Is dells xps line up that bad?

[1BadManVan]

I’m honestly considering going back to a laptop as I just can’t find the real need for my iPad. I almost always reach for my phone on the couch and in bed. I keep eyeing up the new air, love the design but in Canada it’s about $2200 for the 512/16 model. There’s a lot of options out there in the windows market for that price with more storage and ram.

Whatever laptop I get, I want it to last for as long as possible. I’m still not sold on Mac OS, never used it in my life where I’m quite familiar with windows. It seems the closest to apple for design and build quality is the Xps 13.

My issue is, though it’s constantly recommended by basically every review site and channel out there, it seems users constantly complain about quality control a short time in. As any of this improved with their newer models?

My last laptop I tried was the Lenovo Yoga 9i. Pretty nice laptop but spent 2 weeks trying to track down a screen issue that they blamed on a driver issue but no fix worked.

I just want something that’s ultra portable, decent battery life, nice screen and keyboard. Gaming isn’t a big priority, I have an Xbox at home that does what I need.

 

[TechRunner]

I have an XPS 15, and in the seven months I've owned it, it's been flawless. The QC out of the box was spot-on, and nothing has changed with that so far. I had the same concerns going in, as I've heard stories about Dell's QC issues. I rolled the dice, and got a winner. Hopefully it will be the same for you.

 

[1BadManVan]

I have an XPS 15, and in the seven months I've owned it, it's been flawless. The QC out of the box was spot-on, and nothing has changed with that so far. I had the same concerns going in, as I've heard stories about Dell's QC issues. I rolled the dice, and got a winner. Hopefully it will be the same for you.

Nice to hear someone with a positive experience. It’s crazy how many bad experiences there are for a laptop that’s so constantly recommended

 

[keithop]

I have a 2021 XPS 15 which replaced an xps 15 from about 4yrs previous. I didn't choose them, they came from work which has a dell policy.

Honestly I don't like either of them.

Completely personal opinion of course and everyone else in work seems to like theirs.

First the good... come's packaged much like Apples these days. Lovely presentation and worked out of the box with all the ports I expected. Even a usbc->usbA/hdmi adapter.

In use though, I don't love the keyboard, the screen is ok but nothing amazing and the fan is on all the time just running office productivity apps and I REALLY hate that.

For windows laptops, the best I've had are lenovo or MS surface laptop studio. They somehow feel nicer and more solid to me.

Having said all that, yes the XPS15 has worked fine, not had any actual problems with it other than you know, just not loving it.

 

[1BadManVan]

I have a 2021 XPS 15 which replaced an xps 15 from about 4yrs previous. I didn't choose them, they came from work which has a dell policy.

Honestly I don't like either of them.

Completely personal opinion of course and everyone else in work seems to like theirs.

First the good... come's packaged much like Apples these days. Lovely presentation and worked out of the box with all the ports I expected. Even a usbc->usbA/hdmi adapter.

In use though, I don't love the keyboard, the screen is ok but nothing amazing and the fan is on all the time just running office productivity apps and I REALLY hate that.

For windows laptops, the best I've had are lenovo or MS surface laptop studio. They somehow feel nicer and more solid to me.

Having said all that, yes the XPS15 has worked fine, not had any actual problems with it other than you know, just not loving it.

Yea I originally chose a Lenovo last year but got pretty turned off after I had screen issues and all Lenovo could do was blame intel for driver issues lol. Did most of the trouble shooting myself but it ultimately went back.

The customer support and warranty is one thing tempting me to just get a MacBook. Just worried I’m going to be quite underwhelmed for what I get at the price they ask for them.

I don’t do anything special, web browsing, would like to start doing a bit if photo editing on the side as a hobby. The biggest thing for me is portability as I want to take it with me for work. That’s where I ended up with an iPad. Just feels too much like a big phone at this point

 

[ZD_plguy17]

Yea I originally chose a Lenovo last year but got pretty turned off after I had screen issues and all Lenovo could do was blame intel for driver issues lol. Did most of the trouble shooting myself but it ultimately went back.

The customer support and warranty is one thing tempting me to just get a MacBook. Just worried I’m going to be quite underwhelmed for what I get at the price they ask for them.

I don’t do anything special, web browsing, would like to start doing a bit if photo editing on the side as a hobby. The biggest thing for me is portability as I want to take it with me for work. That’s where I ended up with an iPad. Just feels too much like a big phone at this point

I got refurbished from Dell Outlet 13" 2021 XPS 9305 model with older chassis, 16:9 screen, older keyboard and comes with 2 T4 usb-c ports, 1 3.2 usb-C and kensington lock port. I don't like Windows though so I replaced it with Linux running KDE DE customized to mimic MacOS DE a little bit but comes with much more freedom. I still installed win 11 inside VM for apps that are not available on Linux.

