The XPS 15 Laptop: A Review of Its Display and Performance

I've had the chance to work on my laptop using the Dell XPS 15, and I must say that it's really good. The display is wonderful, with its slight bezels being one of the nicest things about it. However, there are some limitations to be aware of - the refresh rate is capped at 60Hz, regardless of how much you spend on the device. Additionally, if you upgrade to a nicer display, you'll lose out on brightness and battery life.

In contrast, the Apple MacBook Pro 14 has one of the nicest displays available on a laptop, period. It's insane that they can fit such high-quality display technology into their base model 14-inch MacBook. The display goes up to 120Hz refresh rate, has a billion color combination, and can reach up to 1600 nits of HDR Max brightness. This display is just amazing, and I try to be objective about screen performance, but this screen is just too good. It's also worth noting that the speaker quality on the MacBook Pro 14 cannot be beat - there's nothing wrong with the Dell XPS speakers in a vacuum, but they're not the same when compared to Apple.

Battery Life: A Key Consideration

One of the main areas where the Dell XPS 15 and MacBook Pro 14 differ is in their battery life. The M2 MacBook Pro 14 is capable of running for hours on end without needing a charge, even if you need to use it for long periods of time without being able to plug in. In contrast, the XPS 15 has usable battery life, but it's not reliable enough to depend on in certain situations.

Upgrades and Limitations

The Dell XPS 15 is somewhat similar to the MacBook Pro 14, but there are some key differences that set them apart. One of these differences is the ability to upgrade RAM and solid-state drives - this is a major advantage for those who want more control over their laptop's performance. However, it also means that older sticks of memory may not be compatible with the XPS 15, limiting savings from upgrading.

Another difference between the two laptops is the presence of Intel processors on the Dell XPS 15. This can be a problem if you're planning to use your laptop for anything more demanding than basic browsing - in these cases, the fans will turn on and make noise. The thermal performance on the XPS 15 is also not ideal.

External Display Performance

Finally, it's worth noting that when using an external display with the Dell XPS 15, the graphics card used defaults to the integrated Intel Graphics, rather than the Nvidia card that can be accessed through certain settings. This limits the refresh rate on even high-end gaming monitors to 60Hz. In contrast, plugging in an HDMI cable to the MacBook Pro 14 allows you to access maximum external display power.

Conclusion: Why Not Recommend Either Laptop?

