Image 9 of 9 Design Year over year, not much at all about the XPS 15 design identity has changed. The product still comes wrapped in an aluminum unibody shell with a carbon fiber keyboard deck, connected by a single, sturdy hinge. The design here stands alone, thanks to the ports allowed by the greater dimensions of the Dell XPS 15, while other laptops commit to that USB-C dongle life. The Dell XPS 15 features a full-size SD card slot, HDMI and USB 3.1, where the MacBook Pro only has four Thunderbolt 3 ports. The Dell XPS 15 doesn’t have a lot of room for a number pad on the keyboard, but neither do the XPS 15’s listed competitors. Plus, the keyboard is very punchy and well spaced – just like the Dell XPS 13. All we’re left asking for is a bit more travel.
XPS 15 (9560) - External USB 3.0 hub disconnecting from right USB port Basically everything connected to the right USB port keeps disconnecting then reconnecting. I have installed the latest BIOS and Chipset drivers. XPS Help Thinking of Getting an XPS 15 9560, need ethernet submitted 1 year ago * by jcarter315 XPS 15 9560 16GB RAM, i7, 512GB SSD So, I need to get a portable powerhouse like the XPS 15.
The touchpad is just good enough, though, with a matte glass tracking surface that produces a satisfying click when pressed. Using the UI with the XPS 15 is easy between the accurate touchpad and responsive touchscreen. Display and audio And, what a touchscreen it is. Our review unit came in the optional 4K UHD (3,840 x 2,160) resolution, which makes colors and textures in films and photos simply pop. Of course, this also means that the XPS 15 is more than ready to power editing of 4K media content. The MacBook Pro and Asus ZenBook Pro can certainly power the same kind of work (and play) through an external 4K display, but the XPS 15 doesn’t need that – it can handle 4K work wherever and whenever.
Better yet, the display meets 100% of the Adobe RGB color gamut. Unfortunately, the ‘chin-cam’ returns with the Dell XPS 15: the webcam is positioned beneath the screen to make way for its mega-thin left, right and top bezels.
The resolution is june fine, but the placement is just no good, and could be a deal-breaker for some. Similarly, the speakers are in an odd spot considering the size of the XPS 15 – they’re on the base toward the lip, facing down. They’re also really small given the laptop’s size, though they’re loud enough. The Dell XPS 15’s audio capabilities lack depth compared to your TV or headphones, but it gets loud, at least. Images Credit: TechRadar First reviewed February 2018.
Near the end of 2015, Dell rolled out their new XPS styling cues, that were so successful on the XPS 13, to its larger sibling, the XPS 15. Thanks to the Infinity Edge display, Dell’s new XPS 15 packed a full 15.6-inch display into a notebook closer to the size of a 14-inch model. Perhaps the size reduction is not quite as dramatic as the XPS 13 when it first launched with the thin-bezel design, but Dell also kept the performance heart of the XPS 15 intact with the change, keeping a quad-core 45-Watt CPU, and NVIDIA GTX 960M graphics. Dell has since done a revision from that XPS 15 9550 model to the latest 9560 version.
The small model number change might signify that this is a small revision. On the exterior that is certainly the case, with the overall XPS 15 design remaining relatively unchanged, but under the hood there are some more impressive changes awaiting. The first is a move to Intel’s 7 th generation Core processors.
Although performance per clock did not change from 6 th to 7 th generation, a new, improved, 14nm process does allow higher frequencies without blowing through the thermal design power restraints. This allows a small boost in performance over the same designation CPU from the previous design. More importantly, NVIDIA announced newer graphics to replace the outgoing Maxwell based GTX 960M.
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The Pascal based GTX 1050 is a significant upgrade, dropping the M branding. Pascal offers much more compute, thanks to the new architecture based on 14nm FinFET, and the GDDR5 capacity doubles from the 2 GB on the GTX 960M to 4 GB on the GTX 1050. The XPS 15 was never a gaming laptop, but a much more capable graphics card certainly helps propel it closer to those dedicated machines, and also can play a big role in compute tasks that can leverage the GPU. Dell didn’t stop there. The previous model offered either a 56 Wh battery, or a stout 84 Wh version.
With the latest 9560 version of the XPS 15, that larger battery is bigger again, boasting a 97 Wh capacity, which is right near the 99 Wh limit allowed in a notebook. Dell claims the 9560 is the class leader in battery life for a 15.6-inch notebook, at least when doing productivity tasks, with up to 19.5 hours of battery life. The battery life will be impacted significantly by the choice of displays though, and just like the 9550 model, Dell is offering both a 1920x1080 (FHD) non-touch version, as well as a 3840x2160 (UHD) panel with touch. The higher resolution also targets 100% of the Adobe RGB color gamut. With both a higher resolution, and wider color gamut, the UHD version is not the one to get if you need the longest battery life, but may be the optimal version if Adobe RGB is important for your workflow. Not all of the changes are for the best though. Dell has dropped the 3x3:3 Broadcom wireless option for the 9560, which is a shame since Dell was one of the few PC suppliers to offer a 3x3:3 solution.
They’ve opted to go with the same Killer Wireless-AC 1535 as they use in the smaller XPS 13. This is a 2x2:2 solution, which is definitely going to impact transfer speeds. There’s also lots of connectivity options, with Dell supporting HDMI 1.4, USB 3.0 with PowerShare, a SD card reader, and a USB-C port supporting Thunderbolt 3. The last port allows for a single cable docking solution, which can drive up to two UHD displays, as well as charge the laptop.
The inside has changed a lot, but the outside has stayed mostly the same. That’s not a bad thing either, since the XPS 15 was already one of the sleekest looking large display productivity notebooks around. Monday, July 31, 2017 - A-freaking-men.
A 'Killer' network card of any kind is an immediate negative mark against a product in my book. As far as onboard wired networking goes I consider Intel gigabit ethernet to be my baseline. Anything gigabit but non-Intel is a negative. Anything NBASE-T or 10G is a positive.
For WiFi anything truly onboard, as in built in to the motherboard, is a negative to me. WiFi technology moves too fast. My gigabit ethernet card from 2004 is still just as useful today as it was then, but my 802.11g card from the same time is pretty much a relic by modern standards. My laptops have all lived through multiple generations of wireless networking, so the ability to upgrade is key. Along those same lines, vendors that lock down their firmwares to only boot with approved cards can suck a big fat one.
I still consider an Intel WiFi card to be a plus and Killer to be a small minus. Plain old Broadcom or Atheros is the neutral position.