Dell XPS 15
£1,814 | $2,174 www.dell.com Jack of all trades, master of some
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hen Dell refreshed its 13-inch flagship laptop late last year, its 15-inch sibling wasn’t so lucky, with an update to that model conspicuous by its absence – until now. While the 2016 Dell XPS 15 was fine, it wasn’t without some hiccups that ultimately set it back. For starters, the battery life was dismal, and it also included a shallow keyboard, weak speakers and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M graphics chip that wielded only 2GB of video RAM, not nearly enough for either current or future games. Fortunately, all of these issues have been rectified with the 2017 Dell XPS 15 that we’re looking at here. What’s more, everything we liked about the 2016 version is still in place, including a diverse range of prices and configurations.
Price and availability Like the Dell XPS 13, which we praised for its vast spectrum of
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hardware options, the 2017 Dell XPS 15 has a ton of these, too. While the model we were sent for review is valued at £1,814 ($2,174), it comes with a luxury, 7th-generation Intel Core i77700HQ quad-core processor, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD storage, a 4K InfinityEdge touch display, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 graphics card and a built-in fingerprint reader for Windows Hello logins. Assuming your tastes don’t require all of these bells and whistles, what you get with the entry-level Dell XPS 15 depends on where you live. In the UK, the Dell XPS 15 starts at £1,349 for an Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, a 1080p Full HD non-touch display and a 1TB hard drive/32GB SSD. The entry-level US model, meanwhile, gets an Intel Core i3, 8GB of RAM, a 1080p display (again, no touch) and a 500GB hard drive/32GB SSD combo. Neither model has discrete graphics or a fingerprint reader.
Design At first glance, the 2017 Dell XPS 15 doesn’t look much different from its predecessor. It still has a silvery aluminium shell that closes in on a rubberised material surrounding plastic inputs. Only the keyboard has been refined since the last time we saw it. Although the key travel is relatively low, the Dell XPS 15 boasts a keyboard that’s both spacious and comfy, keeping in line with trends followed by the likes of the HP Spectre x360 15 and even Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Pro. The touchpad remains clicky, which is great for those who want that, not so good if you don’t. At least the tracking and left/right click detection on the Dell XPS 15’s touchpad are up to par. Plus the Dell compares favourably with the the inputs on its arch-rival, the Gigabyte Aero 15, whose keys are so tightly packed that it’s a nuisance trying to get anything done outside of gaming.