**A Comparison of Dell XPS 17 and 15 Laptops: Performance, Design, and Features**

As an avid tech enthusiast, I recently had the opportunity to review two laptops from Dell's XPS series - the 15-inch model and the 17-inch model. In this article, I will share my hands-on experience with these machines, highlighting their performance, design, features, and any notable aspects that set them apart.

**Trackpad Wobble: A Strange Phenomenon**

One of the most peculiar things about both laptops is the trackpad wobble. For those who may not be familiar, a trackpad wobble refers to the slight movement or vibration in the trackpad when you're using it. On my 15-inch XPS device, I experienced this issue with one of the engineering samples I had, which was quite frustrating. However, I'm happy to report that the second sample I received did not exhibit this problem, and it's possible that it was just a one-off issue. Nevertheless, I want to emphasize that these machines do have a trackpad wobble, and it's something to be aware of.

**Gaming Performance: Not What You Expect**

When it comes to gaming performance, the XPS 15 is an excellent machine. Its thermal performance has improved significantly compared to previous models, but it still doesn't quite live up to expectations. While I was able to play games at high frame rates and resolutions, there were instances where the temperature spikes to as much as 99 degrees Celsius, which may not be ideal for prolonged gaming sessions. In contrast, the Razer Blade 15 is a more aggressive performer in terms of thermal management, which makes it better suited for demanding games.

**Latency Issues: Not a Major Concern**

Music production and content creation often require low latency and responsiveness. To test the XPS devices' performance in this regard, I ran a Latency Monitor test on both machines. The results were reassuring - I never saw any heavy latency spikes during my testing session, which lasted over an hour. While this is not conclusive proof that these laptops won't experience latency issues in the future, it's certainly encouraging.

**Undervolting: Not an Option**

One feature that was missing from both XPS devices is undervolting, a technique used to reduce the voltage supplied to the CPU and GPU while maintaining performance. I explored this option by navigating through the BIOS settings on both machines, but unfortunately, it's not supported. This may be a limitation for users who want more flexibility in their system's power consumption.

**Battery Life: Similar Performance**

Despite my expectations of the 17-inch model having shorter battery life due to its larger size and weight, I was pleasantly surprised to find that both devices have similar battery life - approximately seven hours with the higher resolution panel. This is a testament to Dell's excellent battery management capabilities.

**The Verdict: A Weighing Decision**

In conclusion, my review of the Dell XPS 17 and 15 laptops has been a mixed bag. While the 17-inch model offers more material, better thermal performance, and improved design, it also comes with a higher price tag and significant weight increase. The 15-inch model, on the other hand, is more portable and affordable but may not offer the same level of performance and features as its larger counterpart.

Ultimately, my decision to choose one over the other was based on my specific needs and preferences. If you're looking for a powerful laptop that can handle demanding tasks like gaming and music production, I would recommend considering other options that specialize in these areas. However, if you value portability, affordability, and good performance, then either of these XPS devices may be an excellent choice.

**Final Thoughts**

As with any new technology, there are always trade-offs to consider when purchasing a high-end laptop like the Dell XPS 17 or 15. While neither device is perfect, they both offer exceptional performance, design, and features that make them stand out in their class. By weighing these factors carefully and understanding what each machine has to offer, you can make an informed decision about which one suits your lifestyle best.

**Technical Specifications:**

* Dell XPS 15:

+ 15-inch Full HD display

+ Up to 10th Gen Intel Core i7 processor

+ NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card

+ Up to 16 hours of battery life

+ Starting price around $1,000

* Dell XPS 17:

+ 17-inch Full HD display

+ Up to 10th Gen Intel Core i9 processor

+ NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics card

+ Up to 15 hours of battery life

+ Starting price around $2,000

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enall right so this is my review of the xps 17 and xps 15. now i went into this video with the intent of choosing one of these devices as my personal windows laptop this year like i wanted to use one of these new xps devices as my actual regular daily laptop so i'm gonna be i mean a lot of the conversation that we're gonna be having here is from my perspective of what i would want in a laptop all right so uh just right off the rip these devices are heavier than you might think or they might be heavier than you think that's probably a better way to put it the xps 15 this is the same weight as last year's model they both come in at four to four point five pounds depending on how you configure them but this is a smaller machine so it's just dense and same thing goes for the xps 17. this machine can be equipped with a vapor chamber if you have like the higher end configurations and that unit like that vapor chamber configuration and the 4k panel configuration just adds weight to this system so keep in mind if you want something that's like a really light laptop just look at the numbers of these things and compared to other stuff you might be interested in now i really like the design aesthetic of the xps devices this year i really like that whole angled look that they have to these machines i like the exterior i also really like the carbon fiber interior now this material i didn't notice this in the kind of first look i had on these devices but this is a different resin or different finish than the previous carbon fiber i actually like this stuff better it's still soft to the touch and nice to use and comfortable to type on but it's not as sticky like it doesn't feel as tacky as the old stuff i used tacky like not as in like gaudy or ugly but like like tacky as in like gummy this feels like a smoother resin and i like it a lot and it's also less prone to fingerprints like one of the things that i didn't like about older xps devices like how easily fingerprints appeared on the palm rest and all over the carbon fiber material this feels like a better material to me i also really like their screens like there's everything about them the brightness the color accuracy the aspect ratio these screens both on the 17 and 15 look fantastic i don't just mean like the thin bezels and just how clean and aesthetically beautiful it looks i mean the actual panel itself is on point now i've seen both the 4k and the 1080p panels and in my opinion it's not worth getting the 4k panels these are both 4k units uh both the review units and the engineering samples i had were also 4k units but it's a 400 upgrade over the 1080p panel and on a screen size that's 17 or 15 inches it's really hard to appreciate a 4k panel now here's the thing dell's website is a little bit confusing in order to get the configuration that gets better video cards while still using that 1080p panel you have to go into the work configurations instead of the ones for home which is a little bit weird the other thing i noticed is that the ghosting on these screens are still present it's not something that's a big deal but if you're someone that's used to like desktop monitors that have fast response times or fast refresh rates these are 60 hertz panels with relatively slow response times you won't really notice it outside of gaming though the aspect ratio is 16x10 i think most people will appreciate that you just get more vertical space right you see more comments when you're scrolling through stuff you have more vertical real estate for like premiere xl whatever it is 16 by 10 is money the speakers i've done uh speaker test so i'm not going to do it again but they sound good when you crank up the volume the bass is very vibratory you feel it throughout the whole keyboard uh the solution to that is don't listen to music as loud but it is a it is something that's present if you're someone that types with music cranking it's very buzzy as you're going uh okay let's talk about the keyboard and trackpad so this is where things get conversational i like the keyboard this is a keyboard that i think most people will like the lack of a number pad seems to bother people based on the comments now personally i think that if they had put a numerical pad on these keyboards it would have really hurt the design aesthetic of this thing like i mean they could have there's obviously room to fit a number pad on a 17-inch device like this but if they'd put it in it just wouldn't look as symmetrical and it wouldn't be an xps device so i i feel like it was a purposeful design choice to emit that but if you need a number pad you can just connect something over usb now the trackpad okay we need to talk about this the engineering samples that i had i had a 17 and a 15 both had great track pads then i got two retail units i got an xps 15 retail unit and xps 17 retail unit and on both of these devices the trackpad has a bit of a wobble it's definitely more pronounced and more annoying on the xps 15 unit and based on what i've read from the emails and comments sections of my previous videos this is a thing this is an issue that is appearing not infrequently and i think it's just a quality control thing from dell this shouldn't be an issue right this shouldn't be something that the users have to put up with from what i've read though it can be fixed you can either put a piece of tape underneath or tighten the screw but i mean like on a device that is this expensive and this premium from a company like dell this really should not be a thing at all so if you do get one you can either return it and get it replaced or if you want to try doing the electrical tape thing you can probably look it up on the internet but it's just weird because the two engineering samples i had had perfect track pads like i'll just do this here so you don't think i'm going crazy this is the 15. this machine like why am i even doing this it's not like you guys can see it but okay maybe you can so the wobble do you hear that sound versus this right this is a rock solid machine like a rock solid track pad this has that weird wobble now before i get into the performance we need to preface this conversation with like these are not two inch thick gaming laptops these aren't gaming laptops at all and i feel like because they're equipped with nvidia cards that are capable of gaming some people expect these to have gaming level performance they don't all right the 15-inch one has better thermal performance than the previous year's