Despite their many strengths, neither the Dell XPS 15 nor the MacBook Pro 14 are bad laptops - they're both good options that will suit your needs well. However, there's a laptop out there that costs significantly less than either of these two devices and is almost as useful: the M1 MacBook Pro 14. This can be had for $1539 refurbished from Apple, making it an unbeatable value for professionals who need a powerful and portable computer.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwho the age-old Dell vs apple rivalry so how does the latest M2 MacBook Pro 14 and the latest 13th generation Dell XPS stack up against each other I don't know first off I think we need to talk about the specs and the ordering options for these two computers because in a surprising move the base model Apple isn't actually the most expensive option that we'll talk about today I know that that's normally the apples the expensive one I know that's normally the thing but that's not it today so the M2 MacBook Pro comes in at 19.99. for that money you'll get the latest 10 core M2 Pro processor a 16 core GPU 16 gigabytes of unified memory and a 512 gigabyte solid state drive now we will talk more about the physical construction and the specs in a bit but internally those are the big selling points the new XPS comes in at a base model price of 23.99 now this specific price I don't consider to be set in stone Dell is constantly updating certain spec options after their products hit the market so if you watch this video months after it comes out this might actually be cheaper but as of today the cheapest model you can get is 23.99 and that base model comes with a 14 core Intel I9 third 900h processor Nvidia 40 78 gigabytes graphics card 16 gigabytes of ddr5 RAM and a 512 gigabyte solid state drive now that's just the cheapest base options for both computers it is a much different story when we look at the highest end now the top end of the MacBook is a 12 core M2 Max processor 38 core GPU 96 gigabytes of unified memory and an 8 terabyte solid state drive that machine that little old laptop that fits all that crazy stuff into this kind of a space that comes in at a pittance of 62.99 and oh yes I felt gross calling that a pittance hole that's a crazy amount of money for a laptop the XPS doesn't have as many upgrade options you can upgrade the processor or the graphics card but you can get up to 64 gigabytes of ddr5 memory and an 8 terabyte Solitaire Drive combining all of that with an upgraded 3.5 K OLED touchscreen display for 46.96 let's move over to the performance I'm pulling some benchmarks from folks way better at running those those benchmarks than myself it does look like the I9 is the more powerful chip when compared to the M2 Pro now the M2 Max maybe that's a different conversation again I'm not specking these all the way out I have the M2 Pro and I have the 13th gen I9 now I don't know that saying the I9 is more powerful is actually saying that much because any processor can be more powerful than any other it just takes more heat and more power to do so and while the I9 does make the bar chart go up it doesn't have the power optimization of the M2 and part of a laptop's job is making the battery last as long as possible right and having that long life with usable power graphically wise though I will have to swap over and give that to the XPS 15. having a dedicated graphics card is really useful for a whole range of topics especially if you want to run any specifically graphically intense programs that aren't already optimized for Apple's Arm based processor architecture but if you do primarily use programs that have been optimized I would say usable performance across the board for both machines is about equal however when we start looking at the bodies of the laptops themselves there are some very important differences the XPS 15 has the same design layout that xps's have had the past few years it's got a very Sleek design a very comfortable carbon fiber top some of the best keyboard typing experience around and it has high powered Thunderbolt 4 ports additionally it has an SD card slot and a headphone jack built right into the laptop body before Apple updated their MacBooks this was the definition of what somebody that makes money with their computer needs and some folks might call that person a professional but again but Apple did update their laptops and now the MacBook has ports rivaling and surpassing the XPS especially in one notable area the MacBook also has Thunderbolt 4 it has SD card slot and it has a headphone jack but most importantly for me it comes with a built-in HDMI port and yes the Dell does come with a usba and HDMI dongle which is much appreciated but look I literally use this HDMI port every single day I personally yes this is subjective welcome to the subjectivity of YouTube opinions uh I think that all laptops need this to be built in the rest of the MacBook body is also no slouch another amazing keyboard probably the best trackpad in the business an okay-ish feeling top I still don't like how Jagged and sharp the edges of this laptop are but you will not find build quality rivaling this in other laptop Brands I mean one of those Keynotes speaking of build quality is in this XPS 15 it came to me again with a wobbly trackpad and a very annoying Creek in the hinge whenever it's open and close listen to this I just I hate that and I'm absolutely willing to chalk that up to a specific problem with my personal laptop that I bought and it's probably not a good sample to Tar the whole XPS lineup with but I've had several xps's with wonky track pads over the past few years and I've literally never had a build quality problem with a Macbook physically though I do prefer typing on the XPS the slight angle of the body combined with that carbon fiber top is probably the best typing experience that I've found on a laptop thus far it's really it's really good I love I typed this whole script on this laptop because I love typing on the XPS display wise it's not really a contest though the XPS still has some of the slightest bezels on the planet it has Windows hello built into the top camera and it has a gorgeous display but it's capped at 60 hertz no matter how much you spend and if you do spend that extra money to get the nicer display You're Gonna Lose a very big chunk of your battery life and you're gonna lose out on brightness going from 500 nits to 400 nits if you upgrade on the other hand the Apple display is the nicest display that you will find on a laptop period it's insane that they put this kind of display even on the base model of the 14-inch MacBook it goes up to 120hz refresh rate has a billion color combination and can go up to 1600 nits of HDR Max brightness this display is just amazing and I try it's a laptop