Dell XPS 17 Base Model question

[Aereldor]

So a lot of people love the XPS 17, and every review I've seen is about how great the 4k screen is. But Dave2D does mention it not being worth it and to get the cheaper 1200p screen instead. 

 

I'm inclined to do so, I can get one refurbished for incredibly cheap right now. But does the cheaper 1920x1200 screen look anywhere near as good as the expensive 4k+ touch display?

 

I'm a little spoiled when it comes to screens, I've had an Alienware 13R3 OLED for over 5 years now.

[tikker]

You'll lose a bit of image quality maybe, but it's more a point of do you need 3840x2160 resolution on a 17" display. Do you do photo/video editing or something else that may benefit from it? If not it's just more pixels sucking up valuable battery life for not that much extra value. That and the 1200p display is matte if you care about that.

[Aereldor]

10 minutes ago, tikker said:

You'll lose a bit of image quality maybe, but it's more a point of do you need 3840x2160 resolution on a 17" display. Do you do photo/video editing or something else that may benefit from it? If not it's just more pixels sucking up valuable battery life for not that much extra value. That and the 1200p display is matte if you care about that.

I prefer Matte, and no I definitely don't need 4k, but I do need good colour accuracy. if the matte panel does 100% sRGB and ~90% adobeRGB, that's what matters. That said, does the 1200p display have larger bezels? That would suck.

[tikker]

10 minutes ago, soundlogic said:

I prefer Matte, and no I definitely don't need 4k, but I do need good colour accuracy. if the matte panel does 100% sRGB and ~90% adobeRGB, that's what matters. That said, does the 1200p display have larger bezels? That would suck.

Bezels should be similar or the same even from what I remember from their lineup. I don't know about the colour space/accuracy of the displays and reviews only seem to care about the 2160p version. Someone on Reddit measured it themselves and found some numbers. Not an official review, but should give an indication maybe:

Quote

Color accuracy:

I was a bit sad, as someone who enjoys photography/videography, that I never really saw reports of color accuracy for the 1200p screen, so I took the opportunity to do it myself when I received the laptop not too long ago.

I used a Spyder5 Pro.

Here are the results:

100% sRGB

79% AdobeRGB

74% NTSC

80% P3

Not bad! I think I'll stick with my MacBook Pro 16 for photo editing and my desktop for video editing though!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/hj18bp/xps_17_1920x1200_arrived_measured_color_accuracy/

 

 

[jaslion]

4k at that size is a waste. The 1200p is plenty good and the colour accuracy of the xps is excellent.

 

Do keep in mind that the base model is worse in terms of power than what you have now mainly because the xps series as a whole overheats a lot so a fair bit of performance is lost.

[Aereldor]

2 minutes ago, jaslion said:

4k at that size is a waste. The 1200p is plenty good and the colour accuracy of the xps is excellent.

 

Do keep in mind that the base model is worse in terms of power than what you have now mainly because the xps series as a whole overheats a lot so a fair bit of performance is lost.

Well that sucks, especially since they've been blocking undervolting through BIOS updates for years now. Maybe I'll look at something else. 

[jaslion]

1 minute ago, soundlogic said:

Well that sucks, especially since they've been blocking undervolting through BIOS updates for years now. Maybe I'll look at something else. 

Yeah all the xps laptops still have the same cooling setup from when the best cpu you could get in them was a i7 6700hq which already was maxing out the cooling. These were more aimed at cpu's like a i7 6600u which was a dual core.

 

The xps 17 is the least bad of the bunch but well yeah it's obvious why. It's bigger thus bigger cooler but still not enough.

 

I assume you want a laptop that is more portable and better than what you have now? If so look at the asus g15 2021 it's light, very good, has a GREAT screen (made for creatives and colour calibrated out of the box), powerful, great battery and lighter than your alienware (if the weight of your alienware is correct as I get 3 different weights when googling). Also it runs really cool and can handle up to the ryzen 5900 + 3070 without a sweat. It will perform about 4% slower than other laptops with those specs as asus went for a quieter laptop instead of letting it rip to maximum performance all the time like others.

 

If you want a laptop that is also very good and lets the hardware go as fast as possible. The entire lenovo legion 5 2021 series is rock solid and really good. Handles up to the 3070 without a problem. The 3080 is it's cooling limit and it does still work but it gets toasty then.

[Aereldor]

Just now, jaslion said:

Yeah all the xps laptops still have the same cooling setup from when the best cpu you could get in them was a i7 6700hq which already was maxing out the cooling. These were more aimed at cpu's like a i7 6600u which was a dual core.

 

The xps 17 is the least bad of the bunch but well yeah it's obvious why. It's bigger thus bigger cooler but still not enough.

