Dell XPS 15 9500 (2020) Review - MUCH Better Than I Expected

Folks meet the new xps 159500 this is one of the first notebooks that we've ever considered to bea true hybrid basically it can do pretty much anythingwith asterisks of course you see this one was a bit difficult to evaluateagainst the competition .

Because if you look at the majority of the notebookcontent that we publish on the channel most of them are catered towards gamersbecause they are gaming laptops in the firstplace and so when i switched over to the xps 15i almost wondered like is this thing a productivity deviceor gaming notebook or an ultra portable laptop likeit could be all of those things but it alsocould be none of them at all dell has focused really hard on reducing noise tomake .

The xps 15 really easy to live with so that meansthey're gonna be some performance sacrificesbut does that make it the perfect all-around notebook or does the jack ofall trades approach also make it a master of none well it'spretty expensive so dell needs to get a lot of things rightbut i do have some concerns as well so let's talk about thatafter a quick message from our sponsor .

The new gala had all-in-one coolers byliam lee combining premium materials for a beautifulpackage to cool your intel or amd cpu with black or white color optionsavailable both with tasteful aluminum housing andcomplementing 120mm argb high static pressure fans and yougotta appreciate proper length fan screws the water pumpis excellent with easy installation cool pattern with vibrant lightingcontrol with the hub or via your motherboardand rotatable housing to match your orientation and don't forget thealuminum magnetic cap for a different lookcheck out the new galahad all-in-one coolers by lee lee down belowalright so before i get into my full review i definitely have to talk aboutsome of the issues that users have been experiencingwith the current xps 15. 

If you go onto reddit or youtubeyou can find some of the issues for example there's been problems supportedwith the trackpad not registering clicks and my friends randomly turned itselfoff every few minutes or so and so he had to return it i've alsoseen a lot of negative feedback about the screen's auto brightness featureand the fingerprint sensor not working after the notebook wakes up the samplethat i have over here is from a later batch .

 I haven'tencountered any of those but with that being said let's startwith the price the base model retails fortwelve hundred and fifty dollars and for that you get a core i5 processoreight gigs of ram a 256 gigabyte ssd no discrete graphics and a 1080p or a1200p ips 500 display if you want a discretegraphics card you'll have to step it up to the core i7model and a 1650ti for about 1650 us dollars the samplethat we have in hand comes with twice the memorytwice the storage uh the same gpu and the displayand it goes for about 1850 us dollars that's expensive .

But when you look atthe overall package it's actually not too bad now mike and ihave been using this thing for the past couple of weeks and he'sdrooling all over it he loves everything about this machineand i guess i can sort of fall into that category because there are a lot ofreasons to like uh the xps 15 and kicking softwith the design and build quality it's an absolutemasterpiece guys if you recall watching my xps 13 reviewi was raving about the incredible craftsmanship by the engineering teamover at dell . 

It is the gold standard for what anultrabook should be well if i switch gears to the xps 15think of it as a super-sized xps 13 without making any compromisesso that means you're getting a robust hinge that doesn't wobbleyou can also open the lid with just one hand and unlike the xps 13the lid is magnetic so you don't have to worry about that gapbetween the lid and the main body however i did notice that the middlesection doesn't say flush but that's just me being picky theinterior space is a breath of fresh air having used a variety of gamingnotebooks you're getting a standard layout whichi'm sure a lot of you would appreciate dell has made the keys bigger comparedto last year's model .

The power button acts as a fingerprintreader the keys feel excellent there's a good amount oftravel distance so they don't feel shallowthey're way way better than my razer blade 15 advancedbecause you get proper feedback i love the phone choice i think dell hasutilized the space efficiently especially with the arrowkeys and the shift keys there is one thing that bothered me justa little bit and that is the backspace key on my sample felt a bitloose compared to the rest of keys but other than thatit's a fantastic keyboard it's also led backlit and i didn't have any problemsviewing it at night the cherry on top of this is the carbon fiber inspired palmrest i think dell has nailed this in terms ofgiving users a superior comfortable typing experience it justfeels like pillows for my palms i'm not sure if that made sense but thisis one of my favorite features of the xps 15. 

Now moving on to thetrackpad it's big it's really big guys it'sbigger than my razer blade 15. it's the biggest track pad that i'veever encountered on a windows notebook and it's amazing you've got aglass surface with support for windows driversuh the finger navigation it's just super smooth it's very responsivei loved using this trackpad every single daynow .

My sample did not have any of those wobbling issues that other users havereported so take that for what it is so that'swhy i really enjoyed it now there is one thing that i do have topoint out and that is the middle click because the primary left and rightbuttons are integrated and they do sound really good uh here's a quick sound test so it's really nice the only thing isthat there is a middle click that basically has no function it's kindof like a dead zone so if i'm trying to drag and dropfiles from my explorer to the desktop it doesn't work out so definitely keepthat in mind personally i think that the trackpad might be a little bit too bigbut hey if it's a bigger trackpad .

