An Excellent Mix Of Power, Design And
Endurance.
Dell recently refreshed its XPS line up of
laptops, slotting in two new models and updating its XPS 13 Ultrabook to Ivy
Bridge. The XPS 15 is in some ways the odd one out of the lineup. While it is
physically quite similar to the XPS 13 and 14, it doesn’t bear the Ultrabook
moniker. Instead, it uses normal laptop hardware, freeing it from Intel’s tight
Ultrabook definition.
Expect to see more of these families of
products where some are Ultrabooks and some aren’t. One of the biggest effects
of Intel’s Ultrabook push is that it is driving manufacturers to focus more on
thin and light laptops, even if they don’t qualify under Intel’s schemes. There
are actually many advantages to this, such as more powerful processors, optical
drives and features like Gigabit Ethernet.
An
Excellent Mix Of Power, Design And Endurance.
The XPS 15 is a perfect example, built with
a focus on power over battery life. Our review sample has a core i7-3612QM CPU,
GeForce GT 640M, 8GB RAM, ITB HDD (with 32GB cache drive) and a 1920 x 1080
screen. This is packed into a chassis that is only 20.7mm thick, with o much
smaller footprint than normal 15m laptops thanks to a thin bezel screen similar
to that used on the XPS 13.
The chassis itself is made of a mix of
aluminium with a silicone base. The screen is covered with a sturdy but
annoyingly reflective layer of Gorilla glass, and the palmrest is magnesium
alloy with a soft, rubberised finish. It is beautifully constructed and looks
fantastic thanks to this mix of materials.
Typing on the XPS 15’s backlit Chiclet
keyboard is surprisingly comfortable. The soft touch palm rest is both cool and
comfortable and the generously sized trackpad is fast and responsive. Dell has
included a thin rubber strip around the edge of the screen, which sits on the
edge of the palm rest when closed, reducing the amount of dust that con build
up inside. The combination of this rubber and the sturdiness of the lid also
means the keys don’t press against the screen when closed.
Typing
on the XPS 15’s backlit Chiclet keyboard is surprisingly comfortable.
On the left side of the chassis sit three
USB 3 ports, Mini-DisplayPort and HDMI. There is also a fold-down Gigabit
Ethernet port, employed so it fits onto the thin aluminium band. The right-
hand side has o slot loading optical drive, Kensington lock, SD reader and
audio in and out. It is a solid feature set, and our only real issue with it is
the lack of a USB on the right-hand side - it is not a deal breaker but for
convenience at least one port on the right would have been handy.
Not only is the construction solid, but
performance i5 excellent. In our Real World benchmarks we saw an overall score
of 0.86 thanks to the core i7, and it endured just under six hours of light
battery life testing. Considering that this isn’t using on Ultrabook CPU, this
battery life in itself is impressive, although in the heavy use test it only
managed an hour and 22 minutes.
It is no slouch in the gaming space either.
In our Crysis test the GeForce GT 640M managed a borderline-playable 26 fps at
high detail, and a speedy 4ofps at medium. With a little tweaking this makes
for a solid gaming Laptop on top of its other strong points - even the cheaper
variants come with a GeForce GT 630M which should allow for decent gaming
performance.
With the XPS 15 Dell is continuing to
deliver one of the more exciting laptop lineups. Not only does it sport enough
grunt for serious work and play, but it does so in a wonderfully small package.
The construction is excellent, it looks fantastic and little touches like the
thin bezel screen are hard to walk away from, making it one of the best Thin
laptops on the market today.