 

I assume you want a laptop that is more portable and better than what you have now? If so look at the asus g15 2021 it's light, very good, has a GREAT screen (made for creatives and colour calibrated out of the box), powerful, great battery and lighter than your alienware (if the weight of your alienware is correct as I get 3 different weights when googling). Also it runs really cool and can handle up to the ryzen 5900 + 3070 without a sweat. It will perform about 4% slower than other laptops with those specs as asus went for a quieter laptop instead of letting it rip to maximum performance all the time like others.

 

If you want a laptop that is also very good and lets the hardware go as fast as possible. The entire lenovo legion 5 2021 series is rock solid and really good. Handles up to the 3070 without a problem. The 3080 is it's cooling limit and it does still work but it gets toasty then.

Honestly just speculating RN, I'm probably just going to stick with my 13R3 till it dies... Thanks for your time though, and thanks again for showing me stuff in GW2 earlier this year (last year?)

[jaslion]

1 minute ago, soundlogic said:

Honestly just speculating RN, I'm probably just going to stick with my 13R3 till it dies... Thanks for your time though, and thanks again for showing me stuff in GW2 earlier this year (last year?)

Oh haha that was you? Hope you enjoyed/enjoy the game. If you aren't looking for a replacement then yeah no worries about riding the laptop out.

 

Might want to do some maintenance as I did on my gaming laptop from that time as the thermal paste was dried up after 3 years and temps started going up. Also the usual open it up once a year and blow out the dust and stuff :p. All that really extends the life of a laptop by years.

 

Bonus is that if you ever get a new one the alienware brand holds some value on the used market and so you can sell it on for more money than other devices.

[Aereldor]

15 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Oh haha that was you? Hope you enjoyed/enjoy the game. If you aren't looking for a replacement then yeah no worries about riding the laptop out.

 

Might want to do some maintenance as I did on my gaming laptop from that time as the thermal paste was dried up after 3 years and temps started going up. Also the usual open it up once a year and blow out the dust and stuff :p. All that really extends the life of a laptop by years.

 

Bonus is that if you ever get a new one the alienware brand holds some value on the used market and so you can sell it on for more money than other devices.

I mean if nothing else, it's a 1060 laptop with near-desktop performance in this current market and in mint condition... Could probably get a grand for it. But I'm going to hang on to it till at least mid-2022... if not till 2025 lol

[mt123]

I can say from real world experience that the 1200p display is just fine, as I myself bought an XPS 17 9700 a couple months ago. Mine's pretty specked up, with the i9-10885H, 32 GB memory, 1 TB SSD, NVIDIA RTX 2060 Max-Q, and the 1200p display. Now, I've never had the experience of laying my eyes on a 4K display, regarding any device, so I can't say how it is compared to a 4K display. However, I've mostly set my eyes on Mac Desktops and a big 1080p flat screen over the years of doing homework and gaming on my console, and it's safe to say that the 1200p display on the XPS looks very sharp. 

 

I mainly got this laptop to get me through my 4 years of Mechanical Engineering Undergrad considering it was big, but still thin enough to carry around in my backpack every day. That being said, I don't really need a crazily color accurate 4K panel, though I have had to submit renders of my final projects on SolidWorks (I'm taking an engineering summer course), and the 2060 Max-Q in my laptop does a fine job in doing so. When applying different textures and shadows to my projects, I'd say it takes less than a minute to fully render out, heck maybe even less than 30 seconds, though then again, renders like this aren't too intense. 

 

I'd say if you're still interested in the XPS 17, go for it, especially since the 2021 refresh - the 9710 - has up to NVIDIA RTX 3060 (70W), which is very noticeably faster than the 2060 Max-Q in my XPS (which makes me so salty : (  lol). Plus, even the 3050 seems to perform faster outright than the 2060 Max-Q, even though it does also have less dedicated video memory (6 GB vs 4 GB, respectively). Here's one similarly specked out to mine going for $2,500 - somewhat reasonable considering I got my XPS 17 9700 for ~$2,100. https://www.dell.com/en-us/member/shop/dell-laptops/new-xps-17-laptop/spd/xps-17-9710-laptop/xn9710cto220s Though, you can get an XPS 17 with the 3060 for less, I think around $2,200 (albeit, you'll be down to 512 GB SSD and 16 GB memory).

 

Not sure if you're also interested, but the new Inspiron 16 also has an NVIDIA RTX 3060, though it's a 60W version compared to the XPS 17's 70W. However, fully specked out, it tops at only ~$1,750, packing an 8-core 11th gen i7, 32 GB memory, 1 TB SSD, and the 3060. These also have a weird "3K" display, which I think is technically in between 1440p and 4K. Though, it's peak brightness is only 300 nits.

 

One more thing, you mentioned bezels before, and all XPS 17's (9700 and 9710) and the Inspiron 16 have very thin displays and 16:10 screen ratios, any the thin bezels on my XPS 17 make it look so sexy, imo.

 

Hope this helps, in some way!