it's for work I try not to be swayed by screen performance too much but this screen is just too good plus speaker wise you also cannot compete with apple I mean I definitely wouldn't want to so don't worry about the everyday ad getting into a laptop speaker manufacturing business is that it is that thing there is nothing wrong with the XPS speakers they sound fine in a vacuum it's just not the same also when we talk about battery life the M2 MacBook Pro 14 is insane I never worry about this dying on me even if I have to travel or work for long hours in the office without being able to plug in the Dell on the other hand is fine and it has usable battery life but It suffers from normal Windows problems of having simply okay battery life but not battery life that I would ever depend on if needed you also lose a really big chunk of power the second you unplug it for a wall yes you can manage that around a little bit but remember every bit you bump up the performance you bump down a chunk of your usable life of the laptop practically speaking though the two laptops are remarkably similar in actual use except for three seemingly small differences but these are differences nonetheless and they pushed me into an actual recommendation you can upgrade the RAM and solid state drive on the XPS if you want to it's really easy and yes it sucks that Apple doesn't let you do this I think that's a huge issue especially with the pro machines having the space that they could let you do this one downside though is the XPS 15 uses high-end ddr5 RAM and while I don't mean to say that it's bad in a performance way it's bad in that older sticks of memory are incompatible so you don't really save too much money upgrading this yourself number two the Dell For Better or Worse has an Intel processor and that means if you are using this for anything other than browsing very low powered light footprinted websites these fans will turn on and if you try something as radical as playing World of Warcraft classic or video editing from this machine those fans will be very loud and very annoying and the thermal performance is not something that I'm happy with on the XPS 15 and then number three something I didn't realize or consider about this is that when you plug the XPS into that HDMI adapter the graphics card the computer uses by default on external displays is the integrated Intel Graphics that means 60hz refresh rates on even high-end gaming monitors I'm sure there is a way to set the Nvidia card to be the primary but it wasn't easily accessible to me and all I have to do to get maximum external display power on my MacBook is I just plug in an HDMI cable but frankly neither of these two laptops are bad they are both good laptops that will suit you well but in a shocking twist I don't recommend either of these These are fine don't buy them because there is a laptop out there that costs 500 less than the mac and almost a thousand dollars less than the dell and it's just as useful what's it hold on I've been hiding it here the whole time it's the M1 MacBook Pro 14. this can be had for 1539 refurbished from Apple that gets you the exact same body and most of the same capabilities as the M2 MacBook with all of the other better stuff that we already talked about over the Dell if you are looking for a travel Powerhouse of a computer don't get either the two laptops we've talked about today and get the M1 MacBook Pro 14. it's literally the best value professional laptop ever made I have no problems recommending this and if you want to see more about the M1 MacBook Pro 14 click here click click click click click click click thanks for watchingwho the age-old Dell vs apple rivalry so how does the latest M2 MacBook Pro 14 and the latest 13th generation Dell XPS stack up against each other I don't know first off I think we need to talk about the specs and the ordering options for these two computers because in a surprising move the base model Apple isn't actually the most expensive option that we'll talk about today I know that that's normally the apples the expensive one I know that's normally the thing but that's not it today so the M2 MacBook Pro comes in at 19.99. for that money you'll get the latest 10 core M2 Pro processor a 16 core GPU 16 gigabytes of unified memory and a 512 gigabyte solid state drive now we will talk more about the physical construction and the specs in a bit but internally those are the big selling points the new XPS comes in at a base model price of 23.99 now this specific price I don't consider to be set in stone Dell is constantly updating certain spec options after their products hit the market so if you watch this video months after it comes out this might actually be cheaper but as of today the cheapest model you can get is 23.99 and that base model comes with a 14 core Intel I9 third 900h processor Nvidia 40 78 gigabytes graphics card 16 gigabytes of ddr5 RAM and a 512 gigabyte solid state drive now that's just the cheapest base options for both computers it is a much different story when we look at the highest end now the top end of the MacBook is a 12 core M2 Max processor 38 core GPU 96 gigabytes of unified memory and an 8 terabyte solid state drive that machine that little old laptop that fits all that crazy stuff into this kind of a space that comes in at a pittance of 62.99 and oh yes I felt gross calling that a pittance hole that's a crazy amount of money for a laptop the XPS doesn't have as many upgrade options you can upgrade the processor or the graphics card but you can get up to 64 gigabytes of ddr5 memory and an 8 terabyte Solitaire Drive combining all of that with an upgraded 3.5 K OLED touchscreen display for 46.96 let's move over to the performance I'm pulling some benchmarks from folks way better at running those those benchmarks than myself it does look like the I9 is the more powerful chip when compared to the M2 Pro now the M2 Max maybe that's a different conversation again I'm not specking these all the way out I have the M2 Pro and I have the 13th gen I9 now I don't know that saying the I9 is more powerful is actually saying that much because any processor can be more powerful than any other it just takes more heat and more power to do so and while the I9 does make the bar chart go up it doesn't have the power optimization of the M2 and part of a laptop's job is making the battery last as long as possible right and having that long life with usable power graphically wise though I will have to swap over and give that to the XPS 15. having a dedicated graphics card is really useful for a whole range of topics especially if you want to run any specifically graphically intense programs that aren't already optimized for Apple's Arm based processor architecture but if you do primarily use programs that have been