Dell XPS 15

Description:

Design

The New Dell XPS design language is the farthest thing from new to me, though I’ve seen many more laptops than most folks. It’s truly a matter of if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, with high-end styling that’s become familiar in 13- and 17-inch as well as 15-inch sizes. The XPS 15 again gets its premium look and feel (and price) from an all-aluminum exterior. The Dell’s sleek physical design helps, too: Measuring just 0.71 by 13.6 by 9.1 inches (HWD), it’s seriously compact for a 15.6-inch laptop. I’d forgive you for thinking the screen was smaller than that at first glance. The system is still reasonably portable at 4.2 pounds.

Display

The displays of Dell XPS laptops are always striking, due largely to their razor-thin bezels. The XPS 15’s nearly borderless screen is not just eye-catching but helps fit a 15.6-inch panel into a smaller chassis. While the base display is a non-touch “full HD+” screen (1,920 by 1,200 pixels rather than 1,920 by 1,080 due to its 16:10 aspect ratio), our test unit was upgraded with what Dell calls a 3.5K (3,456-by-2,160-pixel) OLED touch panel. As you’d expect from OLED technology, its picture quality is brilliant and vibrant.

Processor

The Dell XPS 15 is equipped with the Intel Core i7-13700H is a high-end mobile CPU for laptops based on the Raptor Lake-H series (Alder Lake architecture). It was announced in early 2023 and offers 6 performance cores (P-cores, Golden Cove architecture) and 8 efficient cores (E-cores, Gracemont architecture). The P-cores support Hyper-Threading leading to 20 supported threads when combined with the E-cores. The clock rate ranges from 2.4 to 5 GHz (single-core turbo, all-core 4.7 GHz) on the performance cluster and 1.8 to 3.7 GHz on the efficiency cluster. The performance of the E-cores should be similar to old Skylake cores (compare with the Core i7-6920HQ). All cores can use up to 24 MB L3 cache.

Performance

The Dell XPS 15 comes with the Windows 11 Home with the 22H2 update installed. Outside of Windows, drivers, and Dell maintenance utilities there was very little else installed. Dell includes the My Dell system utility, Dell Update to grab the latest drivers and firmware from the manufacturer, and the Dell Digital Delivery app that installs software that’s bundled with the machine. That bundled software does include a 12-month subscription to McAfee LiveSafe for those who want more protection than what Windows Defender offers, but it’s not installed out of the box. And of course, Microsoft always pushes the free tier of OneDrive and a Microsoft 365 trial with Windows, but that’s not unique to Dell, of course.

Features