YOU Should Buy the Dell XPS 17 9710, And Here's Why!

A Look at the Incredible Technology of the Dell XPS 17 Laptop

As I sat down to appreciate the incredible technology that we have in 2021, I couldn't help but think back to the early days of computing. Specifically, I thought about what it would be like to use a Tandy computer from the early 90s and how amazed I would be by the display on this laptop. The Dell XPS 17's display is truly one of its standout features - a massive 16x10 screen that seems almost otherworldly. It's clear that technology has come a long way since those early days, but I have to say, I'm still in awe of how far we've come.

One thing that really struck me about the XPS 17 is its bezels. They're incredibly small, to the point where they seem almost invisible when you're using the laptop. It's like the screen just floats in front of you, making it feel incredibly immersive and engaging. I have to admit, I've gotten used to this kind of design in laptops, but it still takes my breath away every time I see it. Whether you're a gamer, a content creator, or just someone who loves staring at screens for hours on end, the XPS 17's display is sure to impress.

For those from the Apple laptop ecosystem, there's one feature that might surprise you - the ability to upgrade components yourself. Unlike Mac laptops, which often have soldered cases that make repairs impossible, the XPS 17 has two RAM slots and two M.2 SSD slots that can be easily upgraded. This is a game-changer for anyone who wants to customize their laptop without breaking the bank. And let me tell you, I was thrilled to upgrade my XPS 17 myself - adding 64GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD was a breeze, and it cost me about half what it would have cost to have the OEM do it.

But what really sets the XPS 17 apart from other laptops is its price. Yes, it's an expensive computer, but when you consider the power and features you get, I think it's absolutely worth every penny. The machine I originally reviewed came with an 8-core processor, 512GB of SSD storage, and a dedicated NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 graphics card - all for around $2,000. Compare that to a gaming laptop, which can cost upwards of $3,000 or more, and it's clear that the XPS 17 is an absolute steal.

And let's not forget about the competition - the Apple MacBook Pro 16, which is typically priced around $400-500 more than the XPS 17. But after using both machines for extended periods, I have to say that I think the XPS 17 holds its own against even the priciest Mac laptop on the market. Whether you're a creative professional or just someone who needs a powerful laptop for work, the XPS 17 is definitely worth considering.

So, what's my final verdict? Well, I don't have to say that this video has a "but" or a "henceforth" - the Dell XPS 17 is truly one of the best laptops out there right now. Whether you're in the market for a new machine or just want to upgrade your current one, I highly recommend giving the XPS 17 a look. It's an incredible laptop that checks all the boxes - power, portability, and style - and it's sure to leave you impressed.

And if you like this video, be sure to check out our other content for more reviews and comparisons of the latest laptops on the market. But one thing's for sure: I'm not done with the XPS 17 yet - in fact, I've got a follow-up video planned that compares it to its smaller sibling, the XPS 15. Stay tuned!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ensurprise the dell xps 17 has been updated to the 9710 and while those updates from the surface may look pretty minimal and really not like all that much has changed from last year i think when we look under the hood it's a pretty substantial upgrade and a fantastic laptop in its own right and you know what you should buy one so why is that let's find out oh that might have broken it did we nope we're good what's up everyone i'm the everyday dad and if i can figure it out you can figure it out so big almost we're almost pushing it we made it we made it though team we made it welcome back to the you should buy series a couple of quick notes before we get started about you should buy one i'll never make it you should buy a video on something that i haven't purchased myself for example this is my personal xps 17 and number two i don't actually want you to buy everything that i talk about in this series you should buy is more about the celebration of the positive things about consumer technology and the reasons to purchase them and not focus on just the negativity that surrounds all this stuff so with those disclaimers out of the way back to this 17. i've been very impressed with this machine i'm so impressed that this is actually my current windows computer long time viewers will know that i maintain both the windows and a mac setup at all times because sometimes you just need a little bit of both worlds it's how the world works you should never be trapped in one certain kind of system i was using a custom built windows pc for about a year but it was too big and too noisy and i like being able to take my wow rating with me when i need to so a few months ago i moved to my asus g17 with its ryzen 5900 hx but it's been giving me some weird issues so in the past few weeks i've moved to this and i could not be happier and that's the first reason to buy the xps 17 how easily this integrates into an existing desktop system this baby is rocking four thunderbolt 4 ports which basically it lets you do anything unless you do anything each of these ports could handle data display power and it could do that in spades you