The XPS 15 has always been “the macbook for non-mac users” in my eyes for a while. It comes with all the great mac-isms; short-travel keys, high quality display, long battery life, the potential to burn your house down…
The new XPS 17 has some notable changes:
big trackpad
16:10 display (1920x1200 or 3840x2400)
IR camera for windows hello
1.3mm travel on the keyboard, 10% bigger keys (smaller gap between keys)
fingerprint on top right of keyboard
4x thunderbolt 3
moved to all USB C
improved speakers. not quite macbook though
redesigned thermal management. It remains to be seen if it does enough though.
2 m.2 for NVMe
2 DDR4 SODIMMs
WLAN is baked on now
The new XPS 15 has some notable changes:
big trackpad
16:10 display (1920x1200 or 3840x2400)
IR camera for windows hello
1.3mm travel on the keyboard, 10% bigger keys (smaller gap between keys)
I’ve been wanting a 14-inch XPS, and the new 15 is now smaller than my current 14-inch personal laptop. Woo. (My current XPS 15 work laptop is only marginally bigger than my personal laptop mind you…)
I wonder if we can expect AMD versions of this next year. Ryzen 4xxx series 8-core APU in the base model would be nice.
bummer they made the battery smaller. My xps 15 is from a few years ago, I think it has the 105 wh battery, the one that you can get if you give up the sata hdd bay. but that extra battery really comes in handy for a long days at a conference running the beautiful 4k display and six core CPU without needing to worry about having an outlet handy.
only things I dont like about my xps, the usb pd is limited to 60w, instead of the full 100, and the camera is down in the hinge, lower left, so the viewing angle is extra weird
After watching the video posted above, it made it sound like you can bring on more than 100wh, but it’s more of a hassle because you have to get approval first. After some Googling, it seems even if getting approval there is a cap at 160wh. https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/rules-for-traveling-with-batteries/
However, I am not disagreeing that this is the reason why you don’t really see laptops pushing the 100wh limit.
RIP still intel, cant wait for some AMD powered versions
17" is crap for working on a plane tho 15 is like the tops for that imo, Rather just have a USBc external travel pannel if you need a bigger screen cuz at home or work you will have it docked anyway.
I hope they are better than the last series. My wife has a 9575 that I purchased for her Xmas of 2018 and it has had nothing but problems. Loud, hot, and constantly crashes even when idle. Most people recommended re-pasting the CPU because Dell apparently does such a bad job doing it when they build them. Seriously? Re-paste a new laptop? A few months ago she was having battery issues so I contacted Dell to ask about a replacement battery. They said the part is no longer available and probably wouldn’t be again. For a year old laptop! Fortunately, cracking it open and disconnecting and reconnecting the battery solved her problem.
She wanted a MacBook and I got her this instead. Wish I would have gone for the MacBook. Oddly enough she prefers to use her 2012 MacBook Pro over the new Dell. But Apple’s planned obsolescence policy is making that difficult as many apps are no longer supported (she can no longer sync her iPhone to it).
As much as an AMD one would be great, that would mean Intel licencing out Thunderbolt to OEMs for use with AMD chips. They weren’t losing market share on the desktop by doing that, but it would open a whole can of worms if they allowed it in laptops (Apple and Microsoft saying bye to Intel, and everyone else following).
We’ll see.
