If you want to buy one you should extend your analysis beyond the hardware specs because the software and operating systems are not ready yet. I can give the example of the latest XPS 13 2-1 where Office applications like Outlook cannot recognize a monitor with a different resolution and the fonts are blurred. Look for example at https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Office-apps-appear-... high DPI is a whole issue.
I can give many other examples with drivers support. For example, if I unplug the notebook from the dock the audio playback doesn't work again if I don't reboot the computer or remove/reinstall the driver.
It would ve nice to hear about a critical analysis in Linux.
XPS 13 on linux (ubuntu) here, the support is very good. The HiDPI screen need some configuration but most apps will run out of the box, some need to set a parameter for pixel density. Most issues can be solve by looking in the ArchWiki (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI).
USB-C (even a dock with power, usb, sound, hdmi, display port, ethernet will run fine), WiFi, Graphic Card, touchpad, sound, event the touchscreen, all work without troubles. Really happy to finely find a nice linux-friendly laptop.
Agreed, I also bought an XPS 9360 and comparing it to Linux on my Macbook Pro, the difference is night and day. Everything is incredibly well supported on the XPS.
Kinda. The Precision 5520 can be configured with a Xeon E3-1505Mv6 ("better" CPU) but with a Quadro M1200 (Maxwell) instead of the new XPS 9960 with a Pascal GTX 1050 ("worse" graphics, quoted because it depends on workload, pro vs consumer GPUs but the pro stuff here is a generation older...they'll probably update it soon). The Precision 7720 can be had with an E3-1535Mv6 and a Quadro P5000 (similar to a GTX 1070, and Pascal), but it's a 17" and thicker. https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-Quadro-P5000.191073.0.h...
Very true, the previous XPS 15 had huge problems with the Killer NIC card because the drivers for it took months to stabilise and its only recently been that a driver update has made the Wifi somewhat stable and the machine has stopped crashing every few days.
What other people seem to have done is get Dell to swap the Killer NIC with an Intel one which has much better driver support.
I'll never buy a latest gen XPS ever again. I bought my wife the latest and greatest XPS last year (Cyber Monday) and it had the most ridiculous problems. For example, WiFi would randomly disconnect, Chrome couldn't play Netflix (what?), internet speeds were an order of magnitude slower than my Chromebook, etc.
I fixed the issues by swapping with an Intel card (didn't want to have to wait months for driver updates), but in my opinion that is unacceptable for a premium laptop. Why is Dell skimping on parts? I paid $1500 precisely because I didn't want to deal with crappy parts, but instead they took my $1500 and gave me a worse browsing experience than my $150 Chromebook...
I hate how prevalent Killer NIC chips have become. They seem to be racing to the bottom with cheap wireless and ethernet PHYs with crappy drivers, yet their reputation hasn't quite caught up. Their marketing brands them as premium and a lot of manufacturers still buy into it to target the "gaming" segment (which also hates them).
I refuse to buy any board which has these chips and will pay a small premium for an Intel or Realtek instead.
I don't recall anybody ever having a kind word to say about them. As I recall the product used to be the cheapest Atheros chips the vendor could find plus a proprietary driver that was snake oil and bugs. Not better than a Realtek and worse in a lot of cases. I suspect that they're actually cheaper than a Realtek, which is why they keep showing on consumer hardware.
I always thought of them as purveyors of snake oil and reached for Intel NICs with great results every time. I used to like Atheros for radios back in the good old bad days of WEP and MadWifi.
My experience with a similar (fully maxed out 9560, but no touch display). Since updating the drivers, the killer card has been working without fail, though it was a little frustrating to deal with a brand new laptop that constantly blue screened and failed to connect to wireless when my 10year old macbook sitting at the same desk was fine. Reddit has a good guide for setting it up, though some of these are now out-of-date.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/5unlmb/got_my_brand_n...
If you don't want to bother with dealing with Dell, they do provide official repair guides on their site telling you exactly how to do it. I bought the prior generation of the XPS 13, and for $25, an Intel 7625 wifi card. Took me about 20 minutes to swap it out.
There are a lot of reports of killer drivers causing issues. My friend needed help with his Alienware 15 because it started instantly blue screening as the login screen came up at every boot. Dell's only solution was a factory reset. I dug into it and a release of the official killer wifi drivers was bugged. They had to be disabled to actually boot. They couldn't be uninstalled or upgraded in safe mode because they use the Windows installed doesn't run in safe mode.
You can enable and disable drivers and startup functionality in safe mode. You can't install or uninstall any apps or drivers that utilize Windows Installer as the service isn't running, rendering the install/uninstall/modify abilities of those apps and drivers useless. You can still install and uninstall apps and drivers that use proper installers like NSIS, etc.
OK, so "Windows Installer" is a third party app? Why's it a service; surely it only needs to run when initiated as part of an install/upgrade/uninstall rather than perpetually?
They're right though. It doesn't run in safe mode and it's a fucking pain in the ass. Makes fixing issues harder when you can't uninstall shit in safemode. Drivers especially.
> Office applications like Outlook cannot recognize a monitor with a different resolution and the fonts are blurred
I just spent 30 minutes this morning dealing with this exact issue on my laptop that I've docked into two nice external monitors.
To fix it, open the display settings and set one of the external monitors to the primary display. Then log out, and log back in.
I have no idea why this works, but if it hadn't I'd have chucked the laptop out the window by now. Windows 10 is almost great, but for a dozen little stupid things like this.
It doesn't work with Microsoft Office, it is a known issue that Microsoft Office doesn't support that setting. With Google Chrome it will work because all the work is done by the browser.
high DPI in windows 10 is honestly such a shit show. Bugs, you have to Log Out and Log back in every time you change settings/monitors! Its honestly unacceptable given how seamlessly macOS and Linux (Fedora at least) handle this sort of thing.
Mine has a problem with stuck keys. If I press caps lock+w, the w stays pressed (in software) so I just get long strings of wwwwww. The spacebar also gets double-pressed around 5% of the time, which is extremely annoying.
Another issue is that audio to the headphones will sometimes just stop until I restart pulse. Not even a reboot will fix it, only a pulse restart.
It's a fantastic machine otherwise, but the drivers are pretty buggy.
Yeah, external monitors in a mixed DPI setting is very weird. If you change your primary monitor, you get to pick which screen it looks OK on!
Mine actually bricked itself so hard it couldn't boot at all. I had to send it back to dell. This was after installing a firmware update _distributed with their tool_.
No, it doesn't. I use two similar external monitors, same DPI, and Office fonts are blurred. Please check the link, it is a known issue. The monitors are not 4k or the exact resolution of the notebook display.
This does not accord with my experience. I have last year's 15" Dell Precision with a 4k panel, and Sway works brilliantly. I went with Intel graphics for compatibility, and because it saves money and battery life compared to NVidia. Text looks great, and I can make it really tiny if I want.
It is a wonderful resource, but doesn't solve all trouble. It specifically says that the only modern DE that supports hidpi scaling well is KDE. Gnome hidpi support is crap (no fractional scaling), Unity is going away. Sway and the rest are of course cool, but most people use some kind of GUI toolkit like GTK that either supports hidpi or not (mostly not well).