could theoretically have four separate dongles running to four separate desktop setups running to one computer i practically it doesn't make sense but it's pretty neat that you could get so much into one computer for me it's just been two plugs and i'm totally set up i have been using the power cable provided instead of running my power through a dock or dongle simply because i don't have a dock or dongle that provides enough power to this machine it's one of things that you also have to think about with the intel macbook pro 16. it requires more power than some of the docks and dongles you'll find out there but keyboard mouse monitor everything has been working perfectly and i can't even tell the difference between this and like the much more powerful gaming laptop except you know my rating has actually been going smoother i guess i heal better when using the xps that's sarcasm i don't heal very well at all the next reason to buy the xps 17 is the power and that might surprise some folks because this year you know 2021 has been the year of the ryzen power laptop if we go back to the beginning of the year everything that i was excited about in the laptop world was either powered by apple m1 or the new ryzen 9 series and we uh we all laugh there's proof of me laughing at companies that continue to use intel chips so i'm not going to say that this is the most powerful laptop i've ever used and i'm not gonna say you'll be able to triple a game at 4k resolution in 60 frames per second but this is way more powerful than i originally thought it would be i think dell hit the sweet spot here for productivity and creation power combined with a powerful enough gpu option i've got the model with the 3050 that you can get some serious crap done with this computer i get that my game you know wow classic the burning crusade is a 15 year old game so hey it's probably not the most intensive but at the higher settings it does have a decent amount of particle effects and i don't know shaders whatever magic stuff the games have that makes them work it has enough of that going on that i'm able to keep a stable frame rate and i'm pretty happy here plus when we ran our benchmarks and pushed this thing hard i never once saw a power drain problem nor have i seen thermal problems and for reference i have the eight core i7 model this is just a really fantastically powered machine and if you are benchmark focused this will answer the mail in single core and more impressively multi-core performance and the next reason to buy the xps 17 is kind of in line with the power and it's the thermal management yes the thermal design of a laptop is important enough to make it its own reason and the xps 17 might be the best thermally designed large productivity laptop that i've ever come across this is even better than the macbook pro 16. it has a full vapor chamber cooling system that is straight up amazing i when we talk about this i only have words that sound like hyperbole because of how ridiculous this is not only does it have that vapor chamber but i've really not heard the fan turn on all that high or loud either yes there is fan noise when doing things like rendering out 4k or running one of those tough on the cpu and gpu benchmarks but besides that this computer is pretty silent it's not as quiet as say my m1 mac mini or macbook pro but for a windows laptop this might be one of the best noise producing laptops of all time and when i say best i mean worse it's the worst because it has no noise and that kind of combination is what i look for in a laptop i personally don't need cutting edge power i need good enough power to run my video production and my project manager stuff at the same time and do so without sounding like a hair dryer when i'm trying to work and the 17 hits that mark really well the next reason to buy this is the overall size of the laptop i said this in my follow up video a couple of weeks ago but the most shocking thing about this in the xps 15 is just how small they are for how big of a screen this has this legitimately looks and feels like a standard 15-inch laptop while continuing to have that beautiful 17-inch monitor it boggles my mind that i'm able to say this many good things about a machine because normally you don't get all three you have to give up something to make a computer in my experience if you want a super small and thin laptop you've got to give up thermal performance because normally you can't fit in a good thermal system in such a thin laptop or you've got to give up on power because of that lack of thermals or you don't get a small and thin laptop because engineering those other two things in is too difficult somehow they found a way here because this easily fits into any of my backpacks and i've had no problems taking this with me the two times i've had to go into the office since buying this laptop this is exactly what i feel like a travel desktop computer should feel like to use and while we're talking about how this feels like a travel desktop another big positive about this machine and more like this is half a reason to get it is the keyboard and overall design of the body of the laptop one this is the best feeling laptop body on the market i don't mean windows laptop i don't mean almost as good as apple i mean this is the best feeling this carbon fiber top feels so good to work on and it does not smudge and it does not get messed up like other brands out there two the keyboard is unique and i mean that in a good way this time normally when i say it's unique or special it's it's not a good thing but here i do mean that in a good way it's not like other laptop keyboards and that it's