Dell XPS 15 Haswell Edition: QHD+ with a Refined Design
by Jarred Walton on March 6, 2014 7:00 AM ESTDell XPS 15 Conclusion: Almost There
At the end of the day, what can be said about the XPS 15 is that it’s a great looking laptop and on paper it checks all the right boxes. In practice, I’ll be frank and state that it’s been a bit of a love/hate relationship with the XPS 15, but the hate comes more from being frustrated by my inability to get consistent results. If the system always throttled (which is what happened with the previous generation Ivy Bridge XPS 15), it would be easy to point out the problem, but that’s not the case. When it runs as it ought to, the XPS 15 offers a great blend of style, build quality, performance, battery life...and let’s not forget the awesome QHD+ display. The applications on Windows may still have issues with High-DPI right now, but long-term I’d rather have a high quality display than not, and the XPS 15 gives me exactly that.
This review is possibly one of the longest of my career, at least in terms of finishing and posting it. Originally I had planned to get the review posted ASAP, but when I started encountering issues with the GPU clocks I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what precisely was going on. I really like the laptop in general, and if I hadn’t been pounding on the system specifically running benchmarks and games and checking for throttling, maybe I could have missed that. Even with that particular issue cropping up from time to time, I still like the XPS 15 more than the vast majority of laptops I’ve tested. There was a time when performance mattered more, but these days the keyboard, touchpad, screen, and overall design end up being far more important to me, and I suspect that’s true for many of our readers.
Since the first XPS 15 rolled out several years back, Dell has clearly been trying to create a laptop – and a line of laptops – that offers a premium experience. Each generation has improved, sometimes in small ways and sometimes not. This round, the optical drive has been kicked to the curb, making way for a slimmer and lighter laptop that doesn’t have to sacrifice on battery life or performance. Everything seems to be in place for the XPS 15 to succeed, and if I were personally in the market for a new laptop the XPS 15 would certainly be high up on my list. It’s just that one item of inconsistent GPU performance that gives me pause.
If you don't care about gaming but like everything else on top, the Haswell XPS 15 a great laptop and I could easily give it an Editors' Choice award. On the other hand, until/unless the need to reboot on occasion to fix the GPU and CPU temperatures (and the resultant throttling) is addressed, those who occasionally/frequently play games might be better off waiting or looking at other options. There are quite a few laptops coming out with high-DPI displays, and some may be able to top the XPS 15. Others may be lacking in the style or build quality departments but should come with lower pricing (and a caching SSD at best). Even If Dell can fix the need to reboot on occasion to get the GPU running where it ought to be, this is a premium quality laptop with a premium price, so it’s not for everyone; it is however one of a very few options that can even think of challenging the MacBook Pro Retina.
As far as competitors go, it’s pretty simple really: if you want to run OS X, get a MacBook, but if you’re happier running Windows I don’t see much point in going that route. There really aren’t many other laptops in the same bracket right now. Razer’s Blade (and Blade Pro) is close in many ways, but it has much more of a gaming slant and a higher price tag to go with it. Otherwise, you can either wait for the upcoming spring refresh of notebooks, or you can look at some of the Ultrabooks that skip the discrete GPU entirely – Toshiba’s KIRAbook and Samsung’s ATIV Book 9 Plus might be a couple to consider. Last year’s ASUS UX51VZ is another great candidate, but it needs a refresh to Haswell (and GeForce 800M perhaps?) now. In other words, there’s very little in the way of direct competition at present.
The bottom line is that this is a laptop that has style, battery life, build quality, input devices that work well, a high-end QHD+ display, and the option for a 512GB SSD, 16GB RAM, and a discrete GPU. Fix the thermals, whatever the cause – or maybe go with Crystalwell and forego the discrete GPU – and this laptop would be golden. Instead I’m left in the uncomfortable position of really liking a laptop that has a potentially serious fly in the ointment. Hopefully we can clear that up in the coming weeks.
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Andrew Lin - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
can i ask how people fixed letterboxing in games? in certain directx11 games (bioshock infinite and anno 2070) i'm still being letterboxed when running at non-native resolutionJarredWalton - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
I updated the Intel and NVIDIA drivers and I believe the Intel drivers then have an option to modify the scaling (it may have been present in the release drivers but it didn't work for me).Homeles - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
We've had nothing but trouble with these and other XPS models at work. We must have gotten a bad batch -- a lot of dead HDDs out of the box.Conceptually, these are great computers. I love the screens on these. They're not bad to work on (read: repair), although changing one of the SO-DIMM sockets is rather annoying since you have to tear the whole thing down to get to it. I do dislike the slot load drive.
If it weren't for the myriad of hardware problems I've seen with these, they'd be a great product. Hope the Haswell version doesn't suffer the issues I've seen.