optimized I would say usable performance across the board for both machines is about equal however when we start looking at the bodies of the laptops themselves there are some very important differences the XPS 15 has the same design layout that xps's have had the past few years it's got a very Sleek design a very comfortable carbon fiber top some of the best keyboard typing experience around and it has high powered Thunderbolt 4 ports additionally it has an SD card slot and a headphone jack built right into the laptop body before Apple updated their MacBooks this was the definition of what somebody that makes money with their computer needs and some folks might call that person a professional but again but Apple did update their laptops and now the MacBook has ports rivaling and surpassing the XPS especially in one notable area the MacBook also has Thunderbolt 4 it has SD card slot and it has a headphone jack but most importantly for me it comes with a built-in HDMI port and yes the Dell does come with a usba and HDMI dongle which is much appreciated but look I literally use this HDMI port every single day I personally yes this is subjective welcome to the subjectivity of YouTube opinions uh I think that all laptops need this to be built in the rest of the MacBook body is also no slouch another amazing keyboard probably the best trackpad in the business an okay-ish feeling top I still don't like how Jagged and sharp the edges of this laptop are but you will not find build quality rivaling this in other laptop Brands I mean one of those Keynotes speaking of build quality is in this XPS 15 it came to me again with a wobbly trackpad and a very annoying Creek in the hinge whenever it's open and close listen to this I just I hate that and I'm absolutely willing to chalk that up to a specific problem with my personal laptop that I bought and it's probably not a good sample to Tar the whole XPS lineup with but I've had several xps's with wonky track pads over the past few years and I've literally never had a build quality problem with a Macbook physically though I do prefer typing on the XPS the slight angle of the body combined with that carbon fiber top is probably the best typing experience that I've found on a laptop thus far it's really it's really good I love I typed this whole script on this laptop because I love typing on the XPS display wise it's not really a contest though the XPS still has some of the slightest bezels on the planet it has Windows hello built into the top camera and it has a gorgeous display but it's capped at 60 hertz no matter how much you spend and if you do spend that extra money to get the nicer display You're Gonna Lose a very big chunk of your battery life and you're gonna lose out on brightness going from 500 nits to 400 nits if you upgrade on the other hand the Apple display is the nicest display that you will find on a laptop period it's insane that they put this kind of display even on the base model of the 14-inch MacBook it goes up to 120hz refresh rate has a billion color combination and can go up to 1600 nits of HDR Max brightness this display is just amazing and I try it's a laptop it's for work I try not to be swayed by screen performance too much but this screen is just too good plus speaker wise you also cannot compete with apple I mean I definitely wouldn't want to so don't worry about the everyday ad getting into a laptop speaker manufacturing business is that it is that thing there is nothing wrong with the XPS speakers they sound fine in a vacuum it's just not the same also when we talk about battery life the M2 MacBook Pro 14 is insane I never worry about this dying on me even if I have to travel or work for long hours in the office without being able to plug in the Dell on the other hand is fine and it has usable battery life but It suffers from normal Windows problems of having simply okay battery life but not battery life that I would ever depend on if needed you also lose a really big chunk of power the second you unplug it for a wall yes you can manage that around a little bit but remember every bit you bump up the performance you bump down a chunk of your usable life of the laptop practically speaking though the two laptops are remarkably similar in actual use except for three seemingly small differences but these are differences nonetheless and they pushed me into an actual recommendation you can upgrade the RAM and solid state drive on the XPS if you want to it's really easy and yes it sucks that Apple doesn't let you do this I think that's a huge issue especially with the pro machines having the space that they could let you do this one downside though is the XPS 15 uses high-end ddr5 RAM and while I don't mean to say that it's bad in a performance way it's bad in that older sticks of memory are incompatible so you don't really save too much money upgrading this yourself number two the Dell For Better or Worse has an Intel processor and that means if you are using this for anything other than browsing very low powered light footprinted websites these fans will turn on and if you try something as radical as playing World of Warcraft classic or video editing from this machine those fans will be very loud and very annoying and the thermal performance is not something that I'm happy with on the XPS 15 and then number three something I didn't realize or consider about this is that when you plug the XPS into that HDMI adapter the graphics card the computer uses by default on external displays is the integrated Intel Graphics that means 60hz refresh rates on even high-end gaming monitors I'm sure there is a way to set the Nvidia card to be the primary but it wasn't easily accessible to me and all I have to do to get maximum external display power on my MacBook is I just plug in an HDMI cable but frankly neither of these two laptops are bad they are both good laptops that will suit you well but in a shocking twist I don't recommend either of these These are fine don't buy them because there is a laptop out there that costs 500 less than the mac and almost a thousand dollars less than the dell and it's just as useful what's it hold on I've been hiding it here the whole time it's the M1 MacBook Pro 14. this can be had for 1539 refurbished from Apple that gets you the exact same body and most of the same capabilities as the M2 MacBook with all of the other better stuff that we already talked about over the Dell if you are looking for a travel Powerhouse of a computer don't get either the two laptops we've talked about today and get the M1 MacBook Pro 14. it's literally the best value professional laptop ever made I have no problems recommending this and if you want to see more about the M1 MacBook Pro 14 click here click click click click click click click thanks for watching\n"