Chrome is still using an old version of GTK isn't it?
I have a load of problems with the virtual keyboard on my Tablet, I've had to work around it with a chrome extension that manually lets me pop the keyboard up.
I have a 4K laptop running Linux mint and it's great. Mint has a high dpi setting that makes it look good. There are a few programs that have trouble, but most work just fine. I think Ubuntu will be coming out with support soon as well.
> high DPI is an even more troublesome issue with Linux. As of right now, for me, high DPI is not worth it outside of the Apple walled garden.
Actual 4K resolution works way better on Linux than it does on OS X. By default, OS X will use 2560x1440, even on a display that's capable of 3840x2160. If you try to set it to the latter on OS X in your display settings, it looks really terrible.
The experience is less consistent on Linux in 3840x2160, but overall it's much better, and it's well-supported by the common applications that Linux users would use (Firefox/Chrome, terminal emulators, any GTK+ 3 or Qt 5 applications, and more).
OSX will happily use 3840x2160. Are you sure your limitation is not somewhere else? Maybe you ran out of available crts on the graphics card, or the display cable has it's limits, or whatever.
That said, the 4K support in Fedora is nice. The only problem is with Qt4, Gtk2 and other apps using legacy toolkits.
> OSX will happily use 3840x2160. Are you sure your limitation is not somewhere else?
Yes, it will use it, but it looks terrible. Even the native system UI isn't designed for it, let alone Cocoa-based third-party applications or third-party applications that don't use Cocoa.
Right now I'm sitting behind 4K (Dell P2715Q) monitor connected to rMBP (13", 2015). What I'm supposed to miss? What exactly is not displaying correctly and I didn't notice?
Also, exactly what applications do not use Cocoa? Apple had made extremely difficult to talk directly do display server, the two non-private-frameworks-without-stable-abi ways were Carbon and Cocoa. Carbon is already dead.
> Right now I'm sitting behind 4K (Dell P2715Q) monitor connected to rMBP (13", 2015). What I'm supposed to miss? What exactly is not displaying correctly and I didn't notice?
I use the same monitor as well. Until recently, I had the 15" version of that laptop, and now I have the latest 15" Macbook Pro. Both use 2560x1440 on the external monitor even though it's capable of 3840x2160, because that's what OS X defaults to, and every time I try increasing the resolution, I only make it a few minutes before I can't stand how terrible the experience is and end up switching back.
> Also, exactly what applications do not use Cocoa?
I'm saying that native Mac applications look really bad on OS X when set to 3840x2160. The UI and text don't scale consistently, and that's true both of the system-level UI and of application UI. The situation gets even worse when you're talking about applications designed for X11[0], which I could forgive, but on the other hand, those applications scale just fine on Linux.
By contrast, all of this works out-of-the-box in (for example) Unity. I don't have to deal with dialog boxes that are out of proportion with the system bar, or text that's impossible to read unless I squint on some applications but perfectly readable on others.
[0] We could get into a debate about whether XQuartz really counts as "cocoa" or not, but I'd rather not.
> I use the same monitor as well. Until recently, I had the 15" version of that laptop, and now I have the latest 15" Macbook Pro. Both use 2560x1440 on the external monitor even though it's capable of 3840x2160, because that's what OS X defaults to, and every time I try increasing the resolution, I only make it a few minutes before I can't stand how terrible the experience is and end up switching back.
I would suggest to try using different DisplayPort cable.
OSX defaults to "best" resolution for the given display. In case of this monitor, it is 3840x2160, but - it will tell you is 1920x1080 and use it in HiDPI mode. Like this: http://imgur.com/a/infej
Once you change resolution, it will remember, what you changed it to on that specific display, and will use it next time you connect to it.
> I'm saying that native Mac applications look really bad on OS X when set to 3840x2160. The UI and text don't scale consistently, and that's true both of the system-level UI and of application UI.
In my experience, they scale perfectly. The ones that are non-HiDPI aware, are scaled by the system to the proper size (and thus are pixelated).
XQuartz is another matter. It should be taken behind the barn and shot long time ago. Running X11 apps is better done using a linux vm.
However, what I don't understand, why you have wrong scale. XQuartz is a not DPI-aware app, thus it is scaled by the system.
> I would suggest to try using different DisplayPort cable.
It has nothing to do with the cable. I've had this issue on every single 4K monitor I've used with these laptops - which is at least three different monitors, with different cables - and it even manifests with HDMI 4K output (at 30Hz). All of these setups work perfectly fine with my XPS 13 running at 4K on Linux. I don't understand why you think that the OS's inability to scale the system UI or applications in a reasonable way would have anything to do with the cable.
Try it with a Linux laptop running Unity, and you'll see the difference.
> I don't understand why you think that the OS's inability to scale the system UI or applications in a reasonable way would have anything to do with the cable.
Because that's not the experience everyone else is having. That leaves possibility, that something is broken on your end.
> Try it with a Linux laptop running Unity, and you'll see the difference.
I know how Linux handles HiDPI. See my comment about Fedora elsewhere in the thread.
Okay I have no idea what you're talking about either, and I've used OS X on a 4K monitor. It scales to a virtual 1920x1080p by default; everything just looks sharper. What did you expect to happen?
> Okay I have no idea what you're talking about either, and I've used OS X on a 4K monitor. It scales to a virtual 1920x1080p by default; everything just looks sharper. What did you expect to happen?
If it's scaling to 1080p for you, that's because either your monitor or your cable doesn't support 2560x1440 at 60Hz. If it does, it should default to 1440, assuming you're on an rMBP.
In terms of "what I expected to happen" - well, I expected an actual 4K resolution (like 3840x2160) to work. Maybe not by default, but at least when I enable it, it should be able to auto-scale the appropriate parts of the system and application UI in a consistent manner. That means that I'd be able to actually view a 3840x2160 image at its full intended resolution (not 1080p or 1440p) without scrolling, while also not having to squint in order to read the system bar or do anything else on the OS.
That works pretty much out-of-the-box on Linux with Unity. Even with tweaking configuration everywhere, I can't find any way to do that on OS X and have it look halfway decent.
> In terms of "what I expected to happen" - well, I expected an actual 4K resolution (like 3840x2160) to work. Maybe not by default, but at least when I enable it, it should be able to auto-scale the appropriate parts of the system and application UI in a consistent manner.
That's what it does. OS X will by default render at the panel's native resolution. But it scales everything to a lower effective resolution. Say you're running a 5K monitor at "2560x1440" (as in the iMac 5K). And the app displays a 32x32 icon at (0,0). The OS will see that you're running in 2x mode (real resolution = 2x effective resolution). So it'll pull a 64x64 version of the icon from the app's art assets. It'll take up 32x32 on the virtual 2560x1440 display, but a 64x64 image will be what's copied to the frame buffer. Text glyphs, and images, likewise, will be rendered at full resolution.
When you bypass the default setup and tell the OS to run at 3840x2160, you're not telling it to render at that resolution. You're telling it to size things as if you're running on a standard definition monitor of that size. So when the app displays a 32x32 icon, the OS will see you're running at 1x mode, and pull a 32x32 icon from the art assets. The result will be a tiny icon.