If that's something that you're lookinginto this is great and palm detection wasalso really good too so that's awesome this is the webcam test now i'verecorded this thing probably like five or six times becauseuh randomly there is some crackling noise happening in the background withmy vocals in some cases in some of my recordings ididn't notice any of them but in other cases i did notice some of them soit might be present in this recording or might not i'll see if i can roll a clipthis is the webcam test on the xps 15. 

The video quality isnot really the greatest compared to some of the other notebooks i've encounteredi'm not really sure what's up with that but it's definitely something to keep inmind when you plan on using this thing forbusiness meetings or casual conversations over skype or zoomnow the speakers on the xps 15 were amazingguys i legit watched netflix for hours on this thing andi didn't really have the need to plug in my headphones or an external set ofspeakers on this laptop because they were great there's proper stereoseparation or stereo imaging because you've got twofront facing speakers with great projectionuh .

There's also speakers on the side as well and you also get a bit of bassresponse the trebles don't sound harsh honestlythis is a fantastic multimedia machine moving on to the displayman oh man this is yet another area where dell hit a home runjust like the xps 13 the xps 15 has shifted to a 16 by 10 aspect ratiotypically you'd find notebooks with a resolution of 1920x1080 but in this caseyou get an extra 120 pixels vertically so that will give you more room to workwithin applications which is really nice it's an ips displayand as we ran our display analysis test i was blown away by how color accurateit is it covers 100 srgb 81 adobe rgb and 88dci b3 i was watching some of my old videos on the channel and i compared itto my 4k thank you display . 

Guysi couldn't tell the difference this is like a dream panel for creatorslike myself because i can comfortably editvideos photos whatever it is not to mention it's also a really brightdisplay it gets as far as 500 nits so you can take this thing outdoors withouta problem you can also opt for a slightly color accurate 4koption but i prefer the 1080p or the 1200pdisplay because it's matte and i just prefer having thatnon-reflective display over something that's glossy the io is unfortunately anarea where you'll need to make compromises because you're not getting awhole lot of options so on the left hand side you get akensington lock .

Two thunderbolt 3 portsswitching to the left you get an audio jack a full sizeuh three card reader and a usb 3.1 type c portso here's where i stand with the port situation i completely see what dell'sdoing here with the current xps lineup the xps13 doesn't have a lot of io the xps 15 it's all mostly usb-c and ithink they're trying to future proof their lineup for the next generation ofaccessories but if you look at the current situationthere's not a lot of accessories that come with usbcwireless adapters or usbc cables .

If you want to connect other accessories you'lldefinitely need a type a port which surprisingly you canuse because they do include this usb usb-c uh hub that comes with afull size type a port and a full size hdmi port so that's somethingi guess it's a lifestyle change that you'll sort of have to adaptbut unless and until if you absolutely need usb type a for everything that youdo maybe .

It's not the right time to switchin terms of upgradability this laptop surprised me for its formfactor as you can see you've got two ram slotsthat can be accessed right over here maximum supported memory is 64 gigabytesthe primary nvme ssd is right over here and there's an extra m.2 slot forstorage expansion which is awesome but interestingly they don't provide anyscrews for mounting that second drive so tell idon't know .

What's up with that the primary nvme ssd is fast guys it'sthe fastest that we've ever come across on a notebookboth in terms of read and write performance especiallyon a notebook this thing dell's power manager is a really deep programthat's worth a while to check out but it could actually be a bit too complicatedfor most everyday users you can select when the battery is mostlikely to charge which extends battery lifepeak shift allows you to manage .

When charging happens so you can lower yourconsumption during peak times when the utility maycharge more for electricity thermal management is more about comfortthan anything else for example both cool and quiet modes prioritizesurface temperatures by using a network of sensorsdell has placed through the chassis the xps can then increase the speed ofeither one of its fans or both to reduce temperatures in areas thatwould most affect you for example in the palm rest area andkeyboard now how does that translate to batterylife well this is again a solid win for the xps15. during our light load test .

This laptop lasted for more than 16hours and it's by far the longest lasting notebook within uhthis caliber which is just amazing when i switch over to the heavy loadtest it does take a bit of a hit lasting forabout only an hour and 11 minutes i guess this is a good time to move on tosome temperature results starting with the surface heatand it looks like dell's doing exactly what they promised the keyboard areaonly gets to around 50 degrees celsius at its hottest point even with thesystem under full load it's also nice to see all the hot airgoing out the back so your mouse hand or lap isn't going to get too toastyheat on the bottom chassis is also really well managed here just to giveyou some idea of how cool this thing runsthe top and bottom temperature hot spots on the xps are a good10 to 15 degrees lower than many of the other notebooks .

That i've reviewedconsidering how slim it is and the kind of specs this thing's runningthat's seriously impressive guys and how does that translate tonoise well at idle the xps 15 is dead silent and even under full loadwhen the fans are spinning at higher rpms it's still one of the quieter highperformance notebooks around but what does all that focus on surfacetemperatures and reducing noise mean for overall performance well let'scheck out clock speeds over time and i'm going to go a little more in depthhere and compare the xps 15 to the msi gs66 another notebook thatuses .