not clicky at all this is like the laptop where clicking and clacking goes to die listen it's just it's not there but this is like a smooth cushion that while you are typing your hands glide across the keys and it's incredibly easy to get up to speed working on this thing you do have to press a fraction harder than you might have to on something like say a macbook keyboard and i do overall prefer the macbook keyboard more but this is very good in its own right and i think this is a fantastic addition to the laptop why isn't this a full point then gary you said two positives but said it's only half a reason my youtube tech personality calculator doesn't compute on that one well it only gets half a point because the trackpad is pretty meh yes it exists yes i'm glad it's there but it's only there the real problem you'll run into when buying one of these computers is the so-so nature of dell's quality control if you get a good model keep hold of that sucker and if you get a bad model well then i'd return it for a good one that's what i did last year with the xps 17 9700 i had a bad trackpad model so i returned that thing the trackpad here is good enough for them not to lose a totally arbitrary youtube point scale system point but it's not good enough to win them any of those fake points we were talking about the size of the laptop and i want to get back to that a second because we only get a laptop of this size because of one thing they shrank the bezels on the display to the smallest you'll probably find and the display yes the display is a reason by itself to buy the laptop this display is huge it's like a gigantic display that does almost feel like the size of an actual desktop monitor and for somebody that grew up using a tandy computer back in the early 90s this display on the laptop is like one of those or maybe even two of those stitched together i want to take a moment to really appreciate the kind of crazy technology that we have in 2021 i mean 10 year old gary back in 1993 would have thought that this was literally science fiction 16x10 displays are my favorite for laptops all laptops need this and if dell has been able to do this for a few years now i want this teeny tiny level of bezels and large form factor monitors on everything apple make it happen please please i'm i'm sorry apple i i didn't mean to yell i know i've said this before but it bears repeating that because of how small the bezels are when you are using the laptop they really just fade away and it's like a screen is just floating in front of you and that's the coolest thing ever it's like when you really get into the zone with one of those old magic eye books except that this doesn't give you a headache and make you dizzy when you eventually see you know the waves or the car or whatever you're trying to find in that if you are from mac laptop land and haven't used a windows laptop in a while this next reason might surprise you you can upgrade components on this laptop yourself crazy right like in mac land i'm pretty sure they solder the case together so even if you break something there's no way to fix it i'm i'm kidding about the soldering part but regular folks can't really fix their own macbooks right to repair is a huge issue and i hope it gains traction soon we should all be able to repair our own devices whether they're tractors or computers or anything if we have the knowledge and the tools we should be able to fix it but on the xps 17 you can upgrade the two ram slots and you get two m.2 ssd slots but wait there's more both slots already come with copper covers and thermal pads pre-installed this is the trifecta of upgrading memory on a laptop the xps 15 drives me nuts because it has the same functionality but it only has one copper cover and one thermal pad so you have to source the others yourself that is lame as we saw in its dedicated video i upgraded my xps 17 to have 64 gigabytes of ram and i added a 2 terabyte solid state drive for about half the price it would have cost to let the oem do it i love that and i will never not love it and the last reason to buy one of these laptops is something that i normally lead with but decided to shake things up today the price and okay we do need to take a step back and preface that yes these are expensive computers that's just the reality of buying a premium machine is how much they're going to cost but for the power and features you can get i do have an eight core machine with 512 gigabytes solid state drive originally came with 16 gigabytes of ram and the dedicated rtx 3050 graphics card that costs around 2 grand compared to a gaming laptop that's a lot but this is a very small very well thermally managed and very powerful work laptop that's absolutely competitively priced so i think that is better and well worth it over a gaming laptop and it beats the current macbook pro 16 by 400 to 500 bucks and i would venture that it will continue to be the newer version when it comes out later this year but at the end of the day so what right no matter the name of the video i absolutely recommend the xps 17 and what's cool is there isn't really a but or a hesitation to that either i don't have like a list of things in front of that saying well if you have this specific need this specific need this specific need well then yeah i recommend this if you need a powerful work or creative computer and you aren't married to the apple ecosystem this is the one to get i've thoroughly enjoyed using mine and i'm so happy that i bought this i've tried out a ton of laptops this year i've spent ridiculous amounts of money on laptops to show you all this year and i'd have to say of all of those