It does not. If you have e.g. QHD on a 13" laptop, then it's cool because 2x scaling works. On my 32" 4K display, it's bad because I'd need 125% or 150% scaling, not 100% or 200%.
- failure that politely states that I need to reboot (if I try to use fingerprint reader to login too quickly after opening the laptop)
- unplanned reboots due to updates
- laggy and choppy video on a single external 4k monitor (compared to no apparent lag when the old rMBP drives 2x 4k monitors)
- very slow Bash (ubuntu subsystem) - but at least they're making an effort
- Cortana seems less effective than Siri, and she wasn't great; and Cortana still only uses Bing search and displays results in Edge browser
- louder and more frequently spun up fan compared to old rMBP (which was also an i7 with an Nvidia GPU)
- occasional crashes when opening laptop or logging in
- very slow unzipping of files (on new 1TB PCIe SSD), regardless of whether 7z is used or built-in unzip is used, and regardless of where I unzip/extract to
In summary, it's just a sexy little game machine. In that regard, it does pretty well. You do have to wear headphones to game because the fan is so loud. And you can't play on an external monitor... too laggy and limited to 30Hz refresh.
Too bad Apple no longer caters to my crowd. Thankfully this old rMBP I use is still running well (despite the screen covering deterioration in weird spotty ways).
>> - less precise trackpad than my 3 year old rMBP
>> - palm-sensitive trackpad
This! I sound like a broken record, but what is wrong with the PC manufacturers not getting the trackpad right/close(r) to how (well) Apple MBP trackpads operate?
Yes, they may have been improving, but going back from MBP to PC laptop is simply infuriating as a result of lack of accuracy of their trackpads. And to back up my subjective assessment of the situation, I have been making a point to make a walk through of the Microsoft store about every 6 months to test out (the trackpads) of all the shiniest PC laptops on display. </rant>
Couldn't agree more. Whenever a friend picks up a new non-Apple machine that's the first thing I try out. It's almost always bad enough for me stop there.
I've always found that Dell ships rock solid H/W, but does a piss poor job of systems integration. The best way to get "OSX Level" reliability that I've found is to clean-install Windows, or remove all their shitty Dell applications and tools. Their track-pad 'helper' tool is particularly quite terrible. Windows 10 too is its own beast. I disable all that update shit because like you I don't want any unplanned reboots. Its ridiculous that you have to do all this shit, but you will be rewarded in the end. I regularly get 40-50 days of up-time before manually rebooting for updates. YMMV !
Literally the only reason I continue to buy MBP's. If PC manufacturers could give me a trackpad which was even close to as good as Apple's I would hop the fence tomorrow.
Regarding the fans, highly recommend using an overclocking tool to undervolt the CPU and iGPU -- reduced temp under load for me by nearly 15C, runs stable with cpu at -130mV. Stops the fans from turning on as often or running as aggressively.
I too was unlucky in receiving a Toshiba as the vendor of my 1TB SSD. There is a reddit thread out there about switching from Intel RST to AHCI with OCZ drivers -- this improved my random write performance significantly.
The most annoying part of the system to me is the "coil whine" coming from the internal DC/DC converters. Lots of different pitch and erratic high frequency noises come from the laptop. My colleagues can confirm that my ears are not particularly sensitive to high frequency noise but this laptop is very audible. Just do not feel like it should have this kind of defect on such a high end machine.
> despite the screen covering deterioration in weird spotty ways
If it's like images at [1] you may be eligible for a free screen replacement. I got Apple to change mine after it started showing the defect (granted, I went to an Apple Store mere weeks before the Apple Care+ coverage ended). Mine is a late 2013 rMBP. The new screen, however, is starting to show the same kind of damage around the edges.
> - less precise trackpad than my 3 year old rMBP
>
> - palm-sensitive trackpad
Sadly this seems to be par for the course for non-Apple laptops. I will say that the Asus ZenBook seems to get pretty close though.
> Thankfully this old rMBP I use is still running well (despite the screen covering deterioration in weird spotty ways).
I'm using a mid-2010 MBP (upgraded the RAM and replaced the drive with an SSD) and it's awesome. Still very usable, runs the latest MacOS, and still gets really good battery life. The Apples of that era seem shockingly well built.
> And you can't play on an external monitor... too laggy and limited to 30Hz refresh.
Did you use an HDMI cable or USB-C to HDMI adapter? Since the spec says the HDMI port is 1.4 only, I'd like to know if using a USB-C to HDMI 2.0 adapter will give you more bandwidth, allowing you to do 4k at 60hz with 4:4:4 chroma support.
What is "your crowd"? Only thing I wish my rMBP had was more than 16GB of RAM for some of the dev I do. Other than that, I can't see switching anytime soon.
Since we're on HN, I'll assume 'his crowd' is software development.
How has apple stopped catering this crowd? Let me give you my opinion.
The new macbook pro's main feature is one that is totally useless to professionals. The touch bar is an interesting idea for the casual user, but for anyone who uses any software professionally, it provides no value as it is much slower than keyboard shortcuts. Not to mention that the lack of tactile feedback means you need to look away from the monitor to use it.
The new design has force a redesign in the keyboard, giving it much lower travel, and it is now a lot more uncomfortable to use (this one in particular is quite subjective)
16GB is just not enough in the era of containers.
The price. It's just absurd and some of the most expensive features (TB) are just useless as I stated above.
Agree 99% on this. My 2012 rMBP (i7 quad core, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, and NVidia discrete graphics) still runs like a champ with VMWare running in the background supporting a docker swarm nonetheless). The only upgradable part in this system was the SSD and I upgraded that from the original 256 to the one that's in there now. The keyboard is actually starting to wear out with the 'S' having all but disappeared from the 'S' key.
All I was hoping for was this exact form factor with upgraded internals (faster CPU, faster GPU, 32GB), swapping the two existing Thunderbolt 2 ports for Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports. But no, apparently we all wanted lighter and thinner, no function keys and only poorly supported (so far) USB-C ports. Who knew?
By the way... TB is not useless. I use it everyday. I plug my rMBP into power and then plug a TB cable in from my computer to my LG Thunderbolt display with builtin USB-3 hub and TB passthrough.
Switching to the 9560 (from a MBP) wouldn't be as easy as one would hope. WSL is very very slow and awkward to use compared to the macOS terminal. Part of the performance problems are related to forking: on *nix forking is a lightweight operation and used a lot, especially in all of those convenient BASH tools that we use (like RVM) but on Windows it's a very expensive process--I'm rewriting GVM2 to speed it up for Go development on WSL. Then there's the whole deal of having to double up on your installs (e.g. installing ruby dependencies on both Windows and within WSL for code completion support, etc., from within VSCode) and not editing WSL files within Windows or risk corruption.
