DELL XPS15 or....

[19_blackie_73]

Hi guys,

I'm looking to replace my laptop to be ready for my upcoming master thesis and working on the go, but still have two to three months in theory to wait. the 7100u and 8GB of ram in my current machine aren't cutting it anymore, also it fails to drive full screen videos on my 1440p external monitor. Currently I would be able to get the XPS15 with the 1650 and 9750h, 16gb and 512 GB SSD for slightly under and the 1TB SSD for slightly over 1500€ directly from DELL. Is it a very good deal to not pass on? Are there cheaper alternatives (not from HP, ain't buying them, also Acer, bad experience)? I know Ryzen CPUs are now a thing in the mobile segment, but I don't see them significantly outperforming the 9750h for my needs.

 
Must haves:

-be in the form factor of a 14" laptop like my e470

-preferred 14" FHD Display

-long lasting battery - 8-10hr like the e470 in office usage are a must have

-16gb of ram and at least 512GB SSD, preferably 1TB

-HDMI and at least 1 USB-A, SD Card slot

-near silent operation

 

BTW, the newer model is not an option for me because lack of ports.

Are there any inherent problems with the xps15?

 

Thanks  for any input or thoughts.

[5x5]

Avoid the XPS 15 like the plague. It has massive heat issues, it has latency issues, the QA from Dell is horrible and Dell support is useless. It's a nightmare to use and a nightmare to get repaired. By Farr the worst premium device on the market.

 

Look at the Asus Zephyrus G14/15 if you want performance and decent battery life

[19_blackie_73]

11 minutes ago, 5x5 said:

Avoid the XPS 15 like the plague. It has massive heat issues, it has latency issues, the QA from Dell is horrible and Dell support is useless. It's a nightmare to use and a nightmare to get repaired. By Farr the worst premium device on the market.

 

Look at the Asus Zephyrus G14/15 if you want performance and decent battery life

is it silent though? I had a look at it before, but I really need it quiet in low load situation, preferably turning the fan of while no load. It indeed looks a good candidate too.

[5x5]

Just now, 19_blackie_73 said:

is it silent though? I had a look at it before, but I really need it quiet in low load situation, preferably turning the fan of while no load. It indeed looks a good candidate too.

The Zephyrus models have a silent setting for lower loads and lower performance. The XPS is a vacuum cleaner

[19_blackie_73]

2 minutes ago, 5x5 said:

The Zephyrus models have a silent setting for lower loads and lower performance. The XPS is a vacuum cleaner

out of interest, did you have the xps at one point? Or where does your experience come from? (not to discredit you)

[5x5]

13 minutes ago, 19_blackie_73 said:

out of interest, did you have the xps at one point? Or where does your experience come from? (not to discredit you)

A whole host of users on forums and in my area of work who've had nothing but problems. I've yet to see an XPS user be able to do any form of work on it as it's only good for Facebook and web browsing. Anything heavy and it shoots up to 100*C and throttles to 1.6GHz making the CPU slower than a desktop Pentium

[19_blackie_73]

1 hour ago, 5x5 said:

A whole host of users on forums and in my area of work who've had nothing but problems. I've yet to see an XPS user be able to do any form of work on it as it's only good for Facebook and web browsing. Anything heavy and it shoots up to 100*C and throttles to 1.6GHz making the CPU slower than a desktop Pentium

any experience with the x1 carbon or the likes? I have my concerns that the Zephyrus although being a compelling package might be to loud for my taste even on silent. And tbh, more power than I ever need. I'm not in need for a dgpu, it's a nice touch if it has one but I prefer light over dgpu especially with the ryzen apus

[5x5]

3 minutes ago, 19_blackie_73 said:

any experience with the x1 carbon or the likes? I have my concerns that the Zephyrus although being a compelling package might be to loud for my taste even on silent

You won't find a quieter laptop in this form factor than the Zephyrus G models. The Intel equivalents all run a lot louder as the CPUs run a lot hotter and need a lot more power. If the G14 is too loud for you, you'll have to look for a professional heavy duty workstation and those are much larger and more expensive.

On the topic of the X1 - they're good but they are not meant for heavy load. It's an office and business laptop, not an engineering one and it won't handle load well. After all, that's a low-clocked ULV CPU (ignore the boost clock, the ULV CPUs never reach the advertised Intel clocks. I have an 8550-based laptop and even though it says 4GHz, it never goes above 2GHz under load).

SO yeah, for you, the G14 is basically as good as it gets.

[19_blackie_73]

46 minutes ago, 5x5 said:

You won't find a quieter laptop in this form factor than the Zephyrus G models. The Intel equivalents all run a lot louder as the CPUs run a lot hotter and need a lot more power. If the G14 is too loud for you, you'll have to look for a professional heavy duty workstation and those are much larger and more expensive.

On the topic of the X1 - they're good but they are not meant for heavy load. It's an office and business laptop, not an engineering one and it won't handle load well. After all, that's a low-clocked ULV CPU (ignore the boost clock, the ULV CPUs never reach the advertised Intel clocks. I have an 8550-based laptop and even though it says 4GHz, it never goes above 2GHz under load).

SO yeah, for you, the G14 is basically as good as it gets.

tbh, just need more power as the 7100u as the internal gpu struggles with 1440p and researching with many tabs and writing a 120page svg loaded word document killed the machine almost. I won't run simulations on the laptop, only minor music recording duties sometimes and writing a whole lot of word documents with the occasional video in the mean time. So the 4800hs is pretty much overkill as much as the 9750h will be. For sims, we have enough raw horsepower at university or there's always my 3600 equipped desktop if in need for more power. I just need more or less fanless mode for idle/low load scenarios as I'm pretty sensitive on that front.

But thanks for your input and giving the detailed replies. Probably will wait for more ryzen laptops to come out in the next few weeks as there seem to be a lot on the horizon

[5x5]

1 hour ago, 19_blackie_73 said:

tbh, just need more power as the 7100u as the internal gpu struggles with 1440p and researching with many tabs and writing a 120page svg loaded word document killed the machine almost. I won't run simulations on the laptop, only minor music recording duties sometimes and writing a whole lot of word documents with the occasional video in the mean time. So the 4800hs is pretty much overkill as much as the 9750h will be. For sims, we have enough raw horsepower at university or there's always my 3600 equipped desktop if in need for more power. I just need more or less fanless mode for idle/low load scenarios as I'm pretty sensitive on that front.

But thanks for your input and giving the detailed replies. Probably will wait for more ryzen laptops to come out in the next few weeks as there seem to be a lot on the horizon

Yeah, you won't be able to do any of that on Intel UHD graphics or low end junk cards. The minimum is a Vega 7. You also won't have a good time with Intel ULV CPUs. AMD's ULVs are a lot more competent with most being able to easily hold 3GHz or more under load. This is partly due to the far more efficient 7nm process and the fact that AMD don't rate the TDP limits for base clock. So while the ULV i7s are advertised as 4.5GHz - in reality, their limits are rated for 1.4-2GHz