xps15 My Horrible Dell XPS 15 experience (Updated)

[Thomieboy]

Update 3: This is the last straw, I really really do not recommend this product!

After all the disappointment you can read below, I discovered another huge problem... A dead pixel... This is really the last straw, I am done with this. I don't care anymore about the beautiful design and aluminium build quality nor the amazing colors on the screen. I payed too much money for this. I will try to return this and get a refund, but I'm afraid it will not be easy.

 

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Hello everybody,

 

I little backstory, this schoolyear I began my freshman year at college here in Belgium. Therefore I needed a laptop. I’ve always used my gaming desktop. I definitely wanted an aluminium Ultrabook. I searched for one weeks and weeks. I was really interested in the Dell XPS with infinity display. But there were a few problems. The price, it was a really expensive laptop but ok, I would give the money for that. But then I found the XPS 15 with that display was not released yet. I didn’t want to pay so much money for a 13” laptop. I really wanted that laptop, but back in September 2015 I heard It will come out at the end of 2015. So that’s too late for school. I went with buying a temporary laptop which I would sell when I had the XPS 15. I bought an Asus Zenbook UX303 with a 5500u and Intel integrated graphics. I found it pretty cheap for 666€ 2nd hand only a day or 2 old, as good as new.

Months have passed now and I finally got my XPS15! I am really starting to love that Asus Zenbook. It did so much right.

This is my true and honest opinion from a person who payed the full retail price where I had to work my ass of at a holiday job. I am really picky, and I want the best of the best, this is why I bought the XPS.

The model I bought has:

- I7 6700HQ
- 16GB DDR4
- 4K Touchscreen
- Geforce GTX 960m
- 500GB Samsung NVMe drive

 

Here are my Pros and Cons:

Pros:

- Amazing screen! The colours are brilliant.
- Pretty good speakers, they get very load and are surprisingly good for a laptop.
- Keyboard is ok, not so much travel but pretty tactile.
- Very nice trackpad (UPDATE 1: Altough the trackpad feels great, I seem to have a bit of trouble being precise with it, this seem to be a common problem, it's not too bad, but yeah. I use a mouse 90% of the time so not really a big problem)
- Stunning build quality, the aluminium is almost pornographic. And the top lid is fingerprint resistant!

- Great performance! 
 

 

Cons:

- Headphone jack… This is a problem I worry about the most and I find the most disappointing… There is quite a lot of static noise on it. And it clicks a bit when the sound is enabled. You really hear the transition good. I have had this program a lot with tablet; but they were all cheap so yeah. The problem is caused by a bad design of the audio part on the laptop’s motherboard. it gets a lot of interference of the other components on the motherboard.  I will probably buy a DAC because it’s pretty unbearable for me… Sad.. really sad..

- Little shift in red colors on weird viewing angels. When you look at the screen from a pretty weird angel the colors shift a bit, but that is ok. You will never watch your screen from that direction.

- No numeric keypad, this is a “problem” I knew from the beginning. But I got used to working with shift + 1,2,3,4 etc due to my Asus, so yeah, a bummer but nothing too bad.

- From my little time I have spend, I can say that the fans are pretty quite but the fan profile is a bit aggressive for my liking.

- Bloatware, not too much but still too much..

- The hinge, this is another annoying one. You need quite a lot of force to open the hinge, so one finger opening is a nono. ( I had this on my Asus, so I will need to get used to it )

- High pitched noises from the screen adaptor? When something is changing on the screen you can hear quite a lot of high pitched noises coming through the fans grills pointed at the screen. It’s like a bit of a coil whine with GPUs.

- Low quality camera, very bad low-light conditions. But I don’t us this much so, it’s okay.

- Very weird problem where I haven't find the cause yet. The laptop boots quite fast (slower then the Asus) but when I close my lid and open it again, it takes 12 seconds or more before the login screen pops up. Those 12 seconds are just black screen. I can't seem to find anyone else with this. I will contact costumer support about this one next monday...

 

UPDATE 2: I have found another pretty big problem... Screen ghosting, a lot of screen ghosting. I tested a game and it's very noticable. For my case it's okay, but it was to be expected from such a 4K panel. Another quite big dissapointment.. So for the gamers under us. I think the 1080p model would be better for that. I can still hook it up to another monitor for gaming but that defeats the point of a laptop.

While testing with games I was abble to puch it quite heavy. I even played CSGO highest settings on 4K and it was very playable. It looked great too. The fans went too full throttle and they can get quite noisy. But not the annoying whining sound but more the whooshing, air moving one. 

 

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So as you can see, there are a few cons, but most are not really a big deal. The one thing I’m the most disappointed about is the headphone jack issue.. Any other persons having this with there XPS?

These are the things found with inly using it for an hour. I will update this for the interested from time to time. I hope I can help some people with this.

With greetings,
Thomas

[Thomieboy]

Update 2 added!

 

[Dackzy]

Well one thing is sure I will not buy a xps 15 now.

[Thomieboy]

3 hours ago, Dackzy said:

Well one thing is sure I will not buy a xps 15 now.

I don't really recommend buying one unless you will only use it for work or productivity. Media consumption and gaming.. Not really great.

[Thomieboy]

Major update added!

[exercutor5]

A dead pixel on a 4K display that small? It ain't gonna be noticeable man.

[Thomieboy]

43 minutes ago, exercutor5 said:

A dead pixel on a 4K display that small? It ain't gonna be noticeable man.

It is not really noticeable indeed, but when I do, I keep noticing it, now I know where it is. It's not a big annoying that ruins my experience, it's just the fact that it's broken. All pixels should work. Definitely on a laptop with this price. Like I said also in the post, I'm very picky and can't accept these things. There are people out there just like me, and this post is for them.