Then there's that single 2-lane Thunderbolt/USB-C port and the 9560's 130W power requirements...sadness. While an HP Zbook Studio G4 (also quad core i7, all the way up to Xeon) includes two 4-lane TB3 ports, it has older Quadro 1200m graphics and comes with a 150W power adapter (!): way way out of the max 100W USB-C spec. And yet the new rMBP still only draws something like 87W. In short, you can't charge any of these machines over USB-C unless they're idling.
It's like being stuck between a rock and hard place right now: Apple caters only to the mass consumer while everyone else is spread so thinly across all markets that they can't seem to focus and make a truly awesome MBP replacement for power users (engineers, creatives, scientists, gamers, etc). And I look at this 5-year old rMBP with its totally smooth underside, still incredible display, properly placed speakers and webcam, and wonder why Windows notebooks still can't compete with this Jobs-era design.
I used to manage with VMs on 8gb, 16 should be enough for most people using containers. Believe the laptop in this review can be upgraded to 32 for the heavy-hitters.
It was included: problem with CPU and random freezes, Coil Whine, Swollen Battery, SSD problem and problem with misaligned Jack port with a hole in case.
In total, my device was repaired 3 times (within 10 months) and from the original device I have a case, touch-pad and screen only.
I'm not here to complain, because after the battery fix was done, it works perfectly. The Dell Service is super helpful and reactive, D2D warranty is just awesome.
My question is:
Have somebody seen any indicators of problems listed above in 9560?
/r/dell lists serious issues with the Killer NIC, coil whine, thermal limitations (when playing), speakers are bad ("average android 4.0 device sounds"), Win10 scaling make 4K display still not great (especially with external low-density displays), backlit keyboard disabling itself, some people get absolutely dreadful battery life.
Mine has had only had flaky wifi (killer) and a driver install from Killer's site remedied that. Other than that it's been a flawless machine. Windows 10 still doesn't have all of its' HiDpi issues worked out but I love this laptop.
I really don't know why anyone would order a laptop from Dell, or any other OEM for that matter.
Dell and their like, obviously, aren't at the for-front of laptop design. They are still using plastic and calling Carbon fiber a "premium" laptop material (it isn't). They are using second rate network adapters. They are using second rate SSDs which have terrible write speeds. Windows trackpads arent any better than they were 10 years ago.
To top it all off? You'll need to do a whole damn Windows reinstall to get rid of the tons of bloatware they pack in.
That order is pretty much spot on and it's been that way for 20 years.
HP's competitor to the 9560 would likely be the just-released Zbook Studio G4 but it does not offer a 4k touch screen option. Lenovo doesn't really have a competitor right now, the closest would likely be the P51s but it's only dual core...I think the regular P51 (not the slim) is at least one pound heavier.
I also had the swollen battery problem but my 9550 - my trackpad eventually got pushed up 1/4 of an inch or so. The bummer was that my laptop was out of warranty and the battery is not a "user serviceable option" on the 9550 so I couldn't just order a replacement battery from Dell -- they wanted me to send it in and wait two weeks which was a non-starter as it is my main development machine. I ended up buying a used battery off of some guy on Amazon along with a screwdriver kit with a T5 bit. It took me all of 10 minutes to replace the battery.
I haven't had any other problems but the fact that they won't allow end-users to replace such a simple part as the battery will make me think hard when I replace this laptop.
Sure, mine had BSOD's space bar double-tap, choppy sound and laggy 3D mouse (I mean 1 sec lag) right out of the box. I wasn't as patient as you, I sent it back. On Linux most was fine except the keyboard, but I was too afraid that HW was crap (also, searching for solutions was throwing me a lot of other people's issues with the HW). It seems like I was right.
They're definitely not all of them that bad, a colleague has one which functions perfectly and overall reviews seem on the positive side. But yeah, once in a while sh*t happens. E.g. I've had/used multiple Dell devices without any problems whatsoever but I recommended some Dell precision latop to a friend and it came basically DOA.
This is a great laptop if you are not using the gpu and the cpu at the same time and you don't care about the screen response. So basically you put a game in this PC and after some minutes you see the great faults of the computer. The 4k screen has low response and it is a bit more blurry with movement than usual displays, although you will only notice this if you have another display to compare.
The biggest issue is the power throttling. When the CPU and the GPU get a bit hot, the VRMs area get hot too and they drop the CPU to 0.7GHz. You play for few minutes and you are amazed, you can play last gen games quite good. But suddenly everything is crap. The VRMs area is hot and is dropping the voltage of the CPU to cold down. Really bad air flow design. Where I said games you can say another application that uses GPU and CPU like deep learning, or maybe watch a video and compile the kernel.(Message for Dell: why do you put a great CPU and GPU in a laptop if we cannot use both for more than few minutes?)
The other minor issue with this laptop is the thunderbolt with 2 PCI lanes. If it had 4 PCI lanes it could be you all day computer as you could connect external GPUs without losing too much. But 2 PCI lanes is not enough.
As a side note some people also have problems with the Wi-Fi. I had to buy another Wi-Fi card for my router as it couldn't connect, but with others routers that it connects it works quite good.
P.S. I run Windows 10 Pro and Archlinux in this computer. The fingerprint does not work on linux yet, everything else is fine.
In my (anecdotal) Dell laptops have been crap at heat management. My current laptop (about 4 years old at this point) had the problem you described, except once the CPU throttling turned on, the BIOS was extremely conservative in turning it off, to the point where I would often reboot to get it running at speed again. Eventually they released a BIOS update that fixed the issue, (and started throttling earlier to avoid dropping to .8ghz)
Point being, when buying a laptop, always ask about the thermal.
I have had a XPS 15 9550 as my main machine for almost a year now, and I can say I'm disatisfied.
It needs a very specific combinations of driver update and bio flashing to work, charging using USB-C sometimes just stops, making it work with a dock took me a good month to figure out, the battery last only a few hours, the webcam is weirdly placed. Worst of all, the sound has suddenly started to act wildly and is now full of cracks.
Given the price I paid for it (2500 € to include a 1 To hard drive and 32 Gb of RAM), I found it less than satisfactory.
But what is infuriating is that some very big problems (like BSOD level) where brought to the attention to the Dell staff on their support forum and the post have been dormant without clear answer from their part for months.
My previously positive perception of the dell brand have been seriously ternished. This is not just bad manufacturing, it's really bad marketting.
I've had serious reliability issues with every Dell or Alienware product I've bought. Yes, the specifications look great and they seem to work fine at first, but quality is simply ridiculously bad for such expensive products.
Earlier this year I bought a Developer Edition (Ubuntu) of Dell Precision 5520, which is the business version of XPS 15 9560. Same chassis and hardware, better factory QA and different GPU options.
I very much regret this decision. I spent ~100 hours trying to get it to work properly and to configure Ubuntu (including supposedly simple things like switching Alt and Ctrl keys). At the hourly rate I'm charging, this is more than enough to buy ANY laptop. Next time I'll swallow my pride and just buy a top of the line Macbook Pro.
Out of the box Ubuntu works great, but it is very fragile to updating. For example, updating BIOS to a version that fixes an important CPU bug causes the computer to freeze and shutdown every few minutes at random.
Updating the OS itself caused weird bugs such as being unable to click on app menu items with a USB touchpad. Ditching the default Unity for Gnome3 fixed this particular bug.