the m1 macbook air and the dell xps 17 are currently tied for me as my favorites overall it even had look this thing even has an sd card slot how can we be mad at a laptop with an sd card slot i can't be mad at a laptop like that and if you like this video and you want to see how this compares to its smaller sibling the xps 15 good news i've got a video just for you that you can find by clicking right here click click click click click click click thanks for watchingsurprise the dell xps 17 has been updated to the 9710 and while those updates from the surface may look pretty minimal and really not like all that much has changed from last year i think when we look under the hood it's a pretty substantial upgrade and a fantastic laptop in its own right and you know what you should buy one so why is that let's find out oh that might have broken it did we nope we're good what's up everyone i'm the everyday dad and if i can figure it out you can figure it out so big almost we're almost pushing it we made it we made it though team we made it welcome back to the you should buy series a couple of quick notes before we get started about you should buy one i'll never make it you should buy a video on something that i haven't purchased myself for example this is my personal xps 17 and number two i don't actually want you to buy everything that i talk about in this series you should buy is more about the celebration of the positive things about consumer technology and the reasons to purchase them and not focus on just the negativity that surrounds all this stuff so with those disclaimers out of the way back to this 17. i've been very impressed with this machine i'm so impressed that this is actually my current windows computer long time viewers will know that i maintain both the windows and a mac setup at all times because sometimes you just need a little bit of both worlds it's how the world works you should never be trapped in one certain kind of system i was using a custom built windows pc for about a year but it was too big and too noisy and i like being able to take my wow rating with me when i need to so a few months ago i moved to my asus g17 with its ryzen 5900 hx but it's been giving me some weird issues so in the past few weeks i've moved to this and i could not be happier and that's the first reason to buy the xps 17 how easily this integrates into an existing desktop system this baby is rocking four thunderbolt 4 ports which basically it lets you do anything unless you do anything each of these ports could handle data display power and it could do that in spades you could theoretically have four separate dongles running to four separate desktop setups running to one computer i practically it doesn't make sense but it's pretty neat that you could get so much into one computer for me it's just been two plugs and i'm totally set up i have been using the power cable provided instead of running my power through a dock or dongle simply because i don't have a dock or dongle that provides enough power to this machine it's one of things that you also have to think about with the intel macbook pro 16. it requires more power than some of the docks and dongles you'll find out there but keyboard mouse monitor everything has been working perfectly and i can't even tell the difference between this and like the much more powerful gaming laptop except you know my rating has actually been going smoother i guess i heal better when using the xps that's sarcasm i don't heal very well at all the next reason to buy the xps 17 is the power and that might surprise some folks because this year you know 2021 has been the year of the ryzen power laptop if we go back to the beginning of the year everything that i was excited about in the laptop world was either powered by apple m1 or the new ryzen 9 series and we uh we all laugh there's proof of me laughing at companies that continue to use intel chips so i'm not going to say that this is the most powerful laptop i've ever used and i'm not gonna say you'll be able to triple a game at 4k resolution in 60 frames per second but this is way more powerful than i originally thought it would be i think dell hit the sweet spot here for productivity and creation power combined with a powerful enough gpu option i've got the model with the 3050 that you can get some serious crap done with this computer i get that my game you know wow classic the burning crusade is a 15 year old game so hey it's probably not the most intensive but at the higher settings it does have a decent amount of particle effects and i don't know shaders whatever magic stuff the games have that makes them work it has enough of that going on that i'm able to keep a stable frame rate and i'm pretty happy here plus when we ran our benchmarks and pushed this thing hard i never once saw a power drain problem nor have i seen thermal problems and for reference i have the eight core i7 model this is just a really fantastically powered machine and if you are benchmark focused this will answer the mail in single core and more impressively multi-core performance and the next reason to buy the xps 17 is kind of in line with the power and it's the thermal management yes the thermal design of a laptop is important enough to make it its own reason and the xps 17 might be the best thermally designed large productivity laptop that i've ever come across this is even better than the macbook pro 16. it has a full vapor chamber cooling system that is straight up amazing i when we talk about this i only have words that sound like hyperbole because of how ridiculous this is not only does it have that vapor chamber but i've really not