model it's not great i would consider it to be acceptable see i've been very critical of xps 15 over the past two or three years because their their thermals just weren't up to snuff this has improved but it's not great the xps 17 with its vapor chamber i expected this to be miraculously awesome like i thought when i did my preview of it that this would just blow my socks off when i actually got the retail unit it's good but it's also imperfect it's not like two inch thick gaming laptop perfect what i think dell likes to do is that they let their systems turbo up really fast to a really high clock speed but then they bring it down really aggressively so these temperatures will spike to like 99 degrees and then it'll drop back down to like 85 and this is different from let's say something like a razer blade 15. that machine doesn't spike up in temperature it has a more flat temperature profile but it also doesn't turbo as aggressively so i feel like a razer blade 15 is way better for gaming because when you're playing games both your cpu and gpu are stressed for a very long period of time so only like four or five hours if you're playing games but for something like this an xps device these are geared more for just spikier workflows right now in terms of music production i know that a lot of people have shied away from xps devices in the past because of latency issues i ran latency monitor on it just to see what was going on on both these machines they both seem fine like i ran that test for over an hour and i never saw some heavy latency spikes i don't know if that's like enough information for you guys though i'm not a producer but based on my limited testing these don't seem to have any latency issues like previous year's models now these also do not seem to have undervolting i went around the bios just to look around to see if there's something that i could enable to allow it they do not have undervolting like previous year's models either okay so here's the deal at the beginning of this video i said i would choose one right this was a harder choice for me than i thought it would be i originally thought it would be the 17 for sure right i wanted the performance but this is a big machine it's just heavier than i thought it would be it's just more cumbersome than i thought it'd be it doesn't even fit into my regular backpack normally i have to change backpacks because of this device um i'm gonna go with it though i feel like the benefits that this gives are stuff that i like it's just it doesn't come without a cost the weight for one and it's just not as portable of a package as i'd like my laptop to be but the overall experience on the xps 17 is great now the battery life on these two machines they're similar i thought the 17 would run out quicker but it's got a slightly bigger battery 97 watt hours versus 86 and i'm getting seven hours of battery life on both and this is with the higher resolution panel so it's got pretty good battery management so that's it that's my xps 17 and 15 review i know a lot of people if you're interested in buying one you're gonna be drawn to the 17 because it's not that much more expensive than the 50. i think it's only 100 more on the base model you just get a lot more material a lot more device uh but just be be aware of the weights be aware of the numbers just to make sure it fits in your in your lifestyle okay hope you guys enjoyed this video thumbs if you liked it subs if you loved it i'll see you guys next time youall right so this is my review of the xps 17 and xps 15. now i went into this video with the intent of choosing one of these devices as my personal windows laptop this year like i wanted to use one of these new xps devices as my actual regular daily laptop so i'm gonna be i mean a lot of the conversation that we're gonna be having here is from my perspective of what i would want in a laptop all right so uh just right off the rip these devices are heavier than you might think or they might be heavier than you think that's probably a better way to put it the xps 15 this is the same weight as last year's model they both come in at four to four point five pounds depending on how you configure them but this is a smaller machine so it's just dense and same thing goes for the xps 17. this machine can be equipped with a vapor chamber if you have like the higher end configurations and that unit like that vapor chamber configuration and the 4k panel configuration just adds weight to this system so keep in mind if you want something that's like a really light laptop just look at the numbers of these things and compared to other stuff you might be interested in now i really like the design aesthetic of the xps devices this year i really like that whole angled look that they have to these machines i like the exterior i also really like the carbon fiber interior now this material i didn't notice this in the kind of first look i had on these devices but this is a different resin or different finish than the previous carbon fiber i actually like this stuff better it's still soft to the touch and nice to use and comfortable to type on but it's not as sticky like it doesn't feel as tacky as the old stuff i used tacky like not as in like gaudy or ugly but like like tacky as in like gummy this feels like a smoother resin and i like it a lot and it's also less prone to fingerprints like one of the things that i didn't like about older xps devices like how easily fingerprints appeared on the palm rest and all over the carbon fiber material this feels like a better material to me i also really like their screens like there's everything about them the brightness the color accuracy the aspect ratio these screens both on the 17 and 15 look fantastic i don't just mean like the thin bezels and just how clean and aesthetically beautiful it looks i mean the actual panel itself is on point now i've seen both the 4k and the 1080p panels and in my opinion it's not worth getting the 4k panels these are both 4k units uh both the review units and the engineering samples i had were also 4k units but it's a 400 upgrade over the 1080p panel and on a screen size that's 17 or 15 inches it's really hard to appreciate a 4k panel now here's the thing dell's website is a little bit confusing in order to get the configuration that gets better video cards while still using that 1080p panel you have to go into the work configurations instead of the ones for home which is a little bit weird the other thing i noticed is that the ghosting on these screens are still present it's not something that's a big deal but if you're someone that's used to like desktop monitors that have fast response times or fast refresh rates these are 60 hertz panels with relatively