Review: Dell XPS 15 (Late 2015)

Introduction and design

The XPS 15 sees Dell bring its evolutionary InfinityEdge display to a 15-inch laptop for the first time. If you're a fan of the XPS 13's space-saving design, but enjoy the productivity gains of a 15-inch laptop, Dell's latest machine promises workstation-class performance in a similarly compact chassis boasting the footprint of a 14-inch laptop.

As a former 11-inch MacBook Air owner, I was a fan of last year's revamped XPS 13. It looked the part, had the chops to cope with any task I threw at it and fit snugly into my backpack.

The XPS 15 sacrifices some of that portability in exchange for a roomy 4K display and a dedicated GPU. This makes the Dell XPS 15 a good, but not great, choice for 1080p gaming – but more on that later.

Design for life

The new XPS 15 bears little resemblance to its early 2015 predecessor, which itself was upgraded with a 4K display. The latest model's corners are much squarer, lending it a more box-like shape, and any silver flourishes on the inside have been swallowed up by a sea of matte black material.

Dell's latest XPS 15 is essentially a larger XPS 13 design-wise, from the black Dell logo etched into its silver aluminium lid to the thatched pattern on its black base. The laptop's minimalist look is the opposite of what you'll find on flashy gaming laptops. If you prefer the quietly subdued, no-nonsense look, then you'll enjoy what the XPS 15 has to offer.

I find the tactile, rubberized material around the trackpad much more welcoming than the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro's all-aluminium base, though the XPS 15 gets dirtier much easier. It attracts grease and natural hand oils like a sponge, so have a damp cloth handy if you want to keep it looking like new.

The touchscreen, on the other hand, does a better job of keeping fingerprints away. Any that do appear can be wiped away easily with a soft cloth.

On the underside of the XPS 15 are two strips of rubber that keep the machine in place when using it on a hard surface. Its display reclines around 45 degrees which, combined with the Sharp IGZO display's wide viewing angles, is enough to give you a good view of whatever it is you're doing when balancing the XPS 15 on your lap. You can manhandle the machine as much as you want, thanks to its stellar build quality, granting peace of mind when transporting it in a backpack without a case.

Everything on display

While the XPS 13's display tops out at QHD+ (3,200 x 1,800), the XPS 15 is configurable with a 4K touchscreen that boasts a 3,840 x 2,160-pixel resolution – and it's stunning to look at. Superlatives are often applied liberally when talking about laptop displays, but the XPS 15 deserves its praise.

Dell claims that the display covers 100% of the Adobe RGB color space, which is almost the case. Measured with my i1DisplayPro colorimeter, it achieved a hugely impressive 95%, which makes the XPS 15 a great option for photo editors who require spot-on accuracy,

The vibrancy of the display is exaggerated by Dell's PremierColor app, found lurking in the System Tray when you boot up the machine. Each of its six presets correspond to an activity you may be doing on the machine – from watching movies (Cinema – DCI-P3) to designing websites (Internet – sRGB), working with video (Rec.709/Rec.601) and editing images (Photo – Adobe RGB). I didn't see any reason to switch from the default 'Vibrant' setting, which produces deep blacks, colours that "pop", and bright, natural whites.

The XPS 15's superb colors are complemented by its high pixel density. At 282.4 ppi (pixels per inch), it's sharper than the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina (220 ppi) and the Surface Book (267 ppi) while matching the Asus UX501 (282 ppi), which also comes with a 4K display.

Having such a pixel-packed display brings the benefit of highly legible text, smooth lines on menus, crisp icons and massively detailed photos. Navigating archives to find a new desktop wallpaper suddenly becomes an enjoyable (and regular) task.

The XPS 15 ships with Windows 10's scaling set to 250%, which shifts the balance too far toward legibility, versus room on the desktop. Adjusting the slider to 200% gives you the same amount of space as a 1,920 x 1,080-pixel resolution monitor without making a noticeable dent in clarity. If you're used to working with large spreadsheets, editing 4K video and undertaking other tasks that require a roomy working area, setting the scaling to 125% lets you squeeze in more rows and toolbars without making fonts and icons too small to make out.

The downside is that some Windows applications still aren't optimized for high-resolution displays, so you'll inevitably end up with tiny or huge icons and fuzzy images in applications that haven't been updated to take advantage of the extra pixels. You'll occasionally come across apps, such as Evernote, that don't even render fonts correctly at scaled resolutions. The good news is that developers are updating their apps to support scaled resolutions in much greater numbers than they were before Windows 10 came along.