The recovery image that Dell provides for Ubuntu simply does not work a few months after release – craps out when it's unable to either fetch or install some package. So I don't even have a way of getting a working version of Ubuntu on this laptop if anything happens to my hard drive.
Oh and the touchpad configs are appallingly bad out of the box. Impossible to use. I fixed 98% of palm interference issues with a few lines of xinput config. I don't know why Dell didn't do that themselves.
And of course, Dell only provides only 7 days of Ubuntu support. After that you're on your own.
Now I'm trying to sell this laptop, but no one on craigslist wants it even at 35% ($900CAD) off the original price. A few months old laptop in perfect condition that is still on warranty.
Speaking of Ubuntu itself, it has been a profound disappointment as well. I will not be trying Dell or linux on desktop for another 7 years at least. My 9 year old Macbook Pro is far superior to this mess.
PS I also tried hackintoshing this laptop, and it worked 95% of the way, but it requires the latest BIOS to work, and that causes random shutdowns regardless of the OS.
I've been using the XPS 9560 full-time since February, and have experienced precisely 0 of the issues you describe whilst running a number of Linux variants, including several Ubuntu variants, Fedora and Solus.
> So I don't even have a way of getting a working version of Ubuntu on this laptop if anything happens to my hard drive.
You could simply download Ubuntu directly, or any other distribution. Dell isn't doing anything special to the version they distribute.
> For example, updating BIOS to a version that fixes an important CPU bug causes the computer to freeze and shutdown every few minutes at random.
Have you tried talking to Dell about this issue? Their support, particularity around BIOS issues on their XPS and Precision range has been fantastic in my experience, and they often supply pre-release BIOS versions if they believe it will help, otherwise they tend to replace the laptop.
> Dell isn't doing anything special to the version they distribute.
From what I've read on their website, they actually do bundle it with custom software like drivers. But really my bigger point is that a lot of things do not work the way they're supposed to if you deviate from the happy path just a tiny bit. In my experience.
> Their support, particularity around BIOS issues on their XPS and Precision range has been fantastic in my experience
Try Fedora on it. I switched from Ubuntu to Fedora a while back and couldn't be happier. Not saying you will have a perfect experience but it is worth a shot if you at least like the hardware?
I don't think so. A lot of my issues are with BIOS and various linux apps or the window manager, not technically the distribution flavour itself. Also, I'm done spending time on this :)
I was told they would send me a replacement if they determine it to be a hardware problem. Return wouldn't be an option (I'm past the first 30 days). I'll try to negotiate with them anyway.
I've used the XPS 13 Developer Edition (ie, running Linux) as my daily driver since 2012. For me, it's been way more reliable than either the ThinkPad X1 or even the MacBook Pro, both of which I used as my work laptops during that same time (running Linux and OS X respectively).
I've been hoping to upgrade to the 15-inch for a while, because I like larger screens. It's nice to see the review of this point release version.
I have the xps13 2016 dev edition too, and it's a solid laptop.
Let me ask you which dongle do you use to connect to external hdmi monitors? I got this one[1] a while ago, but it doesn't output more than 800x600. I use the wd15 at home without issues, but it's not suitable for traveling.
I have the same laptop and I'm happy with it, but I'm not happy with the dongle madness that universal adoption of USB C is foisting on us. I also want a reliable travel dongle for external HDMI for this laptop but the reviews of the units I've looked at are not encouraging. The current obsession with thinness (looking at YOU, Apple) is forcing useful connectors off the main system board onto expensive, unreliable dongles. Yuck.
I don't really understand this adversity towards USB Type-C as a single connector for everything. I was around when pretty much every single device had it's own dedicated port and it looked like a snake nest under a desk until USB came along. Yeah, LPT1 for printer, PS/2 for mouse and keyboard, VGA for monitor, etc. We're in a transitional period now to something better, so some people will need dongles for a while and I don't think it's a big deal.
I got my first computer with USB in 1999. I used it with a serial mouse, an AT keyboard, and an LPT printer (passed through a Zip100 on the same port, of course ;-) ). I think that my first use for USB came years later, when I'd already replaced that motherboard. I think I might've used a USB->PS/2 dongle at some point, but that was at the back of the computer, and I didn't care. Any memory card besides SD needs an extra adapter, and that stinks.
Over all these years, this is the first time that my primary machine is a mobile device (laptop), and that I might have to use dongles with the hardware that I'll be repeatedly connecting and disconnecting as I move around.
It's not a big deal, but it'll take time to transition from the last "single connector for everything" to the new one. The only problem I have is the rabid USB-C fans telling me I'm being left behind for sticking with my current hardware for a few more years.
I'm not sure if this is any help to you, maybe your issue is specific to the 2016 model, but I've used this[1] with my xps13 2015 without any issue. It's cheap too!
If you use Linux like arch please make sure to set kernel mode parameters to get your video to work. I also had a lot better luck swapping in an intel 8265 but the one it comes with works fine when you have a good signal.
All in all the 9560 has replaced my Mac as a daily driver.
Edit:
Incase, to save time for someone, put this in kernel mode parameters in the file /boot/grub/grub.cfg and rerun grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
As a developer I can't imagine buying anything other than a Macbook Pro, and I mainly use Windows.
The build quality is top of the line, the drivers are solid, and everything just works. The trackpad is industry leading, and the keyboard is great too. Performance is exceptional, especially in the 15" which comes with a HQ processor (not ultrabook-grade) and a discrete graphics card. It has a PCI-e SSD. The price is reasonable compared to the competition.
But despite being IMO the best laptop available, the main reason I choose them is because every so often I need to boot into OSX for testing, or to do something Mac-only. And nothing else can do that.
You just described the XPS 15 9560... Except the Dell gets a mostly proper keyboard with real function keys (this matters greatly to me as a programmer). It's not ThinkPad grade, yet close. (I've tested my colleague's top spec model).
As for Apple, it's a shame they don't ship 32gb laptops with touch screens.
I'm currently on an ageing OG X1 Carbon (i7/8/256), which has a sensational keyboard and track pointer, with a superb light and strong chassis; for my next, I'm hoping they'll upgrade the core count to 4+ and memory to 32, and an AMOLED display.
In my experience with this new XPS 15 9560, the touch screen is only marginally useful. It doesn't seem to play well with screen pens, so it's just a thing to smudge your finger grease on if you want to show off.
As a counterpoint, I have a lenovo p50 and I couldn't possibly be happier. I'm frequently developing on a Scala backend with a mobile frontend. If you don't want memory pressure, 16GB just won't do it, but my 64GB does phenomenally.
And since I'm often working in Kenya it can be quite difficult to get service for Apple, having parts I can switch out with a screwdriver is a huge blessing. And it's stupidly tough, I've fallen directly on it and it's survived in the past.
I am also developer and I changed last year from Mac to Dell XPS 13". I would have stayed on Mac but the new keyboard felt strange, touchbar is... well I felt it is time to try something new. One surprising feature that I though I would never use is touch screen. I really like it and I thought it would be useless.
