As a com sci major myself, I have been using this as my main computer ever since I got it (I have the i9, 3050Ti, and the OLED screen). I feel like it has struck a good balance between weight, performance, and battery life. It’s not too heavy that I wouldn’t carry it to school, it’s got enough power to power all my emulations and coding needs, and it has been great having up to 11 hours of use for simple school stuff, and up to 6 hours of coding and running code if I’m not using android studio. It has also been very good at editing and rendering school videos to hand in. Even though I’m not really good at editing
Seems like my comment got removed, basically I followed a guide on Reddit titled “How I achieved 7+ hours of battery life on the x14” and change the settings. And I use brave as my main browser. And make sure that nothing is using the dgpu when on battery. I get about 10-11 hours of video playback on TH-cam
Excellent review! i just picked up the '15. I was put off by the steep price tag at first, but this laptop's performance and design absolutely blows me away. The keyboard and trackpad are fantastic, the laptop is super powerful despite being pretty thin, it's obviously not geared towards gaming but it does a great job nonetheless, I LOVE the aspect ratio being 16:10, and the speakers are the best i've heard on a windows laptop, period. Overall fantastic laptop and Dell has set a new standard for windows laptops.
I was lucky enough to get one off ebay that was a like new open box unit for a reasonable price and I was impressed by the build quality. I was surprised by how heavy it feels compared to other 15 inch laptops I've used, though. I have a 15" Razer base model and despite being bulkier, it is actually lighter than the XPS. Lastly, I bought a skin for it from Sopiguard and I think that depending on which one you get, it can upgrade the look of the laptop if you don't like the look of the aluminum. And it protects it from getting scratches and smudged by finger and food oils. I highly recommend it. Also, good luck on your studies in Engineering! I'm a Computer Aided Drafting and Design student and we've had to do some basic structural engineering work in one of my classes. Let's just say, there's a reason why I'm focusing on drafting and not engineering. It takes a person with a certain kind of aptitude to be a good engineer and advanced mathematics have never been my strong point. I appreciate what engineers do for us nonetheless.
Engineering student this year. Just bought dell xps today. Got 13th gen intel rtx 4050 32g ram. Just found your TH-cam channel and it’s great keep it up
Really good review. Without any recent announcements on the Dell XPS 15 (plus) 2023, I will be looking at the 2022 model like yours. I am an IT consultant so Teams desktop / browsers and various desktop apps, multiple browser profiles, tabs etc . I agree with not going for the i9 processor but maybe look a the OLED / touch screen and 64 Gb RAM. Lot of reviewers talk about the low refresh rate in the current XPS range and the lack of wifi 6e support so I wonder what your thoughts are on that.
Even as a person who uses an iPhone 13 Pro and an iPad Pro with high refresh rate, the 60Hz on the XPS 15 hasn't bothered me at all. WiFi 6E would've been a nice future proofing touch, but considering how long it takes for places to upgrade their Wifi, I think Wifi 6 is already enough
Nice video. Given you have an iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch, and had a large budget, what was the reason for buying a Windows machine rather than another Mac? Ive got a MacBook Pro M1 Pro and XPS 9510. Love them both but live predominantly in the Apple ecosystem so makes more sense for me to use the Mac.
I'm currently a student studying engineering, and I've heard that some important engineering applications like SolidWorks only work on Windows computers. As much as I'd love to use a 14-inch MacBook Pro as my main computer, I chose to futureproof myself for engineering.
Great review mate! I would love to get this laptop with similar specs. You have mention that you only get 8h battery life doing basic tasks. Is it 6 cell battery or the smaller 3 cell?
Nice review. A few friends and I are going into eng at UBC for first year in the coming months and were thinking of getting this laptop along with the iPad Pro 11 inch. Just wanted to ask if you think getting 16GB of ram would be sufficient or not, as the RAM upgrade to 32gb adds quite a lot of price onto the laptop as I can get it for $2000 before tax with these specs: intel 13th gen i7-13700H Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 6GB GDDR6 16 GB RAM DDR5, 4800 MHz 512 gb SSD 15.6" FHD+ (1920 x 1200) Display
16GB should be fine for now, but a good part about this laptop is that the RAM can be upgraded in the future because it is user-replaceable. That means you can get 16GB now and if you need it in the future and have more money, you can put some more RAM in your XPS 15. Good luck in first-year and feel free to say hi if I'm around campus!