Specifications and value

The XPS 15 might be more compact than other 15-inch laptops, but it's equally as weighty as some of them. Weighing 4.58 pounds (2kg) for the 4K version, it's a pound (0.4kg) heavier than both the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina and the Surface Book. The 15-inch Asus UX501, on the other hand, is half a pound (0.2kg) heavier.

While it's worth noting that the 1080p version of the XPS 15 weighs a more palatable 3.9 pounds (1.8kg), the Dell's forward-thinking design and its grippable materials mean that the extra weight shouldn't be a deciding factor in your choice. If it's too heavy for you, you're probably better off with a 13-inch laptop.

It wasn't difficult to understand why Dell made the XPS 13 with an InfinityEdge display before the XPS 15. Small laptops never go out of fashion – you only have to look at the 12-inch MacBook for evidence of that.

However, I couldn't help but think that the 15-inch laptop segment was in greater need of a laptop built with a compact chassis. As the specs show, the XPS 15 has the smallest footprint of them all.

The 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina puts up an admirable fight, and is only marginally less compact than the XPS 15, measuring 35.89 x 24.71 x 1.8cm, or 14.1 x 9.72 x 0.7 inches (W x D x H) versus the 35.7 x 23.5 x 1.7cm, or 14 x 9.2 x 0.7 inches of Dell's machine. The UX501 is a comparable bloater and more typical of 15-inch laptops, measuring 38.3 x 25.3 x 3.23cm, or 15 x 10 x 1.2 inches.

While narrower than the MacBook and XPS 15, the 13-inch Surface Book is equally as long due to its 3:2 aspect ratio display. It's also taller due to its convertible design, measuring 32.2 x 23.2 x 2.3cm, or 12.7 x 9.1 x 0.9 inches.

Spec sheet

• CPU: 2.6GHz Intel Core i7 6700HQ (quad-core, 6MB cache, up to 3.5GHz with Turbo Boost)
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M (with 2GB GDDR5)
• RAM: 16GB Dual Channel DDR4 (2,133MHz; (8GBx2)
• Screen: 15.6-inch, 4K Ultra HD (3,840 x 2,160) InfinityEdge touch
• Storage: 512GB PCIe SSDSolid State Drive
• Ports: HDMI, USB 3.0 (x2) with PowerShare; Headset Jack (1); SD card reader (SD, SDHC, SDXC); Kensington Lock slot; Thunderbolt 3(1)
• Connectivity: DW1820 3x3 802.11ac 2.4/5GHz + Bluetooth 4.1
• Camera: Widescreen HD (720p) webcam with dual array digital microphone
• Weight: 4.4 poundslbs
• Size: 35.7 x 23.5 x 1.7cm (W x D x H)

Dell usually aims to get everybody into the party when it comes to its consumer-focused line of XPS devices, and the XPS 15 is no different. The lowest of the four configurations comes with a 1TB spinning hard drive, 8GB of RAM and a 1080p display for £1,099 (US$999.99, or AU$1,410), undercutting its main rival, Apple's 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina, by £500 (US$500, or AU$706).

Maxing the XPS 15 out fetches you a 512GB SSD, 16GB of RAM and a 4K display for £1,889 ($1,779.99, or AU$2,512). That's just £100 ($120, or AU$169) less than Apple's similarly-specced machine, and it makes for a much fairer fight.

Of course, the gulf in cost between the top and bottom configurations will have an impact on the overall experience. The entry-level XPS 15 is slower, but the larger capacity hard disk and 1080p display arguably make it a better fit for gamers, who will spend less time on the desktop. If you're more concerned with editing high-resolution videos, streaming 4K video and working with text documents and spreadsheets, in addition to gaming, only the 4K version should be considered.

All configurations feature the same healthy selection of ports, including two USB 3.0 ports and a USB-C Thunderbolt 3 port, which allows you to take advantage of USB-C peripherals – from power banks to monitors and even external graphics card enclosures, such as the Razer Core. Touted as the "one port to rule them all," USB-C holds massive promise but is currently limited by the number of supported peripherals out there.

Performance and benchmarks

The XPS 15 is loaded with high-quality components, including Intel's latest sixth-generation Skylake processor and an Nvidia GTX 960M GPU. That dedicated graphics chip places the XPS 15 in unusual territory.