heard the fan turn on all that high or loud either yes there is fan noise when doing things like rendering out 4k or running one of those tough on the cpu and gpu benchmarks but besides that this computer is pretty silent it's not as quiet as say my m1 mac mini or macbook pro but for a windows laptop this might be one of the best noise producing laptops of all time and when i say best i mean worse it's the worst because it has no noise and that kind of combination is what i look for in a laptop i personally don't need cutting edge power i need good enough power to run my video production and my project manager stuff at the same time and do so without sounding like a hair dryer when i'm trying to work and the 17 hits that mark really well the next reason to buy this is the overall size of the laptop i said this in my follow up video a couple of weeks ago but the most shocking thing about this in the xps 15 is just how small they are for how big of a screen this has this legitimately looks and feels like a standard 15-inch laptop while continuing to have that beautiful 17-inch monitor it boggles my mind that i'm able to say this many good things about a machine because normally you don't get all three you have to give up something to make a computer in my experience if you want a super small and thin laptop you've got to give up thermal performance because normally you can't fit in a good thermal system in such a thin laptop or you've got to give up on power because of that lack of thermals or you don't get a small and thin laptop because engineering those other two things in is too difficult somehow they found a way here because this easily fits into any of my backpacks and i've had no problems taking this with me the two times i've had to go into the office since buying this laptop this is exactly what i feel like a travel desktop computer should feel like to use and while we're talking about how this feels like a travel desktop another big positive about this machine and more like this is half a reason to get it is the keyboard and overall design of the body of the laptop one this is the best feeling laptop body on the market i don't mean windows laptop i don't mean almost as good as apple i mean this is the best feeling this carbon fiber top feels so good to work on and it does not smudge and it does not get messed up like other brands out there two the keyboard is unique and i mean that in a good way this time normally when i say it's unique or special it's it's not a good thing but here i do mean that in a good way it's not like other laptop keyboards and that it's not clicky at all this is like the laptop where clicking and clacking goes to die listen it's just it's not there but this is like a smooth cushion that while you are typing your hands glide across the keys and it's incredibly easy to get up to speed working on this thing you do have to press a fraction harder than you might have to on something like say a macbook keyboard and i do overall prefer the macbook keyboard more but this is very good in its own right and i think this is a fantastic addition to the laptop why isn't this a full point then gary you said two positives but said it's only half a reason my youtube tech personality calculator doesn't compute on that one well it only gets half a point because the trackpad is pretty meh yes it exists yes i'm glad it's there but it's only there the real problem you'll run into when buying one of these computers is the so-so nature of dell's quality control if you get a good model keep hold of that sucker and if you get a bad model well then i'd return it for a good one that's what i did last year with the xps 17 9700 i had a bad trackpad model so i returned that thing the trackpad here is good enough for them not to lose a totally arbitrary youtube point scale system point but it's not good enough to win them any of those fake points we were talking about the size of the laptop and i want to get back to that a second because we only get a laptop of this size because of one thing they shrank the bezels on the display to the smallest you'll probably find and the display yes the display is a reason by itself to buy the laptop this display is huge it's like a gigantic display that does almost feel like the size of an actual desktop monitor and for somebody that grew up using a tandy computer back in the early 90s this display on the laptop is like one of those or maybe even two of those stitched together i want to take a moment to really appreciate the kind of crazy technology that we have in 2021 i mean 10 year old gary back in 1993 would have thought that this was literally science fiction 16x10 displays are my favorite for laptops all laptops need this and if dell has been able to do this for a few years now i want this teeny tiny level of bezels and large form factor monitors on everything apple make it happen please please i'm i'm sorry apple i i didn't mean to yell i know i've said this before but it bears repeating that because of how small the bezels are when you are using the laptop they really just fade away and it's like a screen is just floating in front of you and that's the coolest thing ever it's like when you really get into the zone with one of those old magic eye books except that this doesn't give you a headache and make you dizzy when you eventually see you know the waves or the car or whatever you're trying to find in that if you are from mac laptop land and haven't used a windows laptop in a while this next reason might surprise you you can upgrade components on this laptop yourself crazy right like in mac land i'm pretty sure they solder the case together so even if