slow response times you won't really notice it outside of gaming though the aspect ratio is 16x10 i think most people will appreciate that you just get more vertical space right you see more comments when you're scrolling through stuff you have more vertical real estate for like premiere xl whatever it is 16 by 10 is money the speakers i've done uh speaker test so i'm not going to do it again but they sound good when you crank up the volume the bass is very vibratory you feel it throughout the whole keyboard uh the solution to that is don't listen to music as loud but it is a it is something that's present if you're someone that types with music cranking it's very buzzy as you're going uh okay let's talk about the keyboard and trackpad so this is where things get conversational i like the keyboard this is a keyboard that i think most people will like the lack of a number pad seems to bother people based on the comments now personally i think that if they had put a numerical pad on these keyboards it would have really hurt the design aesthetic of this thing like i mean they could have there's obviously room to fit a number pad on a 17-inch device like this but if they'd put it in it just wouldn't look as symmetrical and it wouldn't be an xps device so i i feel like it was a purposeful design choice to emit that but if you need a number pad you can just connect something over usb now the trackpad okay we need to talk about this the engineering samples that i had i had a 17 and a 15 both had great track pads then i got two retail units i got an xps 15 retail unit and xps 17 retail unit and on both of these devices the trackpad has a bit of a wobble it's definitely more pronounced and more annoying on the xps 15 unit and based on what i've read from the emails and comments sections of my previous videos this is a thing this is an issue that is appearing not infrequently and i think it's just a quality control thing from dell this shouldn't be an issue right this shouldn't be something that the users have to put up with from what i've read though it can be fixed you can either put a piece of tape underneath or tighten the screw but i mean like on a device that is this expensive and this premium from a company like dell this really should not be a thing at all so if you do get one you can either return it and get it replaced or if you want to try doing the electrical tape thing you can probably look it up on the internet but it's just weird because the two engineering samples i had had perfect track pads like i'll just do this here so you don't think i'm going crazy this is the 15. this machine like why am i even doing this it's not like you guys can see it but okay maybe you can so the wobble do you hear that sound versus this right this is a rock solid machine like a rock solid track pad this has that weird wobble now before i get into the performance we need to preface this conversation with like these are not two inch thick gaming laptops these aren't gaming laptops at all and i feel like because they're equipped with nvidia cards that are capable of gaming some people expect these to have gaming level performance they don't all right the 15-inch one has better thermal performance than the previous year's model it's not great i would consider it to be acceptable see i've been very critical of xps 15 over the past two or three years because their their thermals just weren't up to snuff this has improved but it's not great the xps 17 with its vapor chamber i expected this to be miraculously awesome like i thought when i did my preview of it that this would just blow my socks off when i actually got the retail unit it's good but it's also imperfect it's not like two inch thick gaming laptop perfect what i think dell likes to do is that they let their systems turbo up really fast to a really high clock speed but then they bring it down really aggressively so these temperatures will spike to like 99 degrees and then it'll drop back down to like 85 and this is different from let's say something like a razer blade 15. that machine doesn't spike up in temperature it has a more flat temperature profile but it also doesn't turbo as aggressively so i feel like a razer blade 15 is way better for gaming because when you're playing games both your cpu and gpu are stressed for a very long period of time so only like four or five hours if you're playing games but for something like this an xps device these are geared more for just spikier workflows right now in terms of music production i know that a lot of people have shied away from xps devices in the past because of latency issues i ran latency monitor on it just to see what was going on on both these machines they both seem fine like i ran that test for over an hour and i never saw some heavy latency spikes i don't know if that's like enough information for you guys though i'm not a producer but based on my limited testing these don't seem to have any latency issues like previous year's models now these also do not seem to have undervolting i went around the bios just to look around to see if there's something that i could enable to allow it they do not have undervolting like previous year's models either okay so here's the deal at the beginning of this video i said i would choose one right this was a harder choice for me than i thought it would be i originally thought it would be the 17 for sure right i wanted the performance but this is a big machine it's just heavier than i thought it would be it's just more cumbersome than i thought it'd be it doesn't even fit into my regular backpack normally i have to change backpacks because of this device um i'm gonna go with it though i feel like the benefits that this gives are stuff that i like it's just it doesn't come without a cost the weight for one and it's just not as portable of a package as i'd like my laptop to be but the overall experience on the xps 17 is great now the battery life on these two machines they're similar i thought the 17 would run out quicker but it's got a slightly bigger battery 97 watt hours versus 86 and i'm getting seven hours of battery life on both and this is with the higher resolution panel so it's got pretty good battery management so that's it that's my xps 17 and 15 review i know a lot of people if you're interested in buying one you're gonna be drawn to the 17 because it's not that much more expensive than the 50. i think it's only 100 more on the base model you just get a lot more material a lot more device uh but just be be aware of the weights be aware of the numbers just to make sure it fits in your in your lifestyle okay hope you guys enjoyed this video thumbs if you liked it subs if you loved it i'll see you guys next time you\n"