate Microsoft Surface Book 3 weighs in at 4.2 pounds.


All of this reduction occurs when a larger screen is created, taking up the size of a portable computer. Larger bezels account for 92 percent of screen size and body size, and the screen now plays a 16:10 ratio of vertical pixels than 16: 9 pixels.

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Dell XPS 15 9500 (2020) Review


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 Hi,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 the new gala had all-in-one coolers by liam lee combining premium materials for a beautiful package to cool your intel or amd cpu with black or white color options available both with tasteful aluminum housing and complementing 120mm argb high static pressure fans and you gotta appreciate proper length fan screws the water pump is excellent with easy installation cool pattern with vibrant lighting control with the hub or via your motherboard and rotatable housing to match your orientation and don't forget the aluminum magnetic cap for a different look check out the new galahad all-in-one 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 Dell 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 bodes 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.