Dell XPS 15 OLED evaluation: A virtually good 15-inch laptop computer | Engadget

To push the XPS 15’s show to the max, I turned to Ang Lee’s Gemini Man, one of many few movies viewable in 4K with HDR at 60 frames per second. Say what you’ll concerning the film, however the OLED display made the shootout between Will Smith and his youthful clone really feel virtually as thrilling as watching it in theaters. Sure, it would not have a full 4K decision, however that is not one thing you may actually discover whereas watching it. Another bonus: Dell’s upward-firing audio system did an honest job all through a lot of the motion.

Outside of video, the XPS 15’s OLED display made nearly all the pieces a pleasure. I’ve by no means had a lot enjoyable scrolling via text-heavy web sites — even jotting concepts down in Evernote felt a bit extra satisfying, due to the extremely crisp textual content. Photos nearly popped off the display, as you’d anticipate. The DCI-P3 shade vary is round 25 % wider than the extra widespread sRGB, which suggests pictures will be capable of exhibit extra depth.

The solely manner the XPS 15’s display might look higher was if it took a cue from gaming laptops and supplied a quicker refresh fee. Going above 60Hz makes scrolling pictures and textual content look immediately smoother, nevertheless it’ll seemingly be a number of years earlier than work-focused notebooks make the most of that tech.

Our XPS 15 evaluation unit was powered by an eight-core Intel i7-11800H, 16GB of RAM and a 45-watt model of NVIDIA’s RTX 3050 Ti GPU. That’s on the low-end of that GPU’s potential energy utilization — it will probably go all the way in which as much as 80 watts — which suggests it’s miles much less succesful than the identical card in a gaming pocket book. Still, it ought to be an enormous improve from final yr’s GTX 1650 Ti. In the GPU-focused Geekbench 5 Compute benchmark, for instance, the XPS 15 notched round 6,000 extra factors than final yr’s mannequin.

I am unable to think about too many individuals will likely be judging the XPS 15 on its gaming capabilities, not when you will get quicker screens and doubtlessly higher {hardware} for related costs from devoted laptops. But should you’re simply itching to get a little bit of Overwatch motion in every now and then, it is ok to achieve 70fps in Overwatch at 2,560 by 1,600 (1,440p+) on the highest graphics settings. Honestly, it has sufficient energy to sort out most fashionable video games. Just do not attempt taking part in them at 3.5K.

The XPS 15 additionally scored round 50 % larger within the PCMark 10 benchmark, one thing I’d attribute each to that Intel CPU and the NVIDIA {hardware}. You can anticipate it to sort out most intense workloads with ease. It managed to transcode a one-minute 4K video file into 1080p in 35 seconds utilizing Handbrake and the NVIDIA encoder.

As for the XPS 15’s keyboard and trackpad, they’re unchanged from final yr. I appreciated the keyboard’s broad format and responsive keys, although I hope Dell explores methods so as to add much more depth. It’d be good for a few of that CherryMX expertise from Alienware’s gaming laptops to make its strategy to the XPS line. The trackpad, in the meantime, is luxuriously clean. No complaints there.

I’d prefer to see greater than three USB-C ports, however not less than two of them assist Thunderbolt 4. And I’ll at all times give a laptop computer additional credit score for together with a full-sized SD card slot. That’s one thing photographers in all places will recognize. I used to be additionally shocked to search out that the OLED display did not ding the XPS’s battery life as a lot as I believed it might. It lasted for 9 hours and 55 minutes in our battery benchmark, in comparison with 10 hours and 10 minutes on final yr’s mannequin with a 4K+ LCD.

The solely draw back of the XPS 15 is that Dell was a bit gradual so as to add OLED. Remember, the corporate mentioned OLED could be coming to the XPS 15 since CES 2019. I used to be shocked that Dell did not embrace it within the XPS 15’s redesign final yr and I wager the pandemic slowed issues down a bit. But different PC makers, like ASUS, have been a lot faster to construct OLED laptops, so it’s exhausting to make excuses for Dell.

The new XPS 15 begins at $1,300 with a Core i5 processor, built-in graphics, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. You’d should shell out $2,000 to nab our evaluation unit with a 512GB SSD. Those are cheap costs for 15-inch workhorse machines, particularly when the 16-inch MacBook Pro is a relatively painful $2,400 and nonetheless has an growing older ninth-gen Intel chip.

Honestly, I did not anticipate Dell to do a lot with the XPS 15 after final yr. But the addition of OLED goes a great distance. It’s among the best screens you could find on a laptop computer as we speak. It’s so good, actually, that it makes the XPS 15 virtually good.