There are some things that I think could be better. I think Windows is a bit ugly, hardware does not feel polished like in Apple but it's not nowhere as bad as Dells used to be. The only thing I go back to Mac when I need to do iOS stuff and sometimes when i get something from designers in Sketch format but it is unlikely that I will return to MBP anytime soon.
I have W10 running on a 2012 Panasonic ToughBook that has a touch screen. For quite some time I believed that a touch screen was hokey and no one wanted to get smudges on the screen. But I've got to say that once you start using it, whether to click on links, launch apps, or whatever, especially with the large tiles in W10, it becomes very natural. I do think, however, that it is more natural with smaller machines where the screen is just physically closer to you...like on the XPS 13.
That's interesting about the touchscreen? Do you feel any need to get a 2-in-1 or is he simple touchscreen sufficient? I'd interested in a 2-in-1, but they don't run Linux real well and there are other issues, including cost. But if the touchscreen is useful enough, then maybe an XPS 13 along with a tablet would be a good idea.
Simple touch screen is definitely enough for me. I don't feel I need tablet. I have Ipad and I hardly use it.
I find myself touching the screen when reading, on actionable wizards etc. So, it is mostly usability bonus for stuff that I could do in mouse. Funny thing is that I really didn't notice first that I started to touch screen.
I use the XPS 15 in an office with only mac users and this machine is just more powerful since Apple wont update the Macbook Pro line with developers in mind. I hated working on an under performing laptop when I was using the macs.
The specs would agree with you, but my real life side-by-side experience only demonstrates that the XPS is better for gaming. For everything else, my old rMBP is as fast or faster.
And my Mac runs for weeks, sometimes > 2 months, without a reboot. I've had to reboot the XPS on average twice a week (due to crashes, or updates, or really weird performance drops).
My real life side by side test show that turning off my machine at the end of the day isn't a big deal. The fact that I can run 2-3 VMs when the rest of my team can barely run one is a big deal. More ram is a huge benefit, everything I run in the linux subsystem runs faster than the macs I work next to.
Yeah, 32 vs 16 GB is truly a massive difference when doing virtualization. When you consider that the base OS and core apps (dev env/browsers) take up something like 2-3GB, you're more than doubling the available memory for VMs.
Processor is a little more powerful, testing shows them comparable in some testing since Apple can tune the chips a little more then Dell is allowed to. I have twice as much ram which is the real big leap forward, my hard drive seems to be a little faster also.
Most of what you said applies to Surface Books and Surface Pros, you should check them out if you work on Windows. I'm pretty happy with my SP4 myself.
As a fellow developer, I purchased a xps 15 with the 1080p screen. The keyboard is top notch, minus the fact it doesn't have a dedicated end key. The touch pad is good enough as I don't need it very often in the IDE world. The windows 10 touch pad gestures work great. I would highly recomend it.
Same..Look at the comments for an XPS/whatever manufacturer flagship device release and you'll find mostly 'this works great except sometimes it explodes' and then back and forth a bunch of times where someone claims that it works for them, while someone else brings up something else that randomly doesn't work for them.
This laptop looks like mixed bag of opinions. I'm looking something to switch from rMPB 2013 (need more RAM, storage). That laptop i still on my list but on last position.
I had rMBP2016 for 3 months and I could't write on that keyboard. After 1-2 hr's I felt pain in my fingers because constant contact of my nails with that keyboard. And I don't have some bear nails :) Sold it and now my short list is
1. Lenovo X1 carbon WQHD - best keyboard I ever written.
2. XPS 13 (coil whine, spongy keyboard)
3. XPS 15 - problems described in many places ..
Still can't make decision :/
I suggest the lattitude E7470 or E7480 (if you don't see a laptop as a fashion statement). Light, practical, enough ports (the E7470 has a full Ethernet port) and a boring keyboard (which is what I expect from a keyboard).
My friend have one of lattitude models (12.5") and those Dell business screens are not the best ones IMO. Maybe I'm wrong but it is hard to find reseller that have those on the shelf to touch and feel :/
Actually the matte FHD (1920x1080) displays on the E7450/7470/7480 are some of the best displays with no pwm etc. They're not the widest color gamut but they're solid.
I never felt like it was a cheap screen but I am probably not the best judge. I own a E7270 too but I find that format to be too small for any serious work. 14in is a good balance between being portable and comfortable.
I'm ordering the T470P today, 7700HQ (4C/8HT) with a 2560x1440 screen.
No thunderbolt 3 (strange one that) but otherwise exactly what I wanted and with discount comes in around 250 cheaper than the XPS15 with a 1080 screen.
I really wanted to love this machine but couldn't find one that wasn't a lemon.
Went through 3 of them. A well-specced model with 4k screen, 16GB memory, and 512GB SSD.
First had a bad screen, second had sticky keys, and third had faulty video card.
Third time I took it back, I was still willing to get it repaired but the support staff wouldn't do it. They told me they've had so many XPS 15s returned for service that they just recommended getting a totally different machine...
I had lots of annoyance with a previous Optimus based notebook. How has the situation of bumblebee and primusrun and dualbooting improved in the past two years?
I have upgraded an Ubuntu laptop over a few years and every upgrade it broke, requiring some new incantation to fix it the next time. I don't think it's considered the future?
> I had lots of annoyance with a previous Optimus based notebook. How has the situation of bumblebee and primusrun and dualbooting improved in the past two years?
Very slightly, but you're better off getting a notebook that actually has FOSS graphics drivers, for a much more stable and reliable experience.
It's unfortunate that you can't upgrade the XPS15 to the 4K display or a quad-core processor without getting the nVidia graphics along with it. IIRC, some previous models included 4K configurations without that.
> They’ve opted to go with the same Killer Wireless-AC 1535 as they use in the smaller XPS 13.
FWIW this NIC is a huge liability, wifi instability is common and it will bring some machines down hard (bluescreens/kernel panics, just check /r/dell).
Dell US apparently has instructions to replace this POS by a compatible Intel NIC (7200 or 8000 series) if you have issues and complaint, that seems not to be the case for Dell EU.
An Intel NIC costs $20~30, some folks just order a 8260/8265 at the same time as the laptop and install it before even booting.
Any driver issues or other advice about running Windows 7 on this?
(I don't want to use Windows 8 or 10 because of telemetry, nor do I want to spend countless hours trying to figure out how to disable all telemetry, and worry about future updates that introduce more telemetry. I'm happy staying at Window 7.)
I wish business laptops still existed. I bought a 5 year old laptop because you can't get anything today with serviceable parts or design that makes sense. The thinkpad retro can't get here soon enough (assuming it actually has function keys and isn't slimmed down just to be slim).
The lattitude E74xx series is pretty good, I upgraded the RAM and disk on every model I owned. And they still come with win7 drivers. But the latest generation (E7480) has dropped the full Ethernet port with the same sort of foldable port that Sony used on its z-series and they break too easily. You should try a E7470 which has a full Ethernet port while still being an ultra book.
Also they haven't tried to be creative with the keyboard layout, which includes page down/up keys which the xps lacks, quite important for shortcuts.