you break something there's no way to fix it i'm i'm kidding about the soldering part but regular folks can't really fix their own macbooks right to repair is a huge issue and i hope it gains traction soon we should all be able to repair our own devices whether they're tractors or computers or anything if we have the knowledge and the tools we should be able to fix it but on the xps 17 you can upgrade the two ram slots and you get two m.2 ssd slots but wait there's more both slots already come with copper covers and thermal pads pre-installed this is the trifecta of upgrading memory on a laptop the xps 15 drives me nuts because it has the same functionality but it only has one copper cover and one thermal pad so you have to source the others yourself that is lame as we saw in its dedicated video i upgraded my xps 17 to have 64 gigabytes of ram and i added a 2 terabyte solid state drive for about half the price it would have cost to let the oem do it i love that and i will never not love it and the last reason to buy one of these laptops is something that i normally lead with but decided to shake things up today the price and okay we do need to take a step back and preface that yes these are expensive computers that's just the reality of buying a premium machine is how much they're going to cost but for the power and features you can get i do have an eight core machine with 512 gigabytes solid state drive originally came with 16 gigabytes of ram and the dedicated rtx 3050 graphics card that costs around 2 grand compared to a gaming laptop that's a lot but this is a very small very well thermally managed and very powerful work laptop that's absolutely competitively priced so i think that is better and well worth it over a gaming laptop and it beats the current macbook pro 16 by 400 to 500 bucks and i would venture that it will continue to be the newer version when it comes out later this year but at the end of the day so what right no matter the name of the video i absolutely recommend the xps 17 and what's cool is there isn't really a but or a hesitation to that either i don't have like a list of things in front of that saying well if you have this specific need this specific need this specific need well then yeah i recommend this if you need a powerful work or creative computer and you aren't married to the apple ecosystem this is the one to get i've thoroughly enjoyed using mine and i'm so happy that i bought this i've tried out a ton of laptops this year i've spent ridiculous amounts of money on laptops to show you all this year and i'd have to say of all of those the m1 macbook air and the dell xps 17 are currently tied for me as my favorites overall it even had look this thing even has an sd card slot how can we be mad at a laptop with an sd card slot i can't be mad at a laptop like that and if you like this video and you want to see how this compares to its smaller sibling the xps 15 good news i've got a video just for you that you can find by clicking right here click click click click click click click thanks for watchingsurprise the dell xps 17 has been updated to the 9710 and while those updates from the surface may look pretty minimal and really not like all that much has changed from last year i think when we look under the hood it's a pretty substantial upgrade and a fantastic laptop in its own right and you know what you should buy one so why is that let's find out oh that might have broken it did we nope we're good what's up everyone i'm the everyday dad and if i can figure it out you can figure it out so big almost we're almost pushing it we made it we made it though team we made it welcome back to the you should buy series a couple of quick notes before we get started about you should buy one i'll never make it you should buy a video on something that i haven't purchased myself for example this is my personal xps 17 and number two i don't actually want you to buy everything that i talk about in this series you should buy is more about the celebration of the positive things about consumer technology and the reasons to purchase them and not focus on just the negativity that surrounds all this stuff so with those disclaimers out of the way back to this 17. i've been very impressed with this machine i'm so impressed that this is actually my current windows computer long time viewers will know that i maintain both the windows and a mac setup at all times because sometimes you just need a little bit of both worlds it's how the world works you should never be trapped in one certain kind of system i was using a custom built windows pc for about a year but it was too big and too noisy and i like being able to take my wow rating with me when i need to so a few months ago i moved to my asus g17 with its ryzen 5900 hx but it's been giving me some weird issues so in the past few weeks i've moved to this and i could not be happier and that's the first reason to buy the xps 17 how easily this integrates into an existing desktop system this baby is rocking four thunderbolt 4 ports which basically it lets you do anything unless you do anything each of these ports could handle data display power and it could do that in spades you could theoretically have four separate dongles running to four separate desktop setups running to one computer i practically it doesn't make sense but it's pretty neat that you could get so much into one computer for me it's just been two plugs and i'm totally set up i have been using the power cable provided instead of running my power through a dock or dongle simply because i don't have a dock or dongle that provides enough power to this machine it's one of things that