Ended up purchasing one of these. I think we have similar use cases, i.e., lugging it around to, from, and around school so I'm quite interested in how you feel nearly a year later. How does the battery life treat you? Do you have to constantly have to charge in between classes or is it good enough?
Nice review! I wonder how much it bugs manufacturers to hear the phrase "for a Windows laptop" option X (trackpad, speakers, build quality, etc. etc.) is really good. LOL Hopefully, it makes them want to improve. If 2023 iterations are an indication, they're listening. Competition is always good for the consumer, so good on Apple for this one!
Manufacturers compete, consumers win. Yeah I really hope that some of the good stuff that Apple does with their MacBooks can be translated into Windows machines, especially the high-end ones like this laptop
I have the XPS 9520 (I also have that backpack lol) this is a very accurate review, I think your comparison to older Apple macs is a good thing to point out to potential buyers. I'm curious why you have actuaally bought the Dell over an Apple since Apple provides a higher quality experince, was it for gaming? An issue I unfortunately found with my laptop is that I was getting irratic heat, performance and low battery life with it. It took me 4 months of testing including talking to an online Dell rep who did some online testaswell only to tell me everything is ok.. I eventually found out the issue by diabling all the 'energy saving cores' and one main core suddenly my battery life improved, my performance in games stopped being irratic and the heat went down. I informed tell about this and they kindly accepted the laptop back to physically do their own tests and say they are now replacing parts in my laptop.
Thanks for watching! I chose this because I'm in engineering, and I've heard that it's very difficult to use a Mac in engineering because of unsupported applications. I have also noticed shorter battery life than I originally expected. How did you disable the energy efficient cores?
@@AveryCheng You go into the bios and if I remember correctly ti is in the performance section. You then need to diable all the things described as atom cores. This however was not what sorted out my issue, but by disabling them it opens up the main cores to be disabled too. I then moved down from 5 to 4 cores and kept hyperthreading on.
hi what processer, ram and graphics card would i need if i just use it for chrome with 40 tabs open and watch 4k movies and light video editing thanks]
For your usage, I'd maybe suggest at least an i7 11th gen from Intel or an AMD Ryzen 7 5000 series, at least 16GB of RAM, and at least an NVIDIA RTX 1650 Ti
@@AveryCheng thank you reason I’m wondering is because I’m debating between xps 15 and yoga 7i cause the 7i has new 12th gen core i7 and longer battery but screen isn’t as bright as xps 15 from what I’ve seen
Hey I had a quick question, If you go with oled display would you need a tb of storage? And is the Oled display glass and reflective ? I don’t really mind that much with battery life Im just curious which display would be best, the higher end uhd touch 500 nit or oled?
I don’t think you need 1TB of storage to upgrade to the OLED display. From what I’ve heard from other reviewers, there’s not much difference between the OLED and the UHD+ display, other than brightness and contrast. It’s mainly a matter of what matters most to you in the display
I am very disappointed in my Dell XPS 15 that I bought November 2022. It really performs poorly. I previously owned 2 Asus Rog Scar model laptops. I had better performance at a lower price point even my 7th gen did not give me the problems I experience now. The 16gb ram I had to sacrifice totally as it only work togeter in pairs. So I thought of buying a 16gb model to replace one of the 8gb models to at least have 24gb of ram but it could not be done. Multi tasking out of the question. I use my laptop mainly for photo and video editing. I contacted Dell had to repeat my problems over and over. They just seems nit to understand why I was complaining. I regret paying so much more for an XPS that was recommended by so many reviewers on TH-cam for content creators.
I can definitely feel your frustration. I will make a video about it soon, but I've also experienced issues with my XPS 15, mainly with a period of time where it just wouldn't boot into Windows at all and the laptop was unusable. It took sending it back to Dell twice before it got fixed; thankfully it was still under warranty. Unfortunately, most reviewers didn't use this as their main computer for an extended period of time to allow for quality control issues to surface.
