Dell XPS 15 L521X: A Detailed First Look
by Jarred Walton on July 25, 2012 1:10 AM ESTDell XPS 15 Battery Life
Dell uses a 9-cell, 65Wh integrated battery in the XPS 15 that’s not user replaceable, which is similar to what we’ve seen in the previous generation XPS 15z as well as the MacBook Pro 15. Apple uses a higher capacity battery, and under OS X the MBP15 will generally offer superior battery life, but unless something has changed since our last look we would expect greatly decreased battery life under Windows via Boot Camp. Since the XPS 15 is designed to run Windows from the ground up, there isn’t a problem with lack of power optimizations, and the result is competitive battery life. The LCD was set to 50% brightness (109 nits) for our battery testing—or nine steps down from maximum if you’re using the keyboard shortcut.
Idle battery life is just over seven hours, with a normalized result putting the XPS 15 ahead of everything except Ultrabooks and AMD’s Trinity. Put a more typical load on the laptops, like our Internet test, and we’re at five hours of useful battery life. If you’re doing lighter web surfing with a mix of office applications, you can expect somewhere around six hours of battery life. As for video playback, Dell manages just over four hours of 720p H.264 decoding; 1080p H.264 decoding drops that slightly to around 3.5 hours. That’s actually one of the lower results for battery life considering the battery capacity, though it’s worth noting that playback on higher resolution displays ends up being more taxing as there are more pixels to push. Overall, then, battery life is good and will be sufficient for most people to get through a day’s work without plugging in, particularly if they let the LCD turn off and/or the laptop go to sleep during periods of inactivity.
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tipoo - Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - link
It just seems strange that they would ship a laptop which throttles in just minutes, this isn't even a super small ultrabook, it's a standard sized laptop. Maybe there's a problem with the physical seating of the heatsink? Or a BIOS issue maybe?JarredWalton - Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - link
They're working on the BIOS. I wondered about the problem being specific to my unit as well, but there are a lot of users reporting similar issues right now so that doesn't seem to be the case.dragosmp - Thursday, July 26, 2012 - link
Thanks for the reply. I missed the point of it throttling only when using both CPU and GPU.It makes sense that they'd size the cooling for a "typical" TDP and not for the 100%TDP. This is usual practice when sizing cooling systems for high end products, by the same rationale you'd get a huge ugly stuff if one were to size the cooling radiators for a Ferrari for the airflow @20MPH New York traffic without the ECU reducing power. It is form over function and I would prefer to have the cake and eat it too, but this perfectly acceptable in my opinion. I probably misread that one can't use the CPU by itself without throttling, that would be unacceptable.alfling - Thursday, July 26, 2012 - link
lol you can't play 10 minutes without throttlestop...acceptable? whith that price??CeriseCogburn - Sunday, July 29, 2012 - link
The point is "fanboys". Thus it will be marketed and sold.nerd1 - Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - link
I've been a fan of anand site but I think it's getting bit ridiculous.I don't think this laptop will have lot worse thermal compared to MBP or rMBP - Why I cannot see any 'torture' test on MBPs, like bootcamp + CPU benchmark + GPU benchmark? Many of my friends have MBP and I know they are toasty enough, and some reviewer reported throttling issue with rMBP with such a test.
And please compare apple to apples. How much apple charge for RAM or HDD upgrade? (It is plain stupid they are still using 5400rpm drive I think) How much does it cost to get SSD+HDD setup or blueray drive for macbooks? How much does it cost to upgrade macbook screen to 1680*1050? How easy is it to get discount coupons for them?
In practice, you can get a good windows laptop (like the new xps 15) at around $1200 (with easy-to-acquire coupons) and you have to pay full retail price of around $2000 for similarly spec'ed macbook pro 15. I do own a MBA (Which I think is still price-competitive) but all the MBP lines are just plain ripoff.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - link
Give me a break. I am one of the least pro-Apple people around, as I really dislike OS X -- just ask Anand. I do a price comparison on the front page showing how they stack up and conclude that in many areas Dell has the lead. What about throttling on Apple laptops? Well, sadly I'm not the one doing MBP reviews so I can't run those tests. What I can tell you is that Vivek repeatedly ran HL2:EP2 on the latest MBP15 to see if there was any drop in frame rates:http://images.anandtech.com/doci/6037/MBP12-HL2End...
If I made a chart like that for the current A04 BIOS on the XPS 15, there would be a cliff after the first run, dropping from 160FPS to around 80FPS. But hopefully Dell can address that with the next BIOS. Will MBP15 throttle under a stress test workload? I'm almost sure it will, but perhaps not as badly as the XPS 15 right now. What about the Retina MBP? Well, that's a different beast with two fans and apparently significantly improved cooling, and early results suggest it doesn't have any issues with throttling.
Apple makes some very compelling laptops, but ultimately the only reason I would ever consider one is if I were willing to run OS X. I'm not, and thus laptops like the XPS 15 are very much something I want to succeed. A bit more fine tuning and hopefully Dell will get there, as the throttling is the biggest issue I have right now. (The only other major complaint I have is the good but not great LCD.)
nerd1 - Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - link
I just wanted to point out macbook are way more expensive in practice.And I don't think HL2:EP2 is a good benchmark for throttling - I'm pretty sure even internal graphics are sufficient to run them flawlessly these days. One german site used bootcamp and prime95 and they succeeded to make rMBP throttle at 1.2Ghz.
headbox - Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - link
How about doing a RESELL price comparison?! You whine about Apple MBP cost, but in 2 years you can sell it for around 80% of what you paid for it, and tons of people will bid/call you about it. Sell a two-year-old Dell... that phone won't be ringing much, and you'll be lucky to get 50% of what you paid for it. I had the first gen unibody MBP- got it for $1800 and sold it 2.5 years later for $1500 within a couple hours of posting it on craigslist. Try to do that with a "cheaper" PC.alfling - Thursday, July 26, 2012 - link
Someone who buys a 2-year-old used laptop for 80% of its original price (whatever laptop it is) is just a total idiot, no doubts about this. I guess it's full of idiot apple customers out there