I had it only for 4 months and so far it works great, battery life is decent. That said I noticed minor QC issues. Two times it wouldn't power back on and had to perform power drain. I swapped SSD with faster bigger Samsung NVME. Because the original had 2230 form factor and I got 2280, I ordered from eBay 2280 replacement heatsink sourced from older Dell laptops (which IMO Dell should provide for sale direct on its website rather than push for its rebranded overpriced SSDs). It was not needed but it definitely helps keep SSD cooler.

Another thing that I noticed and made me wish I had spend little more $ to get newer gen chassis, is the weird placement of page up, page down just above arrow keys on their older keyboards. Fortunantly I can easily fix it at Linux on software level by remapping these keys.

As for Dell Customer service. So far I did not have to deal with them except for issues with my Dell gaming monitor and it wasn't that great tbh. I felt that they were more concerned about closing the ticket case than really helping and they treat you as second class citizen if you don't use Windows, even though I need to reiterate this was for gaming monitor that gets used with gaming consoles, not just Windows PCs sold by them.

So maybe if you think in future you need Dell CS, to be on the safer side, maybe spend extra $ to buy a laptop from their business line or get it at third party retailer like BestBuy with their optional extended warranty. Or if you still order directly from Dell, get warranty coverage from third party like Asurion and have it serviced at at a place like uBreakiFix. Dell includes onsite service with 1 year warranty though but you may need to do a lot of dancing with phone support before they send tech to your house. Just my 2 cents.

 

[1BadManVan]

Seems most manufactures really lack in the customer service department. It’s why The quality control worries me; it’s tough one

Any other options out there for thin and light ultra portables? Quite the rabbit hole you jump into with windows laptops and all the options. I’ve been tempted by the 2022 Zephyrus G14, obviously not as thin and light but still 3.5 lbs and good battery life. The flow X13 another powerful thin and light.

As much as I don’t really need the gaming power of them, would still be cool to have if they don’t comprise too much. I have a series X hooked up to a 1440p monitor so that’s why the gaming part isn’t as big of a deal since I would have to be plugged into a wall anyways lol

 

[SteveJUAE]

I have only had excellent service from Dell on my youngest laptop that even Apple CS could not rival and similarly with Razer and MS.

As one poster already noted if you buy from a local major retailer you should get similar service to Apple ie you have to drive to the store and sort it out directly opposed to mail it in or onsite support.

A bit too much hype on Apple CS as most postings are from USA on this and it soon tapers off depending on your country of residence. Similarly on quality control etc if Apple laptops were more dependable then Apple would not be making billions on Apple Care as it should be required less

I have not been tempted by Dell of late but equally MS, Razer, HP and even Samsung now all make fine laptops that will fit your requirements on thin and light ultra portables

 

[1BadManVan]

I have only had excellent service from Dell on my youngest laptop that even Apple CS could not rival and similarly with Razer and MS.

As one poster already noted if you buy from a local major retailer you should get similar service to Apple ie you have to drive to the store and sort it out directly opposed to mail it in or onsite support.

A bit too much hype on Apple CS as most postings are from USA on this and it soon tapers off depending on your country of residence. Similarly on quality control etc if Apple laptops were more dependable then Apple would not be making billions on Apple Care as it should be required less

I have not been tempted by Dell of late but equally MS, Razer, HP and even Samsung now all make fine laptops that will fit your requirements on thin and light ultra portables

I live in Canada, have had decent luck with their service so far.

The issue i run into is the limited selection locally for Lenovo and dells etc. but I may have to wander into a Best Buy to see what they got.

Hopefully they will have some of the new M2’s set up to compare with directly in store as well. Told the wife I’ll sell my iPad Pro first… maybe

 

[1BadManVan]

Battery life is a concern of mine for windows laptops. I don’t need any crazy 18 hour battery life, it’s not a work machine for me. But I would like one that I don’t have to always have a charger on me if I leave take it with me somewhere.

My wife has a blade 15 and that thing is horrendous on battery lol

 

[SteveJUAE]

Battery life is a concern of mine for windows laptops. I don’t need any crazy 18 hour battery life, it’s not a work machine for me. But I would like one that I don’t have to always have a charger on me if I leave take it with me somewhere.

My wife has a blade 15 and that thing is horrendous on battery lol

My wife has the little Samsung sub 1kg win 11 with Arm CPU and that's 21 hours battery life LOL

A Razer 15 is like 4 hours but a Razer Book is better and 4k is an option or the Samsung 15" is crazy light and a solid 8 hours on light productivity

 

[ZD_plguy17]

I saw new Samsung tablets/2-1 laptops with Win11 ARM and Intel 12th. They indeed stepped up their game this year.