Dell isn't marketing the XPS 15 as a gaming device, but it's powerful enough to handle most modern titles on high graphics settings with the resolution set to 1,920 x 1,080. Again, it's here that the XPS 15's color-rich, accurate display really shines.

Whether I was smashing skulls against Mortal Kombat X's vibrant and detailed backdrops, driving around the streets of Los Santos in GTA V or playing a frenzied match in Rocket League, I was constantly in awe of just how the display brought the game's colors to life. Where the XPS 15 managed to run games at the golden 60 frames per second (fps) mark with the graphical details ramped up, it was the best experience I've ever had on a 1080p laptop, period.

And when it didn't hit 60 fps? Not so good.

The 960M sits pretty as a mid-range mobile GPU in Nvidia's lineup, and its limiting 2GB of virtual memory means it's ill-equipped to handle texture heavy games, such as Fallout 4 and The Witcher 3, without suffering serious frame rate dips in busy scenes. In Fallout, for example, I had to lower the resolution to 1,366 x 768 and the graphical details to minimum to hit a consistent 60fps.

If that sort of experience is likely to frustrate you, skip the XPS 15 and hunt down a gaming laptop with a GTX 970M, the Aorus X3 Plus v3, which has a similarly sleek chassis, thin display bezels and a whopping 6GB of video memory for roughly the same cost.

Benchmarks

Here's how the Dell XPS 15 performed in our suite of benchmark tests:

• 3DMark: Cloud Gate: 16,942; Sky Diver: 12,541; Fire Strike: 3,930
• Cinebench R15 CPU: 679cb; Graphics: 69.46 fps
• GeekBench: 3,248 (single-core); 12,449 (multi-core)
• PCMark 8 (Home Test): 3,424 points
• PCMark 8 Battery Life: 1 hour and 52 minutes
• Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor (1080p, Ultra): 298.66 fps; (1080p, Low): 66.13 fps
• Metro: Last Light (1080p, Ultra): 58 fps; (1080p, Low): 118 fps

Let's remind ourselves of how Dell's XPS 15 from 2015 fared. The older model features a fourth-generation Intel Core i7-4712HQ Haswell processor, clocked at 3.3GHz, and an Nvidia GeForce GT750M GPU with 2GB of GDDR5 video memory.

• 3DMark: Cloud Gate: 10,408; Sky Diver: 6,866; Fire Strike: 2,060
• Cinebench R15 CPU: 595cb points; Graphics: 72.05 fps
• PCMark 8 (Home Test): 2,571 points
• PCMark 8 Battery Life balanced 50% screen: 3 hours 30 mins

Unsurprisingly, the new XPS 15 beats last year's incarnation in every area, notching a 29% higher score in PCMark 8's Home Test and 13% higher in Cinebench R15's CPU test. The Intel Core i7-6700HQ Skylake chip inside has a thermal design power rating (TDP) of 45 Watts and is one of the beefiest processors around.

As expected, it outperforms the fourth-generation Intel Core i7-4720HQ Haswell chip in the Asus UX501, achieving a 28% higher score in PCMark 8's Home Test. It also easily beats the dual-core i5-6300U processor in the Surface Book, achieving a 38% higher score in same the benchmark.

Processor performance is identical to gaming laptops, such as the Origin EVO15-S, which feature the same CPU. Origin's machine scored 3,416 points, versus the XPS 15's 3,424 points. If you regularly edit video, work with complex spreadsheets or 3D rendering programs, the XPS 15 offers the most processing grunt available in a machine with a compact chassis.

It all adds up to a laptop that excels at everyday computing tasks, whether that's surfing the internet with 30 or more tabs open in multiple browsers, editing big image or video files, typing up documents in Office 2016 or streaming content in Ultra HD. Having 16GB of RAM under the hood, along with a fast 512GB SSD, means you never have to wait for apps to open or endure long loading times when playing games.

Longevity is lacking

The one area where the XPS 15 performs badly is battery life, and even a Skylake chip inside can't do much to prevent the laptop's bright 4K display from draining power quickly. The XPS 15 lasted for just 1 hour and 52 minutes in PCMark 8's punishing battery life test, which is what you can expect when you're pushing the machine to its limits.

It fared much better under real world use – typing up documents, watching YouTube videos and occasional bouts of Battlefield 4 and Rocket League – lasting around 3 hours and 30 minutes with the brightness lowered to 75%. Even so, it doesn't make the XPS 15 a laptop you'll want to take on a trip if power sockets will be in short supply.