you also have to think about with the intel macbook pro 16. it requires more power than some of the docks and dongles you'll find out there but keyboard mouse monitor everything has been working perfectly and i can't even tell the difference between this and like the much more powerful gaming laptop except you know my rating has actually been going smoother i guess i heal better when using the xps that's sarcasm i don't heal very well at all the next reason to buy the xps 17 is the power and that might surprise some folks because this year you know 2021 has been the year of the ryzen power laptop if we go back to the beginning of the year everything that i was excited about in the laptop world was either powered by apple m1 or the new ryzen 9 series and we uh we all laugh there's proof of me laughing at companies that continue to use intel chips so i'm not going to say that this is the most powerful laptop i've ever used and i'm not gonna say you'll be able to triple a game at 4k resolution in 60 frames per second but this is way more powerful than i originally thought it would be i think dell hit the sweet spot here for productivity and creation power combined with a powerful enough gpu option i've got the model with the 3050 that you can get some serious crap done with this computer i get that my game you know wow classic the burning crusade is a 15 year old game so hey it's probably not the most intensive but at the higher settings it does have a decent amount of particle effects and i don't know shaders whatever magic stuff the games have that makes them work it has enough of that going on that i'm able to keep a stable frame rate and i'm pretty happy here plus when we ran our benchmarks and pushed this thing hard i never once saw a power drain problem nor have i seen thermal problems and for reference i have the eight core i7 model this is just a really fantastically powered machine and if you are benchmark focused this will answer the mail in single core and more impressively multi-core performance and the next reason to buy the xps 17 is kind of in line with the power and it's the thermal management yes the thermal design of a laptop is important enough to make it its own reason and the xps 17 might be the best thermally designed large productivity laptop that i've ever come across this is even better than the macbook pro 16. it has a full vapor chamber cooling system that is straight up amazing i when we talk about this i only have words that sound like hyperbole because of how ridiculous this is not only does it have that vapor chamber but i've really not heard the fan turn on all that high or loud either yes there is fan noise when doing things like rendering out 4k or running one of those tough on the cpu and gpu benchmarks but besides that this computer is pretty silent it's not as quiet as say my m1 mac mini or macbook pro but for a windows laptop this might be one of the best noise producing laptops of all time and when i say best i mean worse it's the worst because it has no noise and that kind of combination is what i look for in a laptop i personally don't need cutting edge power i need good enough power to run my video production and my project manager stuff at the same time and do so without sounding like a hair dryer when i'm trying to work and the 17 hits that mark really well the next reason to buy this is the overall size of the laptop i said this in my follow up video a couple of weeks ago but the most shocking thing about this in the xps 15 is just how small they are for how big of a screen this has this legitimately looks and feels like a standard 15-inch laptop while continuing to have that beautiful 17-inch monitor it boggles my mind that i'm able to say this many good things about a machine because normally you don't get all three you have to give up something to make a computer in my experience if you want a super small and thin laptop you've got to give up thermal performance because normally you can't fit in a good thermal system in such a thin laptop or you've got to give up on power because of that lack of thermals or you don't get a small and thin laptop because engineering those other two things in is too difficult somehow they found a way here because this easily fits into any of my backpacks and i've had no problems taking this with me the two times i've had to go into the office since buying this laptop this is exactly what i feel like a travel desktop computer should feel like to use and while we're talking about how this feels like a travel desktop another big positive about this machine and more like this is half a reason to get it is the keyboard and overall design of the body of the laptop one this is the best feeling laptop body on the market i don't mean windows laptop i don't mean almost as good as apple i mean this is the best feeling this carbon fiber top feels so good to work on and it does not smudge and it does not get messed up like other brands out there two the keyboard is unique and i mean that in a good way this time normally when i say it's unique or special it's it's not a good thing but here i do mean that in a good way it's not like other laptop keyboards and that it's not clicky at all this is like the laptop where clicking and clacking goes to die listen it's just it's not there but this is like a smooth cushion that while you are typing your hands glide across the keys and it's incredibly easy to get up to speed working on this thing you do have to press a fraction harder than you might have to on something like say a macbook keyboard and i do overall prefer the macbook keyboard more but this is very good in its own right and i think