@@AveryCheng For years I wanted to purchase an XPS but could not afford it so now you can think how it feels. Mine still on warranty. It seems that most people doing reviews are blinded by the XPS name. It's like the story of "The Emperor's New Clothes". I wish it was different. Thanks for replying I appreciate so much. I will subscribe.
The XPS 9520 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-12900HK 2.50 GHz 32 gb ram is Absolutely the worse computer I have ever owned and I have been using computers since the early 90's After 3 months of use the screen started blinking like it was going to sleep. It start doing it once a day then went to every 5 min over time. I spent over 100 hours trying to resolve this issue with their help desk. Essentially 50% of the time I have had the computer I have not been able to work. I have had 2 docking stations. 3 motherboards, onsite tech, OS reinstall, shipped to resolution center. Issue not resolved. Since it was over a month old they would not replace. So they shipped me a refurbished laptop. That lasted a week. New(refurbished) XPS 9520 new problem. Desktop appearance will change every 5 to 10 reboots. Icon's too far apart on desktop in if there is a popup task for settings. Its like there should be another icon between them. Also the solid background color I choose will go to black. So I have started the process over. First up they want to reinstall the OS. If you have purchased this computer you should extend your warranty immediately. I have used multiple platforms in my 25 year career as a web developer and this is ABSOLUTELY hands down the worse product in terms of reliability that I have ever seen or heard of.
I completely sympathize with everything you've said. I had some quality control issues as well, the main one being a period of time after this review was made where the laptop refused to boot into Windows and didn't recognize the SSD. It took sending it back to them twice in order for them to actually replace the SSD inside. I'm planning on making a one-year later review detailing all of these issues.
@@AveryCheng BTW you where screwed over the price you paid. I got my XPS 9520 with 64GB ram the RTX3050, 4 TB of NVME SSD, the 3.5k OLED screen with 4 years of warraty and 4 years of accidental for $2400 USD.
I'm looking in Dell's website right now wanting to get one so when I search for that model with all that spec mentioned here, it came to $3300 (before $350 discount) and that is for the laptop only before anything else. If anyone can get that entire package for under $2500 (USD), I like to get my hands on one. Lol
As a com sci major myself, I have been using this as my main computer ever since I got it (I have the i9, 3050Ti, and the OLED screen). I feel like it has struck a good balance between weight, performance, and battery life. It’s not too heavy that I wouldn’t carry it to school, it’s got enough power to power all my emulations and coding needs, and it has been great having up to 11 hours of use for simple school stuff, and up to 6 hours of coding and running code if I’m not using android studio. It has also been very good at editing and rendering school videos to hand in. Even though I’m not really good at editing
Damn, how are you getting 11 hours with the OLED screen? I have the FHD+ model with the 86WHr battery and I can hardly get 8 hours on light usage.
Seems like my comment got removed, basically I followed a guide on Reddit titled “How I achieved 7+ hours of battery life on the x14” and change the settings. And I use brave as my main browser. And make sure that nothing is using the dgpu when on battery. I get about 10-11 hours of video playback on TH-cam
Thanks for the tip! I'll definitely be trying some of those out to extend my battery life
Excellent review! i just picked up the '15. I was put off by the steep price tag at first, but this laptop's performance and design absolutely blows me away. The keyboard and trackpad are fantastic, the laptop is super powerful despite being pretty thin, it's obviously not geared towards gaming but it does a great job nonetheless, I LOVE the aspect ratio being 16:10, and the speakers are the best i've heard on a windows laptop, period. Overall fantastic laptop and Dell has set a new standard for windows laptops.
I completely agree, the XPS 15 is an excellent Windows laptop and I've loved using it so far!
How is the temps on normal use?does the keyboard gets warm?and is it annoying ?
