The Dell XPS 15 9560 Review: Infinity Edge Part Two
by Brett Howse on July 31, 2017 8:00 AM ESTBattery Life
Dell continues to offer two choices of battery capacity with the XPS 15 lineup. If you opt for a model with a spinning hard drive, that drive requires space that is replaced with battery capacity if you choose a straight SSD model. One big change from the XPS 15 9550 and the latest 9560 model is the size of the battery though, which has increased from an 84 Wh model to a 97 WH version, which is right up against the upper limits allowed in a laptop. This 15.5% larger battery should result in 15.5% longer battery life, all other factors being equal, however we’ve also switched from a Skylake Core i7-6700HQ and GTX 960M (with Optimus) in the previous version, to a Core i7-7700HQ and GTX 1050 (with Optimus) in the current 9560 model, so we’ll see how that plays out.
To test battery life, we have a couple of different tests that we perform on all machines. The first is our 2013 light web browsing test, which is far too light for today’s web, so it’s only here for a data point against older laptops. We’ve also got our new 2016 web browsing test, which is a higher workload. Finally, movie playback is done as well. All testing is done with the display at 200 nits.
2013 Light Browsing
Our firs test is four web pages, loaded in a loop every minute. As processors and browsers have gotten more efficient, this has become a pretty light workload, but it’s still the test we have the most data points for. As you can see, the 15% more battery capacity gives a result that is 22% higher than the outgoing model, so Kaby Lake and the other changed components are a bit more efficient as well. This result is about nine hours of runtime, which isn’t too bad for a UHD resolution laptop with a quad-core CPU and discrete GPU, but a long way from the 19 hours claimed by Dell. It would make sense to see the FHD version of this laptop do a lot better in this test though, with a smaller gamut, and much less pixel density.
2016 Web Browsing
Our more demanding web test knocks quite a bit of time off of the result, and we don’t have the old 9550 to compare it against here since this test wasn’t run on it, but it is a decent result for a large display notebook.
Normalized Results
Removing the battery capacity from the equation allows us to check out the efficiency of the platform, and unsurprisingly, the XPS 15 is no where near as efficient as an Ultrabook with a U series dual-core CPU. It does make a slight gain on the previous generation though, and is much more efficient than a gaming notebook.
Movie Playback
The first result is simply the number of minutes the laptop can loop a movie at 200 nits, and the Tesseract score is how many times you can play back a long movie, which in this case is The Avengers. The XPS 15 should work well for travel, with it able to play a couple of very long movies in a row before giving up the ghost.
Charge Time
The other half of the story with battery life is charge time. This is always non-linear, with much higher charging rates if the battery is very low, but all laptops end up with a trickle charge to get to 100%, to avoid damaging the battery. With a larger capacity battery than the outgoing model, but the same AC adapter, expectations are for a longer charge time.
That is the case. The XPS 15 9560 takes a few minutes more to charge completely. Percentage wise, the 15% larger battery takes about 11% longer to charge, which is 16 minutes.
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Jodiuh - Tuesday, August 1, 2017 - link
It's 2017...can we PLEASE GET PWM BACKLIGHT RESULTS FOR DEVICES WITH DISPLAYS‽‽‽Rc1138 - Tuesday, August 1, 2017 - link
I really want to live my xps15 9550 but Dell's QC is pretty much nonexistent. Right after warranty expired my battery swelled and lifted touchpad above the body by 5-6mm. I bought and changed the battery but the situation seems to repeat itself again with touchpad buttons becoming hard to press. And that's not the end of my misery because laptop BSODs and reboots randomly without POSTing and the problem seems to be with hardware because reinstall of Windows 10 and downgrade to older drivers doesn't change anything. How can such a premium machine be so faultyRc1138 - Tuesday, August 1, 2017 - link
I meant like not livedavidedney123 - Wednesday, August 2, 2017 - link
I've got a Precision 5520 (which is basically the same laptop) with the 4K screen that has been flawless, my partner has a 9560 with the 1080p which is similarly without issue, and I have a 1080p Precision 5520 on it's way to.I remember reading about a lot of issues users were having with the previous XPS15 and Precision M3800, but I bought dozens of these in 2015/16 and not a single one had any issues on arrival and they have been reliable in use.
TL:DR - don't let a few vocal users with poor experiences put you off, I've found these to be excellent and well built machines.
Glock24 - Wednesday, August 2, 2017 - link
I like that they don't cram a numeric pad in the keyboard. But the port selection is lacking. I would expect at least 3 USB type A ports or more than 1 USB type C in a laptop this size and weight. Also the lack of Ethernet is a big minus for me.TraderGary - Saturday, August 5, 2017 - link
I've had my Dell XPS 15 9560 for 6 weeks and so far it's been flawless. 4K screen is incredible, 32 GB RAM, 1 Terabyte SSD, Fingerprint reader. I can edit 4K video in DaVinci Resolve Studio in real-time with no proxies. After driver update Killer NIC has been faultless. Windows 10 Pro is great.GoMoeJoe - Tuesday, August 8, 2017 - link
Killer Networking has garbage software support.They post new 'Control Center' releases on their support page -
and then pull them back down - reverting to older versions - all without saying a word.
Plus their control center app messes with Windows 10 Creator something fierce - inducing blue screens and ipV6 issues out of nowhere.
Bad decision for Dell (and MSI) to rely so heavily on Killer tech.
They stink and are no longer a serious player.
billobob - Saturday, August 12, 2017 - link
If only they'd take a cue from microsoft and ditch the horrible 16:9. I love my ultrawide 34" LG, but hate 16:9 formats on notebooks--it's just not terribly practical to have the extra horizontal real estate on a laptop. Even the 16:10 apple uses would be a big improvement. If there were a laptop like this with a better aspect ratio I'd buy it in a heartbeat, even with the NoseCam (TM)nishashrivas93 - Saturday, August 12, 2017 - link
nice features....m planning to buy it.....thank u for this reviewsttekg - Sunday, August 13, 2017 - link
Small business - Out of 13 - Dell XPS 15" Laptops - 3 different models over the past 5 years.. only 4 of that group remain operative today. 7 of them dead mainboard - 2.5-3.5 years of usage. 2 of them were user accidents. I actually don't mind too much - they are good laptops and need to be replaced anyway every 3 years.. ;-)