JarredWalton - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
The new version is much easier to work with IMO -- no slot load drive, about eight hex screws to get to the internals, and if you get the SSD model, no HDD to speak of. But for a business, I suspect you'd want no GPU as it wouldn't be much use, and that's sadly not an option.jameskatt - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
The Dell XPS 15 Haswell Edition is Dell's attempt to copy the MacBoo Pro 15-inch with Retina Display. Interestingly, it costs almost as much. But it fails in two major areas: 1) It doesn't have a PCIe SSD. Thus, its SSD storage is half as fast as Apple's. 2) It doesn't have Thunderbolt connectors. This means you cannot attach external PCI card cases nor get high speed storage as on the much more expandable MacBook Pros.Sad. But it is far better to run Windows on a MacBook Pro than to run Windows on a Dell attempt at a clone.
Dell should stop trying to copy Apple - albeit Apple makes tons of profit on its MacBook Pros. Dell should instead create inexpensive battle-tank PC Laptops that cost under $1000. It simply makes no sense to purchase a PC Laptop that costs more than $1000 - unless you are one of the few gamers.
JarredWalton - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
There's nothing wrong with trying to copy one of the better designs out there, and Dell does enough different that it's not a major concern in my book. The PCIe SSD isn't a huge blemish, as random IO is pretty much bottlenecked by the NAND and sequential at 2X the speed only happens rarely other than for large file transfers. As for the Thunderbolt... well, it exists on Windows PCs, but it's rarely used right now. I'd say the vast majority of Windows users (including me) have never worried about the lack of a Thunderbolt port.Your remaining arguments are full of flaws. Look at a post above where one of the readers comments on running Windows full-time on a MacBook. GPU always on, limited driver updates/support, keyboard not designed around Windows, and a few other issues make that a non-solution for people that don't primarily run OS X. And if you think no one should buy anything more than a $1000 laptop, well, there's a huge market for sub-$1000 laptops it's true, but to get there the quality suffers immensely. I personally wouldn't even consider buying a laptop that didn't have a 512GB class SSD, which is $400 minimum right there. Give me a good display, enough RAM, a quad-core CPU, and then toss in a good battery with good keyboard and touchpad. That puts you at around $1300 bare minimum, and more likely $1800+. I'd expect to use such a system for a few years, where others might buy two $900 laptops and think, "I got a faster solution for less money", but the quality of all the parts ends up being far more important to me these days.
If money is tight, by all means get an inexpensive option, but don't knock the people and companies aspiring for something more. Part of the reason so many laptops suck these days is because of the race to the bottom we had for the past decade, so please let's not encourage OEMs to start that up again.
jphughan - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
Nobody but Apple to my knowledge has bootable PCIe SSDs, because that's not a standard. PCIe is not designed to support storage directly, so Apple has had to bolt on some logic in order to make it work, but (as is typical with Apple), they've got a completely proprietary implementation. Have you ever wondered why you can't just buy a PCIe or miniPCIe SSD standalone, except for the ones that come from Apple laptops? That's why.And PCIe SSD storage being twice as fast is a benchmark fact, not a practical real-world one. I would bet that you couldn't reliably tell the two apart in a blind performance test.
As for Thunderbolt, the only things I've ever seen anybody connect to a Thunderbolt connector are displays and Ethernet dongles. Sure I agree that as a connector it has potential, but frankly it hasn't reached market penetration. I think it will turn out to be the modern-day FireWire port personally.
And Dell does make laptops under $1000. They just don't make ONLY laptops under $1000.
JarredWalton - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
I think he's referring to M.2 SSDs that use the PCIe interface for higher performance? I know the Sony VAIO Pro 13 has something like this at least -- maybe just M.2 in general is faster than mSATA. But since it's mostly a benefit for sequential IO and that much sequential IO isn't common in day-to-day use for most laptop users, it's not a deal breaker by any means.Penti - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
The current gen PCI-e SSD's do use AHCI and non Apple PC's do use the same SSDs (in M.2/NGFF form factor) so I don't know where he wants to go with that rant. Logic is in the SSD-controller which isn't custom for Apple by any means. Note here that the PCIe based Apple-Macs support Bootcamp/Windows just fine. At most a bootable PCIe solution requires a BIOS-rom and OS-drivers, but these solutions aren't PCIe to SATA bridges (controllers/adapters) any more, and firmware support is there regardless if it's Apples UEFI or say the Sony's. Shouldn't really be any different to run any other AHCI-drive. Form-factor differs here, but it's the same type of controller and hardware on the (Apple) SSD as with PCIe M.2 drives, which has come with at least controllers from Samsung, Marvell, and SF/LSI now.None AHCI-drives (NVMe) are a bit away because the software (OS) doesn't really support them yet, but neither is they offered.
Samus - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
Wow. $1500 starting price for a Dell?Bold, Michael, bold.