Dell XPS 15 (9570): XPS 15 2018 review

Our View

It's very good product for content creators. It has awesome build quality but it has thermal throttling limitations.

In Favour	Against
Best build quality	Thermal throttling
Long battery life	Single SSD slot
Thunderbolt 3 with 4 lanes of PCIe support	Average speakers
Good keyboard and trackpad	Webcam is a nose cam
Awesome 4k panel	GTX 1050ti is not so great

Design and Specifications

In late 2015, Dell came out with the first good looking XPS 15 (9550). This was a time where most of the laptops were pretty unsightly, except MacBooks. Most windows laptops looked quite bad because  they were thick, most of them were made up of plastic and those who were made up of aluminum, they didn't look particularly good. That first XPS 15 of 2015 was special. It looked good, it was thin, it was pretty powerful but it had thermal limitations.

Next year Dell came up with the XPS 15 (9560). It has same design but the same issues. It had thermal limitations.

Now in 2018, Dell came out with XPS 15 (9570). In past few years, laptop market has been changed. This year there are a lot of good looking thin and light powerful laptops. So XPS 15 does't really stick out as being the obvious choice for someone who wants something like this.

Now the question is, Is XPS 15 still good? And the answer is yeah. It is but there are some issues that I have with it. Its still has the best exterior build for the 15 inch windows laptops. I still thinks the XPS 15 is the leader. It has an awesome exterior. Carbon fiber stuff inside, it feels nice and soft to touch, it's durable and holds up well over time.

This year XPS 15 comes with i5, i7 and i9 processors.

There is decent port selection and the thunderbolt 3 port finally supports four lanes of PCIe so if you want to connect to external GPU, you're getting full bandwidth.

It has an excellent track pad and a good keyboard with white backlighting.

It only has room for a single SSD slot. There is room for a secondary drive which is optional but it's a SATA drive and you also have to use a smaller battery if you avail that option.

Speakers are just OK. They are also not in the best position. They are underneath the laptop.

The Webcam is still a nose cam. It's standard this year but it still has that unflattering angle.

It has an awesome battery life. With the screen at  215 nits i am getting a 8 hours of battery life. That's better battery then the previous generation.

The screen is a 4k panel and I really like it. Its bright, its color accurate and it goes upto 400 nits. Its excellent for content creation or for anyone who like high quality and high resolution display. I think this is its best feature.

The GPU in this machine is GTX 1050ti and it pushes out really respectable frame rates for most modern games at 1080p.

Its also great for Adobe content. The new XPS 15 is little bit faster in Premiere than last year's model.

Description Table

Screen Size	15.6 inches
Screen resolution	3840 x 2160 / 1920 x 1080 pixels
Processor	Intel Core i5-5300H / Intel Core i7-8750H / Intel Core i9-9850HK
RAM	Up to 32GB DDR4-2666MHz
Hard Drive	Up to 1TB PCIe SSD Up to 1TB HDD
Graphics Coprocessor	Intel UHD Graphics 630 / Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 with 4GB GDDR5 / Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti with 4GB GDDR5
Wireless Type	802.11.ac
Item Weight	Starting at 4.0 pounds (56WHr battery) / Starting at 4.5 pounds (97WHr battery)
Product Dimensions	14.06 x 9.25 x 0.45-0.66 inches
Battery	56WHr / 97WHr
Ports	1x HDMI 2.0 2x USB-A 3.1 Gen1 1x USB-C with Thunderbolt 3 1x SD card reader 1x headphone/microphone jack
Price	$1,000+

Thermal performance

This is the topic that really defines this whole product line, even the XPS 15 from 3 years ago. If you push this device hard for extended period of time, you will run into thermal throttling. The i5 and the i7 throttles occasionally and the i9 throttles little bit more.

It honestly questions why they even put the i9 into the XPS 15 because the thermal limitations of this chassis are quite pronounced and just when you stick in a very powerful chip like the i9 into this, you just loose a lot of value of that chip because of the thermal design of this laptop. 

So this brings up the question of whether or not this thermal stuff is a serius issue. The answer is depend upon you. If thermal throttles deal breaker for you then just forget about it. Look at a different brand. But I don't feel like that's a legitimate thing. There are not really obvious alternatives to the XPS 15. There are devices that are similer like the Razer Blade, the AERO 15, GS65, but none of them are quite like the XPS 15. This really a class of its own. None of them are built as well as this, none of them have this super long battery life like this. Its a unique product. So if you want to find something that's like this without the thermal throttling, it doesn't exist.

Conclusion

This device is a unique machine with amaing build quality and a lot of great features but it's still have thermal throttling issue.

So There's really only two realistic options to solve that issue, 

1. You deal with its thermal throttling by repasting it and under vaulting it. Its not the easiest way but it is a way to get better thermals out of this thing.
2. Just understand that the XPS 15 was not built as a gaming device. It's not built to run stuff at full Tilt 24/7. It is a work oriented device. Its a thin and light, quiet laptop

Now if you still want that really amazing build quality you got to stick with this but if you just looking for raw performance , there are other options. This is what it is.