I was lucky enough to get one off ebay that was a like new open box unit for a reasonable price and I was impressed by the build quality. I was surprised by how heavy it feels compared to other 15 inch laptops I've used, though. I have a 15" Razer base model and despite being bulkier, it is actually lighter than the XPS. Lastly, I bought a skin for it from Sopiguard and I think that depending on which one you get, it can upgrade the look of the laptop if you don't like the look of the aluminum. And it protects it from getting scratches and smudged by finger and food oils. I highly recommend it. Also, good luck on your studies in Engineering! I'm a Computer Aided Drafting and Design student and we've had to do some basic structural engineering work in one of my classes. Let's just say, there's a reason why I'm focusing on drafting and not engineering. It takes a person with a certain kind of aptitude to be a good engineer and advanced mathematics have never been my strong point. I appreciate what engineers do for us nonetheless.
I was quite surprised as well with the weight, and I should probably get a skin for it, like yours. Good luck on your CAD studies!
Production go crazy as always 😳
You know it!
Engineering student this year. Just bought dell xps today. Got 13th gen intel rtx 4050 32g ram. Just found your TH-cam channel and it’s great keep it up
Hope you enjoy using the XPS 15! And good luck with your engineering studies!
What's the battery life you getting? Does it have any heating issues?
Best review I've seen from this laptop, thanks!
Thanks! I really appreciate it!
Very nice and detailed review. I am sure many would have found it helpful in choosing XPS 15 for their studies or work.
Thank you!
Really good review. Without any recent announcements on the Dell XPS 15 (plus) 2023, I will be looking at the 2022 model like yours. I am an IT consultant so Teams desktop / browsers and various desktop apps, multiple browser profiles, tabs etc . I agree with not going for the i9 processor but maybe look a the OLED / touch screen and 64 Gb RAM. Lot of reviewers talk about the low refresh rate in the current XPS range and the lack of wifi 6e support so I wonder what your thoughts are on that.
Even as a person who uses an iPhone 13 Pro and an iPad Pro with high refresh rate, the 60Hz on the XPS 15 hasn't bothered me at all. WiFi 6E would've been a nice future proofing touch, but considering how long it takes for places to upgrade their Wifi, I think Wifi 6 is already enough
Nice video.
Given you have an iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch, and had a large budget, what was the reason for buying a Windows machine rather than another Mac?
Ive got a MacBook Pro M1 Pro and XPS 9510. Love them both but live predominantly in the Apple ecosystem so makes more sense for me to use the Mac.
I'm currently a student studying engineering, and I've heard that some important engineering applications like SolidWorks only work on Windows computers. As much as I'd love to use a 14-inch MacBook Pro as my main computer, I chose to futureproof myself for engineering.
How's the laptop doing rn lol
Any problems? Especially with the SSD? Hmmm?
Update coming soon...
Thanks for the review. You mentioned video export times. What editing software do you use... Adobe Premiere? DiVinci Resolve?
I use DaVinci Resolve
HE'S BACK AT IT AGAIN BOYS AAAAAAAAA
Can’t believe it’s been a month :))
@@AveryCheng asdfghjkl time flies like the flight of a bumblebee 😂😭💀 I better start working on finishing my videos too LOL
Looking forward to seeing them!
Great review mate! I would love to get this laptop with similar specs. You have mention that you only get 8h battery life doing basic tasks. Is it 6 cell battery or the smaller 3 cell?
Thanks for watching! The XPS 15 uses a 6 cell battery, to answer your question.
Nice review. A few friends and I are going into eng at UBC for first year in the coming months and were thinking of getting this laptop along with the iPad Pro 11 inch. Just wanted to ask if you think getting 16GB of ram would be sufficient or not, as the RAM upgrade to 32gb adds quite a lot of price onto the laptop as I can get it for $2000 before tax with these specs:
intel 13th gen i7-13700H
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 6GB GDDR6
16 GB RAM DDR5, 4800 MHz
512 gb SSD
15.6" FHD+ (1920 x 1200) Display
16GB should be fine for now, but a good part about this laptop is that the RAM can be upgraded in the future because it is user-replaceable. That means you can get 16GB now and if you need it in the future and have more money, you can put some more RAM in your XPS 15.
Good luck in first-year and feel free to say hi if I'm around campus!
Ended up purchasing one of these.