this is a fantastic addition to the laptop why isn't this a full point then gary you said two positives but said it's only half a reason my youtube tech personality calculator doesn't compute on that one well it only gets half a point because the trackpad is pretty meh yes it exists yes i'm glad it's there but it's only there the real problem you'll run into when buying one of these computers is the so-so nature of dell's quality control if you get a good model keep hold of that sucker and if you get a bad model well then i'd return it for a good one that's what i did last year with the xps 17 9700 i had a bad trackpad model so i returned that thing the trackpad here is good enough for them not to lose a totally arbitrary youtube point scale system point but it's not good enough to win them any of those fake points we were talking about the size of the laptop and i want to get back to that a second because we only get a laptop of this size because of one thing they shrank the bezels on the display to the smallest you'll probably find and the display yes the display is a reason by itself to buy the laptop this display is huge it's like a gigantic display that does almost feel like the size of an actual desktop monitor and for somebody that grew up using a tandy computer back in the early 90s this display on the laptop is like one of those or maybe even two of those stitched together i want to take a moment to really appreciate the kind of crazy technology that we have in 2021 i mean 10 year old gary back in 1993 would have thought that this was literally science fiction 16x10 displays are my favorite for laptops all laptops need this and if dell has been able to do this for a few years now i want this teeny tiny level of bezels and large form factor monitors on everything apple make it happen please please i'm i'm sorry apple i i didn't mean to yell i know i've said this before but it bears repeating that because of how small the bezels are when you are using the laptop they really just fade away and it's like a screen is just floating in front of you and that's the coolest thing ever it's like when you really get into the zone with one of those old magic eye books except that this doesn't give you a headache and make you dizzy when you eventually see you know the waves or the car or whatever you're trying to find in that if you are from mac laptop land and haven't used a windows laptop in a while this next reason might surprise you you can upgrade components on this laptop yourself crazy right like in mac land i'm pretty sure they solder the case together so even if you break something there's no way to fix it i'm i'm kidding about the soldering part but regular folks can't really fix their own macbooks right to repair is a huge issue and i hope it gains traction soon we should all be able to repair our own devices whether they're tractors or computers or anything if we have the knowledge and the tools we should be able to fix it but on the xps 17 you can upgrade the two ram slots and you get two m.2 ssd slots but wait there's more both slots already come with copper covers and thermal pads pre-installed this is the trifecta of upgrading memory on a laptop the xps 15 drives me nuts because it has the same functionality but it only has one copper cover and one thermal pad so you have to source the others yourself that is lame as we saw in its dedicated video i upgraded my xps 17 to have 64 gigabytes of ram and i added a 2 terabyte solid state drive for about half the price it would have cost to let the oem do it i love that and i will never not love it and the last reason to buy one of these laptops is something that i normally lead with but decided to shake things up today the price and okay we do need to take a step back and preface that yes these are expensive computers that's just the reality of buying a premium machine is how much they're going to cost but for the power and features you can get i do have an eight core machine with 512 gigabytes solid state drive originally came with 16 gigabytes of ram and the dedicated rtx 3050 graphics card that costs around 2 grand compared to a gaming laptop that's a lot but this is a very small very well thermally managed and very powerful work laptop that's absolutely competitively priced so i think that is better and well worth it over a gaming laptop and it beats the current macbook pro 16 by 400 to 500 bucks and i would venture that it will continue to be the newer version when it comes out later this year but at the end of the day so what right no matter the name of the video i absolutely recommend the xps 17 and what's cool is there isn't really a but or a hesitation to that either i don't have like a list of things in front of that saying well if you have this specific need this specific need this specific need well then yeah i recommend this if you need a powerful work or creative computer and you aren't married to the apple ecosystem this is the one to get i've thoroughly enjoyed using mine and i'm so happy that i bought this i've tried out a ton of laptops this year i've spent ridiculous amounts of money on laptops to show you all this year and i'd have to say of all of those the m1 macbook air and the dell xps 17 are currently tied for me as my favorites overall it even had look this thing even has an sd card slot how can we be mad at a laptop with an sd card slot i can't be mad at a laptop like that and if you like this video and you want to see how this compares to its smaller sibling the xps 15 good news i've got a video just for you that you can find by clicking right here click click click click click click click thanks for watching\n"