The core i7 10750h processor starting off with cpu temperatures undera full maya workload and like every other intel basednotebook the first 10 minutes or so of the test sees the spike to 100degrees then there's a real quick dip down to amore manageable temperature of between 80 to 85 degrees until the endthe odd thing is even when hitting the 100 degree peakthe xps fans don't seem to have an aggressive enough profile so even withthe cpu sitting near its thermal limit they just sat there and didn't increasetheir speed until the 66 second mark you can also see that at other times fanspeeds dropped off and that caused temperatures to riseagain either way they stayed below the gs66 stealth formsi the clock speeds stayed below .

The msinotebook as well by a good 300 megahertz and they aren'tnearly as stable either there's frequent dips to under threegigahertz and those line up perfectly with those areas where temperaturesstarted to increase so i guess that's the sacrifice thatyou'll need to make for a notebook that's quietand runs pretty cool a lot of the temperature and clock speedmodifications are being controlled by changing the i7 10 750 h's input poweron the fly i mean sure it starts out pretty highbut then dell's algorithms cut back to just 47 wattswith a few areas lowering to only 40 wattsthis is actually right in line with intel's configurable tdp numbers .

So it'snot like we're seeing throttling here as a matter of fact thisis more in line with how the cpu should behavewhereas msi seems to have their gs66 cell configured to the upper endof intel spec moving on to actual performance results and because of thexps 15's initial bursts of high speed shorter tests like cinebench we see itedging out the msi gs66 but that's not really what happens in the real worldso as the tests get longer we get to see a lot more realistic territory withlonger processing workloads and here's where the xbox 15 fallsfurther and further behind but that doesn't mean it's slow this isstill a super fast notebook for its size as a matter of fact .

It's between 50 to75 percent faster than a similarly sized thin and light notebooklike the zenbook 15 that i tested just a few months agoso it's all about perspective meanwhile the discrete gtx 1650 tigives some pretty decent performance uplifts in adobe premiere and resolvewhich is good news for anyone who wants to use the xps 15as a portable rendering machine also rememberthe rest of the notebooks in these charts have much higher in gpus toowinrar shows some respectable performance too which will be prettyimportant for people who need to quickly load or process files fromtheir internal drive and now on to gaming .

Now before i get into theresults i do want to emphasize something very important this laptop is notdesigned for gamers in fact the 1650 ti is more of a mid-range card rather thana really high-end fast gpu and it's really meant toaccelerate programs that require gpu accelerations like premiere or resolveor any other applications that would take advantage ofthe extra cuda cores but other than that you know it's not really a gaming beasti'm just the reason why we're doing some gaming benchmarks isjust show you the fact that it has a little bit of horsepower to play sometitles at respectable frame rates .

So that'sjust something that you definitely need to keep in mind if wesee how the processor reacts in gaming over timetemperatures and clock speeds are managed a lot like when we hit thesystem with a full cpu load that means a huge spike in temperaturesand frequencies at first followed by an epic dip andthen both everything pretty much levels off againthe only difference here is since all the cores are partially loaded3.8 gigahertz was the overall average as for the 1650 tiwell for the first 30 seconds i was a bit worried with those high temperaturesbut like we saw in the last test that's thetime  .

It takes for the fans to actually realize thatthey need to turn on i really think dell needs to change thisi mean look i'm testing it in the highest performance mode and it would beso much better if the fan algorithm was load-basedinstead of it being so slow to respond that way temperatures could be managedbefore they get high and maybe clock speeds won't fall off acliff for a few seconds once things finally stabilize the gpu isrunning right within nvidia specs at under 80 degreesso there's nothing to worry about here so how does that translate intoactual gaming results well uh the xbox 15 might be sitting at the bottom of thecharts but in a few cases it actually comes within five to sevenpercent of the bravo 15 from msi with an rx5500m .

So basically i classified this as a goodfit for medium level gaming don't expect ultra details but if youturn down the settings a bit you'll get playable frame rates inalmost any game at 1080p or the xps 15's native resolution of1920x1200 that's really not all that bad for anotebook like this so i guess the question comes down towho is the xps 15 catered towardsi think if you're someone who's into stock trading or if you're someone whouses programs like matlab or autodesk maya orapplications that need just a little bit of gpu acceleration but also needsome of that cpu horsepower without sacrificing on battery lifeand you value design build quality and you just want a premiumnotebook for that it's worth checking out because it'samazing .

It really does excel in that departmentbut i do want to mention that i wouldn't blame anyone if they completely skippedthe xps 15 because of all the issues that are really well knownwithin the community like the track pad the wobble the wobble issue and ofcourse people have issues with the display notto mention my friend had to go through the random bsods and the freeze aspectas well which again these are all red flags and thatis definitely a quality control issue that dell certainly has to addresspersonally i really want to ditch my razer blade 15and switch over to the xps 15 just because of the beautiful brightcolor accurate display .

The speakers the track padthe i guess the battery life and most importantly the fact thatit's just built really well and it's so refinedthere's just so many good things to like about the xps 15.but i have to send it back dell wants it back so there'sthere's that i might end up buying one for myself but anywaysi hope you were able to take something from this video let me know what youguys think about the xps 15. i mean even after all these issues like would youstill actually consider picking one up curious no i'm here withhardware canucks .