I think we have similar use cases, i.e., lugging it around to, from, and around school so I'm quite interested in how you feel nearly a year later. How does the battery life treat you? Do you have to constantly have to charge in between classes or is it good enough?
I'm going to make a one-year later review on this laptop that will answer all of that, and then some!
Nice review! I wonder how much it bugs manufacturers to hear the phrase "for a Windows laptop" option X (trackpad, speakers, build quality, etc. etc.) is really good. LOL Hopefully, it makes them want to improve. If 2023 iterations are an indication, they're listening. Competition is always good for the consumer, so good on Apple for this one!
Manufacturers compete, consumers win. Yeah I really hope that some of the good stuff that Apple does with their MacBooks can be translated into Windows machines, especially the high-end ones like this laptop
@@AveryCheng Me too! We, the consumers, are paying close to the same amount for them.
I have the XPS 9520 (I also have that backpack lol) this is a very accurate review, I think your comparison to older Apple macs is a good thing to point out to potential buyers. I'm curious why you have actuaally bought the Dell over an Apple since Apple provides a higher quality experince, was it for gaming?
An issue I unfortunately found with my laptop is that I was getting irratic heat, performance and low battery life with it. It took me 4 months of testing including talking to an online Dell rep who did some online testaswell only to tell me everything is ok.. I eventually found out the issue by diabling all the 'energy saving cores' and one main core suddenly my battery life improved, my performance in games stopped being irratic and the heat went down. I informed tell about this and they kindly accepted the laptop back to physically do their own tests and say they are now replacing parts in my laptop.
Thanks for watching! I chose this because I'm in engineering, and I've heard that it's very difficult to use a Mac in engineering because of unsupported applications. I have also noticed shorter battery life than I originally expected. How did you disable the energy efficient cores?
@@AveryCheng You go into the bios and if I remember correctly ti is in the performance section. You then need to diable all the things described as atom cores. This however was not what sorted out my issue, but by disabling them it opens up the main cores to be disabled too. I then moved down from 5 to 4 cores and kept hyperthreading on.
Do you have a video of your new laptop setup tasks, like what settings you change?
To be honest, I don't really change many settings from the default, so it's not enough to warrant a video
Did you order your laptop via Dell website or other platforms? I'm considering buying a XPS 13 plus.
I ordered mine from the Dell website
@@AveryCheng thanks
hi what processer, ram and graphics card would i need if i just use it for chrome with 40 tabs open and watch 4k movies and light video editing
thanks]
For your usage, I'd maybe suggest at least an i7 11th gen from Intel or an AMD Ryzen 7 5000 series, at least 16GB of RAM, and at least an NVIDIA RTX 1650 Ti
dope intro
Thanks!
Hi Can You Recommend a Better CPU Cooling fan for Laptop Under 6 Dollar
Sorry, I'm not really too well versed in computer components, so I can't give you any recommendations; I just use the tech lol 😂
Ok Thank You
i can get the non-ti version of this with the i7 and 16gb of ram for $1350, what do you think?
I'm not sure what your needs are, but I think that's a pretty good deal, all things considered
@@AveryCheng I’m a student going into physics but may also end up in an engineering field if this doesn’t work out
If that's the case, then the XPS should serve you alright. Good luck in your studies!
@@AveryCheng thanks 😁
@@AveryCheng btw, how long do you think it’ll last me? I’m hoping for 6-7 years of use
What do you think of Lenovo yoga 7i
Haven’t really had much exposure to that laptop unfortunately because it didn’t fulfill my needs.
@@AveryCheng thank you reason I’m wondering is because I’m debating between xps 15 and yoga 7i cause the 7i has new 12th gen core i7 and longer battery but screen isn’t as bright as xps 15 from what I’ve seen
Oh and I’ve seen that the yoga 7i might better cooling and fans
Depends on what you value more in a laptop, because you're gonna need to compromise on something
Hey I had a quick question, If you go with oled display would you need a tb of storage? And is the Oled display glass and reflective ? I don’t really mind that much with battery life Im just curious which display would be best, the higher end uhd touch 500 nit or oled?