Nixing the number pad

Sorry, accountants: Dell has spaced out the XPS 15's chiclet-style keys to kept the keyboard's layout centred, leaving no room for a number pad. The keyboard's response is underwhelming due to its low amount of key travel, so if you're expecting a greater amount of tactile feedback then prepare for disappointment.

Though fine for general use, this keyboard lacks the tactile and comfortable typing action that you'll find on other devices, such as Dell's own XPS 12 and the Lenovo Yoga 260. The next XPS 15 has to address this if it wants to be taken seriously as a productivity machine.

I had a brief problem with the XPS15's space bar, which suffers from an irritating squeaking sound. In one instance, it came stuck and refused to pop back out again, something that was eventually fixed by pressing down on it harder. I've also been unsuccessful in my attempts to keep the keyboard backlight to remain on permanently, despite pressing the appropriate function key combination and setting it in the BIOS to remain on. Dell is currently investigating whether that's a one-off issue related to my product sample.

Trackpad and tweeters

The XPS 15's roomy clickpad is the best I've ever used on a Windows laptop, and is almost as smooth and responsive to use as the ones Apple uses on its MacBooks. It's even possible to use three-finger gestures smoothly in Windows 10. The experience isn't quite as fluid as what you'll get on OS X El Capitan (palm rejection is worse for a start), but Microsoft and its partners are catching up in this area.

But the XPS 15's speakers are disappointing, to put it mildly. Dell made the strange decision of placing the laptop's two stereo speakers on the underside of the machine, making the already muddy tones even more difficult to make out.

Dell attempts to gloss over the XPS 15's poor speakers using the Waves MaxxAudio app, which artificially enhances the sound by manipulating bass, mid-range and treble tones through a software equalizer to poor effect. When the speakers on Apple's 12-inch MacBook outshine those on a much thicker 15-inch laptop, it's time to go back to the drawing board.

Verdict

The Dell XPS 15 ranks among the best 15-inch laptops money can buy, but it's not without its problems. Its space-saving design and great performance all add up to a machine that feels like a capable desktop PC and a great 4K monitor rolled into one.

If you're mainly going to be using this notebook away from a wall socket, however, it's a poor choice. Neither is it appropriate if you want to stay on the cutting edge of laptop tech for the next few years.

We liked

The XPS 15's combination of an eyeball-pleasing, accurate 4K display, compact dimensions and powerful processor makes it one of the most attractive workstations on the planet. So long as you're near a wall outlet, you've got a machine that's primed for any task: from productivity work to entertainment to gaming.

The XPS 15 has enough grunt for 1080p gaming, and any titles that it can run at 60 fps benefit from the display's shimmering color saturation and vibrancy. For once, you won't mind using the XPS 15 in the absence of a mouse. With a smooth gliding action, it has one of the best clickpads on a Windows machine. Combined with the touchscreen, you've got two solid input methods to help you pick out menu icons and toolbars.

We disliked

Poor battery life is the main drawback to the XPS 15: you simply can't rely on it for long when using its internal battery. You can lower the brightness to eke out a longer runtime from the battery, but you won't get the full benefit of its gorgeous high-resolution display.

The XPS 15's keyboard fails to enhance its reputation as a machine geared for productivity. It's serviceable, but if you're an ardent typist who appreciates a certain amount of key travel, you're unlikely to be impressed.

Its speakers tell a similar story, producing sound that's plenty loud but suffers from a distinct lack of clarity. Don't expect the XPS 15 to run tomorrow's demanding games, because it tends to struggle with some of today's demanding titles at 1080p due to its GPU's limiting 2GB of video memory.

Final verdict

If you're itching to get your hands on the most compact and powerful workstation around, the XPS 15 is a great choice. It will take some time for a display to best its pixel-packed 4K panel, and the strength of its Skylake processor should see you good for at least a few years.

Its Thunderbolt 3-powered USB-C port offers further future-proofing, though it will be some time before you can take full advantage of it due to a lack of supported accessories today. At the same time, the XPS 15 lives for the moment.

This laptop can play just about every modern game in 1080p, but will struggle to power tomorrow's titles with the graphical details dialled up. You could take it to a coffee shop and watch a full-length 4K movie in glorious 4K with the brightness lowered, but you'd have to hunt down a power socket straight after.

Compromise is at the heart of the XPS 15, and if you're prepared to make it, you'll net yourself of one of the best 4K laptops around.

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