I'm rocking a thinkpad x230 and I will probably continue to do so until they stop making decent batteries for it. I will weep when I can no longer use it.
I use an x230 as my primary as well... but I can't seem to suppress my desire for a FHD screen. Do you know if any of the newer X-series are worth the money?
I have this laptop and run archlinux on it. It's a great machine, and almost everything works straight out of the box (even the external docking station).
Same here. Precision 5520 (the business edition of the XPS). Only thing I wish I took was the better GPU. 4K screen + external screen can be a lot to ask from the onboard graphics.
Other than that, it is so much more performant than my old MBP. Couldn't be happier to have 32GB of ram and the infinity display.
I've had the XPS 9560 since February. I mostly run Fedora (26), but have also run Solus and various versions of Ubuntu. I have a Windows 10 install which I use for Photoshop, Lightroom, and some mobile gaming.
Specifically, the version I have comes with a i7 7700HQ, 32GB RAM, 1TB SDD and 4K screen.
Hardware wise, the laptop is lovely, and the build quality of mine is good, although it hasn't been perfect as I'll get to later. The screen is honestly the best I've ever used, although I do sometimes notice ghosting due to slow response times, I understand in that regard it's comparable to the retina displays used in MBPs.
Performance wise, the hardware speaks for itself. It's a very powerful machine. I haven't experienced any of the lag or video issues that others are reporting. It'll happily play games and crunch whatever data you throw at it, without any thermal issues.
My model was a very early version, and came with which I can only describe as a mushy keyboard which often did not register key-presses. I contacted Dell support, who after a short over the phone test, agreed it was not satisfactory and arranged for an engineer to be at my house the next day to replace the keyboard. This fixed the issue, and the keyboard has been fine ever since. Compared to the new MBP keyboards, I much prefer the 9560 due to the extra travel.
I've also had the GPU fan replaced due to it developing a grinding noise. Again, after a short phone call, Dell agreed to send an engineer to replace the fan the next day. The issue has since re-appeared, and although it's not a critical issue, I'll be getting Dell to replace the fan again. This does seem like a somewhat common issue, although I can't find any recent reports which would hopefully suggest it has been fixed on the manufacturing side. On the topic of noise, my particular machine has no coil-whine.
The webcam position is frankly bad. It's not an issue for me personally, but I do tend to place the laptop somewhere higher if I'm doing a video call - I can't be trimming my noise hair for every call I do.
I did try macOS on the 9560, as a bit of fun more than anything else, and it seemed to be usable after some effort. However I generally dislike macOS, so I'm back to using Fedora 26 which runs perfectly. Some older apps have slight scaling issues with the 4k screen, however nothing has proven to be unusable (yet). I haven't had any issues running a clean version of Windows either.
This is my current laptop and I love it. I finally replaced my desktop PC with a laptop. I use it with a 4K 32" monitor via the docking station (I have the exact same setup at work and at home, I just bring the laptop with me each day.) Having a single machine saves me so much time regarding the complex development setup.
I have a dual boot setup with Ubuntu and Windows with no issues.
I bought it for $1699 CAD for the 7700HQ + Full HD Screen (not 4K) + GTX 1050 + 256GB HD + 16GB RAM and immediately upgraded the disk to 1TB and the ram to 32GB.
Can anyone help me understand the pricing on this one. An Inspiron with core i5 / 8GB RAM / 256GB SSD costs about $500, whereas a similar spec'd XPS 15 retails for more than twice.
Is the "premium" really worth the extra $500-$800 or Dell is overcharging because there's hardly any good Windows machine in this space (except maybe Thinkpads) ?
I've been pretty happy with my Precision 5510 (which uses the same chassis as the XPS 15) but I agree, the keyboard is a low point that the reviews seem to miss. I prefer the keyboard on my old HP Folio 1040, which admittedly is very Macbook-like.
That and the webcam are my only complaints though. I love the speakers, screen, trackpad.. and the single-cable thunderbolt dock is great.
For me it was that the keys actually rattled if you ran your fingers over them, that would drive me crazy, with the backlight on the spacings where all over the place because they moved around so much and the typing experience was sub-optimal, if the XPS15 had had the keyboard on the 7560 I'd have bought it there and then.
The 7560 was a nice looking/nice spec machine at 950 but the damn chassis bent just from opening and closing the lid in the first day.
Dell can make good machines but mostly by luck I think sometimes.
My current Laptop is an old Vostro 3750 I paid 500 quid for new (stacked discounts on the Dell site) and it has a better keyboard after 5 years of abuse.
I was looking at this laptop with 32Gb RAM for development work, where I would be using multiple VirtualBox VMs to simulate (small) clusters. I also would need it to travel well and connect to foreign wifi AP's.
I have a MacBook Pro with Retina display, but I don't like it for developing - it's mostly gathering dust.
My workstation and personal laptop are running OpenSUSE Tumbleweed/KDE, which I love.
I don't mind using a Windows OS as long as I can launch a VM for my development.
But I guess the Dell XPS 15 9560 may not be my best choice given the real-world problems I am reading here.
Is the webcam back at the top of the screen, or is it still at the bottom-left "I can see right up your nose" position.
edit Yep, on page 2:
> The smaller bezels really do reduce the bulk of the notebook, with the one downside in Dell’s case of a poorly positioned webcam at the bottom of the display. Dell wants to keep the top and side bezels the same size for aesthetics, and heavy webcam users will not appreciate this, with a less than flattering up-the-nose result.
I've all but given up hope on Apple bothering with 32Gb RAM.
Been researching the Dell alternatives (XPS and Precision) for a couple of months now. Very tempting machines indeed. I just want to see one in real life to see what the build quality feels like.
Pssst.. Mr Schiller... it seems it is possible to stick 32Gb of RAM into a laptop AND have decent battery life. Well, that is unless you're intent on giving your products anorexia which it seems you are.
I own a Dell XPS 13 and it seems to be fine build quality wise. Others have not been so lucky.
To be honest though, if I had the budget and Apple weren't being ridiculous with the specs I'd still consider a mac a much better development machine; specifically due to Adobe's refusal to port photoshop to ubuntu. If you do not have any need for photoshop, then XPS developer edition is much better value.
My only concern with the dell line is that drivers really are a problem. For some reason, the audio works perfectly fine under Ubuntu and is really half baked on Windows 10 (with the newest drivers from dell). It's like upside down bizarro world.
I'm in the same boat. I have a serious analysis paralysis when it comes to figuring out what my next laptop will be (assuming the MBP keeps hardware specs relatively similar). I just don't know how to find a good laptop model that will definitely run trouble free with a Linux distro.
I really like OS X because of the *nix like OS with a high level of 'just works'. I absolutely won't go back to Windows, my workflow is so far beyond it- so what're my best resources for finding a high spec laptop that will be compatible with a modern Linux distro?
I've got Windows 7 and Mint running on an old Lenovo T430 (pretty sure it's a 430) and Ubuntu 16.10 on my old 2009 MBP after Apple stopped shipping OS updates for it.
Excluding the fact they're on old hardware, I still don't think they 'just work' enough. Power save, WiFi, graphics drivers, fan control, all things that took a LOT of fiddling. Don't really love Ubuntu's desktop either.
