Dell XPS 15 L502x: Now with Sandy Bridge
by Jarred Walton on April 20, 2011 1:10 AM ESTBattery Life: Better than the L501x
As mentioned earlier, Dell shipped us a 90Wh (the website states 92Wh, but our battery rates itself at 90Wh) battery for this review. However, we still have one of their 56Wh batteries from the previous XPS models available, so we tested both configurations. With the move from dual-core Arrandale to quad-core Sandy Bridge, plus a faster GT 540M GPU and HD 3000 IGP, we weren’t sure what would happen to battery life. It turns out that even sticking with the 6-cell battery, the L502x surpasses the L501x in all three of our battery life metrics. That’s good, because the large bump on the bottom of the laptop that the 9-cell upgrade brings into play is a real drawback. Here are the results.
We’ve noted in the past that Sandy Bridge really improved H.264 playback power/battery requirements, and that shows up in our charts again. Compared to the L502x with a 90Wh battery, the smaller ASUS U41JF and its 83Wh battery still comes out ahead in our Idle and Internet results (though keep in mind that the U41JF has to throttle the Core i3 clocks way back to get those results). In the H.264 test, however, the 90Wh Dell comes out with more than a one-hour lead over the next closest competitor. Even looking in Bench, the only laptops we’ve tested that offer better relative battery life for H.264 decoding use either Atom, Brazos, or CULV processors—and the dual-core SNB chip also does better than the quad-core SNB chips. Those are all far slower architectures, so the fact that SNB is even in the discussion is a feather in Intel's cap.
Battery life in general isn’t class leading for the XPS 15, but it’s good enough to satisfy most mobile users. With the standard 6-cell/56Wh battery, you can get 3.5 hours of video viewing, up to 4.5 hours of web surfing (more if you’re on simple web sites), and nearly six hours of idle battery life. Buy the larger battery and you’re looking at 8.5 hours idle, over 7 hours of Internet surfing, and nearly six hours of video playback. The relative performance of the two batteries also scales almost perfectly with cell count and capacity—the 9-cell lasts 52 to 63% longer than the 6-cell.
Rounding things out, we also tested a few other items, again with both batteries. In simulated gaming (looping 3DMark06/03), the L502x manages just 59 to 64 minutes on the 6-cell battery and 86 to 96 minutes with the 9-cell battery. Lower loads are clearly where hybrid laptops excel, so the combination of an active GPU and quad-core SNB is the exact opposite of a low load. Note also that unlike the GTX 460M, the GT 540M can run at full speed even on battery power (hence the low battery life). Setting the LCD to 100% brightness (instead of 40%, which corresponds with 100nits), idle battery life drops a rather large 27%, or in other words the LCD uses an extra ~3.9W for a 150nit increase in backlight intensity. That’s a lot more than we’ve seen with other laptop LCDs, but the 1080p panel is higher quality and gets brighter than much of the competition so we’re willing to cut it some slack.
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JarredWalton - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 - link
Nope; no one has put USB3 into the chipset yet. AMD probably will with their next update I'm guessing, but Intel will likely be pushing Thunderbolt instead.jcannon1018 - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 - link
Even ivy bridge?BioTurboNick - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 - link
Ivy Bridge isn't out yet, so it doesn't count. But it will be getting USB3 http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ivy-bridge-usb-su...Neoarun - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
Well i have got this laptop and i can see that it indeed has a USB 3.0 ....aneuwahl - Sunday, April 24, 2011 - link
This was proven to have no effect at all on the issue we are talking about. In the forum I linked this was widely tested...aneuwahl - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
It is not necessary to have a USB3 device attached to the ports for the problem to come out. It occours to me with a wireless mouse receiver, or a USB keyboard...FlyBri - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 - link
...because Dell just sucks as a company. I really don't care how good their computers are, because if you have a problem with something from them, don't be surprised if they don't really care at all about you. I've never seen so many comments that say "Dell doesn't care", and that even customer support has said that directly to customers as well.Dell doesn't care about doing right by its customers, they don't care about BBB complaints, they commit certain acts of fraud, and they don't care to follow consumer protection laws (this is from my own personal experience). In addition, I just heard from a person who worked at Dell for 11 years and said even for him as an employee it went from a great place to work to being unbearable.
So just a warning to people out there -- some of their products may be decent and come at a good price, but if you EVER have any issues, watch out, because you could be in for a heap of trouble.
jabber - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 - link
Service I've had from Dell has been superb over the past 18 months.Had a power issue with my laptop (turns out the laptop/battery just got 'confused' somehow and a boot without the battery fixed it) called it into Dell and two days later TWO new laptop power supplies turn up. Not needed in the end but really handy. So no complaints there.
A month before the warranty ran out on my laptop I noticed a small piece of one of the key legends had worn off. I took a gamble and called it in at 1pm, no trouble I was told. 11am the next morning a nice chap turned up at my home and swapped out my keyboard. 10 minutes and he was gone. Perfect.
That was just the standard thrown in cover too. Couldnt be happier.
TypeS - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 - link
Ah rabid posters... you need relax a little bit there buddie. Dell cares about it's customers as much as any of the other top electronic manufacturers do; that you buy their stuff and continue to do so.Having worked at a computer store for the last 2 years, I've dealt with Dell, IBM/Lenovo, HP and ASUS, and they all provided acceptable service for in warranty products.
Has Dell been dishonest about it's business practices? Well who hasn't? Intel recently settled with AMD and NVIDIA for it's strong arm tactics and memory and lcd manufacturers have been caught on in price fixing schemes.
I can tell by your post that you probably had a horrible experience with Dell and I won't challenge you on it but one experience out of millions doesn't carry much merit.
SeanPT - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 - link
Protip: Buy from Dell Business instead of home. I've been working exclusively with Dells since 2002 for all of my clients that have basic office needs. I've sold thousands of Dell laptops and PCs and I rarely have a problem. When I do I can do a quick chat and have someone out the next day.