I don’t think you need 1TB of storage to upgrade to the OLED display. From what I’ve heard from other reviewers, there’s not much difference between the OLED and the UHD+ display, other than brightness and contrast. It’s mainly a matter of what matters most to you in the display
@@AveryCheng thanks Im leaning towards oled but never had a display like that so idk how it will do when it comes reflection and stuff
It will be a bit more reflective than a typical display, but it is a nice display nonetheless. Beware of burn-in though
I am very disappointed in my Dell XPS 15 that I bought November 2022. It really performs poorly. I previously owned 2 Asus Rog Scar model laptops. I had better performance at a lower price point even my 7th gen did not give me the problems I experience now. The 16gb ram I had to sacrifice totally as it only work togeter in pairs. So I thought of buying a 16gb model to replace one of the 8gb models to at least have 24gb of ram but it could not be done. Multi tasking out of the question. I use my laptop mainly for photo and video editing. I contacted Dell had to repeat my problems over and over. They just seems nit to understand why I was complaining. I regret paying so much more for an XPS that was recommended by so many reviewers on TH-cam for content creators.
I can definitely feel your frustration. I will make a video about it soon, but I've also experienced issues with my XPS 15, mainly with a period of time where it just wouldn't boot into Windows at all and the laptop was unusable. It took sending it back to Dell twice before it got fixed; thankfully it was still under warranty. Unfortunately, most reviewers didn't use this as their main computer for an extended period of time to allow for quality control issues to surface.
@@AveryCheng For years I wanted to purchase an XPS but could not afford it so now you can think how it feels. Mine still on warranty. It seems that most people doing reviews are blinded by the XPS name. It's like the story of "The Emperor's New Clothes". I wish it was different. Thanks for replying I appreciate so much. I will subscribe.
Thank you so much for the sub!
No USB A port for mouse and short battery life.
No USB-A port I can live with because I have a Bluetooth mouse, but yeah, I do agree that the battery life isn't as good as I wished
perfect video
Thank you!
@@AveryChengyour welcome
The XPS 9520 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-12900HK 2.50 GHz 32 gb ram is Absolutely the worse computer I have ever owned and I have been using computers since the early 90's
After 3 months of use the screen started blinking like it was going to sleep. It start doing it once a day then went to every 5 min over time. I spent over 100 hours trying to resolve this issue with their help desk. Essentially 50% of the time I have had the computer I have not been able to work.
I have had 2 docking stations. 3 motherboards, onsite tech, OS reinstall, shipped to resolution center. Issue not resolved. Since it was over a month old they would not replace. So they shipped me a refurbished laptop. That lasted a week.
New(refurbished) XPS 9520 new problem. Desktop appearance will change every 5 to 10 reboots. Icon's too far apart on desktop in if there is a popup task for settings. Its like there should be another icon between them. Also the solid background color I choose will go to black. So I have started the process over. First up they want to reinstall the OS.
If you have purchased this computer you should extend your warranty immediately.
I have used multiple platforms in my 25 year career as a web developer and this is ABSOLUTELY hands down the worse product in terms of reliability that I have ever seen or heard of.
I completely sympathize with everything you've said. I had some quality control issues as well, the main one being a period of time after this review was made where the laptop refused to boot into Windows and didn't recognize the SSD. It took sending it back to them twice in order for them to actually replace the SSD inside.
I'm planning on making a one-year later review detailing all of these issues.
How can you mistake this for a macbook? Because its silver? Mac are so ugly. XPS is such a better looking design and looks nothing like a stupid mac
Design is all very subjective, but I can definitely see your point in that the XPS is a more interesting design overall
@@AveryCheng BTW you where screwed over the price you paid. I got my XPS 9520 with 64GB ram the RTX3050, 4 TB of NVME SSD, the 3.5k OLED screen with 4 years of warraty and 4 years of accidental for $2400 USD.
I bought this around July and there were no sales or anything at the time. Also, I live in Canada, so enough said.
I'm looking in Dell's website right now wanting to get one so when I search for that model with all that spec mentioned here, it came to $3300 (before $350 discount) and that is for the laptop only before anything else. If anyone can get that entire package for under $2500 (USD), I like to get my hands on one. Lol