Thursday, November 2, 2017

What's not so good about my new Dell XPS 15 laptop (+ a bunch of good things)

Recenty I got a new laptop, again a Dell. I decided to go for a thin "ultrabook", the XPS 15, 16G RAM, 512G SSD. A good review you can find here. I didn't take the 4K version on purpose, since some reviews say it is struggling a bit with that. Plus some software just can't handle it, like Remote Desktop, so  you have to scale down anyway.



Here is an overview of the pros and cons I found while using it.

Pros

  • Sleek design

  • Thin

  • A lot lighter than the M4700

  • Smaller power-supply

  • Fast; no problem with 3-4 IntelliJ workspaces open, over 50 Chrome tabs, DBeaver, Firefox with about 10 tabs

Cons

  • Some backlight bleeding in the bottom right corner of the screen. Most notable when showing a black screen. Not really noticeable during daylight. Here's an example of a really bad case.

  • Crappy keyboard; the page up-down, home, end keys can only be used by pressing the Fn key. If you are a coder, it's really annoying, since you use those keys a lot. Hope next time they make separate keys again.

  • Corners get scratched easily if you put it in your bag without a protecting sleeve

  • Sometimes a flicker (screen turns completely black) on the externally connected screen. Not sure yet if it's the cable.

  • Screen can't fold back flat fully.

  • For some reason the default resolution is set to 125% right after using it for the first time.

  • The connection for the HDMI cable is on the side! And sometimes sits a bit in the way when using the mouse.

  • The professional version of the XPS 15 named Precision 5520 should give you better quality components. But the warranty period has been reduced from 3 years to 1 year. Does it still make it worth to buy the over 500 euros more expensive Precision 5520? Apparently they don't dare to give a longer warrant anymore for the better quality components...


Just got a sleeve for the XPS-15, a CushCase. Ordered via Amazon. Took about 3 weeks to arrive. Fits in a regular mailbox. Fits the XPS-15 nicely; no need to really push.

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