> Not to a TV, tho, which makes it a deal breaker for me. They should put a proper HDMI port.
I'd rather have an extra Thunderbolt 3/USB-C port, to be honest. HDMI 2.0 is bigger and clunkier as a port, and Thunderbolt 3 is strictly better as a protocol (we're not even talking about HDMI 2.1). Maybe if you're talking HDMI 2.1, but the protocol can still be carried over a USB-C connector anyway, so keeping the standard connector interface is preferable in my books.
My bet is that TVs will soon start to have USB-C ports built-in (with whichever protocols they're willing to support). In the meantime, an adapter will do the trick; it can even live with the TV, since that's not meant to be portable.
Even Kaby Lake only supports HDMI 1.4, so there is no Intel-based laptop without a dedicated GPU on the market that is capable of HDMI 2.0. Your only choice is DisplayPort which you can use here via Thunderbolt 3.
I bought one in February. Horrible experience. It couldn't display any video in the browser without freezing. Apparently an intel driver issue. The solution was to manually install an unsupported version of the video driver from the intel website. That solved it but left me with an unstable wifi and a noisy fan. I had much better luck with the Lattitude E74xx series.
XPS is great, having said that I'm waiting for one with USB Type-C charging only and as far as I'm concerned it's time and all sockets should be USB Type-C. I have my Chromebook Pixel for 2 years now and I got used to plugging in a charger from either side.
If anyone cares, I just got a Toshiba Portege X30, it's the lightest machine that can be equipped with 32GB Ram, has 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports and a matte fhd touchscreen. Sadly only a dual core U processor (they launch quad-core U processors in just a few months)
I tried the XPS 15 Kaby Lake UHD touch version
- coil whine
- ctrl key on the most left part of the keyboard
- sound
- no notch for opening
- fan noise
- led bleeding
- touchpad
- surface coating
+ touch display
+ UHD/GPU/RAM/CPU
I'm looking for a (possibly) portable machine to do some deep learning exploration on. Would a developer edition of this with Ubuntu pre-installed, be a good choice? Is the NVidia powerful enough and accessible via drivers?
This is the laptop I have. The biggest (and the only) complaint is that after about 3 or 4 days of use the track pad stops scrolling and starts doing a "click-and-drag" instead. A restart takes care of this.
For $1500 I don't want to regularly spend 5-10 minutes fixing my trackpad, and the anguish of that task relative to the turning of the cosmos is irrelevant.
* Sound was choppy (driver-based issue), apparently this is again well-known: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/5yvsng/xps_15_9560_au... there is no fix, the fix is to send it back (potentially also caused by Killer Wifi, Dell will never recognise that so you'll not get a WiFi card change)
* Mouse has a lag on the screen in 3D applications. Apparently, this is due to partially the XBox app that wants to record and isn't optimized to 4k + possibly McAfee + some other Dell boatware.
So, I returned the laptop. The 2nd thing in my life I ever returned. It was too much, and I wasn't sure I could fix all of the above in 2 weeks (return period in UK). I used Linux for my main OS, where everything but the space bar double-tap was a real issue. But that was painful. I was afraid that the replacement keyboard would be more or less the same. You can apparently just go to a random retailer, and it often double-taps there too (i.e. it will break). Worst about it is that Dell offered a BIOS update to "fix" this. The Dell Knowledge Base (KB) article detailing this has been pulled, BIOSes now come pre-updated (yes, I did update my BIOS, no, it did not fix it). When a BIOS update "fixes" such a basic hardware bug, you really ought to wonder about their quality control.
I can't believe that a machine as high-end as this has all those bugs. I've had an Asus $400 boondoggle from Best Buy for 4 years now and the worst thing it does is occasionally unmount the optical drive. It seems like Dell just has very poor quality control.
I got a T470s for work and I can't recommend it. My current major issue is that the main screen attached to my docking station (Dell 4k 27") goes off for a second in random intervals. At some times as often as every minute, which makes it super annoying to work with it. After Win10 creators update I had another major issue where the video driver did not work anymore after standby. That was at least fixed with some driver updates. Besides that I experienced more bluescreens with it in 2 month than with any other PC that I owned.
Besides the stability issues the screen and the keyboard are quite good. However the touchpad is no comparison to the one on a Macbook. I can work without a mouse on a Macbook without missing anything, but not on the Lenovo. According to some reviews the T470 should be better in that area than the T470s, but I don't have one for comparison.
I have the older xps 15 9530. If you try to run any decent game (spec wise easy for the laptop to handle), it will throttle down to 10 fps or less within 5 minutes. When I contacted customer care, they said since this is an ultrabook, this is expected and that they couldn't do anything.
So, my advice would be to research thoroughly if you are buying an XPS for gaming.
I guess different people have different experiences. Googling "xps 9560 throttling" shows up quiet a few results which sounds very similar to what I face. For example, this is from the 4th link in my search result:
When I play a game (overwatch, fallout 4, gta v), after some time my gpu throttle and i lost between 20-30% fps. And after more time, my CPU throttle to aroung 0.80 ghz and I lost all my FPS, the game become unplayable.
I have an XPS 13 and the coil whine is one of the things that annoyed me the most, seems like they don't care at all. I've briefly used a Thinkpad and on that front is dead silent.
If they continue to provide a model with a Linux distribution installed, I would like to support them and purchase their products again, but that defect is the only thing I would like to see it fixed.
It's proven for me that they don't, as it's a long standing and massive problem. Consumers should stop buying poorly engineered/manufactured devices, that would be the reasonable reaction.
> If they continue to provide a model with a Linux distribution installed, I would like to support them and purchase their products again, but that defect is the only thing I would like to see it fixed
Normally Thinkpads support Linux very well though don't come with it preinstalled.
Had a Dell 7537 (non XPS) and it is honestly the worst machine I have ever used, from physical reliability (broken hinges and parts) through to flat out non-functional components including numerous issues with Wifi. After falling for the looks, I've vowed never to get a Dell again.
Dell is trash and thats why I will soon release www.shitdell.com - to let people around the world to know what kind of shitty product they are getting.
I'm from Brazil and over here everything that Dell sells is trash. Dell Inspiron's hinge breaks usually after 1 year, so you better buy an extended warranty... but why in the hell would you buy an middle to expensive notebook that you know it is made with bad quality and that you need to pay more for extended warranty?
Dell doesn't deserve to exist as a company and soon I will help more people learn about how trashy are Dell's products...
The import taxes are insane and, yes, I would agree that they are so high that they could generate the blue screen of death for some... but never heard of taxes causing hardware problems lol
A quick scan through the comments and you can see that Americans aren't that happy with Dell's hardware neither... and the hinge problem, tons of reports at Dell's USA community forum. So if I were you, would start getting careful with the hinge... or, like customer support from Dell suggested me one time: not open and close the notebook that much.
I can give many other examples with drivers support. For example, if I unplug the notebook from the dock the audio playback doesn't work again if I don't reboot the computer or remove/reinstall the driver.
It would ve nice to hear about a critical analysis in Linux.