Lenovo released good new laptops with new AMD Ryzer processors and usb4 ports. Though not sure if just in the US or also internationally.

All laptops have some issues. I say just don’t worry too much and pick the one you like the most based on your needs, preferences and budget and plan disaster recovery ahead for your data.

Imo laptop class and specs matter more than brand. Feel free to go little above beyond minimum especially with the parts that cannot be upgraded.

 

[1BadManVan]

I saw new Samsung tablets/2-1 laptops with Win11 ARM and Intel 12th. They indeed stepped up their game this year.

Lenovo released good new laptops with new AMD Ryzer processors and usb4 ports. Though not sure if just in the US or also internationally.

All laptops have some issues. I say just don’t worry too much and pick the one you like the most based on your needs, preferences and budget and plan disaster recovery ahead for your data.

Imo laptop class and specs matter more than brand. Feel free to go little above beyond minimum especially with the parts that cannot be upgraded.

Yea fair enough. Just don’t want a repeat of my Lenovo experience lol.

 

[ZD_plguy17]

Yea fair enough. Just don’t want a repeat of my Lenovo experience lol.

I understand. ☺️ My first laptop in college was some entry level HP notebook from CircuitCity and this had started to reboot a few months later, probably due to the bad motherboard. This incentivized me to sell it and purchase my first Apple MacBook Pro mid 2009 that I had for 9-10 years.

I never had issues with Lenovo but only had work assigned X1 Carbon which I believe was more business than consumer line.

I used to work at IT support and serviced HP, Dell, Razer, sometimes Lenovo and Apple and Microsoft Surface notebooks + laptops. Until I saw Spectre, they looked very cheap low quality but did not have any major issues.

 

[1BadManVan]

I understand. ☺️ My first laptop in college was some entry level HP notebook from CircuitCity and this had started to reboot a few months later, probably due to the bad motherboard. This incentivized me to sell it and purchase my first Apple MacBook Pro mid 2009 that I had for 9-10 years.

I never had issues with Lenovo but only had work assigned X1 Carbon which I believe was more business than consumer line.

I used to work at IT support and serviced HP, Dell, Razer, sometimes Lenovo and Apple and Microsoft Surface notebooks + laptops. Until I saw Spectre, they looked very cheap low quality but did not have any major issues.

I’ve never owned a dell or hp. The Razer has been great for my wife, it’s her work/gaming pc for the past year with no issues. Just too heavy and horrible battery. She had an Asus Vivobook that barely lasted a year before it barely could open a basic work document, I believe the hard drive crapped out because we could barely even transfer files off of it.

The dell is tempting. Some say the battery life is pretty good, others say it terrible lol.

 

[ZD_plguy17]

I’ve never owned a dell or hp. The Razer has been great for my wife, it’s her work/gaming pc for the past year with no issues. Just too heavy and horrible battery. She had an Asus Vivobook that barely lasted a year before it barely could open a basic work document, I believe the hard drive crapped out because we could barely even transfer files off of it.

The dell is tempting. Some say the battery life is pretty good, others say it terrible lol.

In UEFI and Dell Power Management app in Windows there is a setting that lets you set level of optimization between saving battery and performance. By default it’s set to optimized and there is also setting that lets you cap charging, so you can for example cap to 90-80% and ensure battery life stays longer.

On my 9305 laptop with Arch Linux with KDE, I have in UEFI set power management to “Always on AC Power” or something like this and when it’s fully charged and disconnect, it gives me estimate of 8h. I have taken it to work without charger for half day afternoon and when returned home I had about above 70% battery left. But I had used screen brightness often only at 50% because so find already bright enough and compared to Windows 11 baremetal, I had Geekbench multicore score higher by about 1000 and 100 on single core. And this is with whole disk encryption LUKS on ext4 format and DRAM-less SSD that generate little heat (Samsung 980) but still get great transfer performance with about half disk filled at read speed close to 2600MB/s.

 

[Isamilis]

Battery life is a concern of mine for windows laptops. I don’t need any crazy 18 hour battery life, it’s not a work machine for me. But I would like one that I don’t have to always have a charger on me if I leave take it with me somewhere.

My wife has a blade 15 and that thing is horrendous on battery lol

As long as the laptop still use intel (or compatible) processor, it’s hard to expect better battery life. If you look for ultra portable, decent battery life, nice screen and keyboard & trackpad, you may consider new M2 MBA base model - even though it needs learning process as you move from Windows world.

 

[ian87w]

In the end, what matters is the end customer service. Hardware wise, most of these laptops, including MacBooks, are made in the same factories of Quanta.

 

[ZD_plguy17]

As long as the laptop still use intel (or compatible) processor, it’s hard to expect better battery life. If you look for ultra portable, decent battery life, nice screen and keyboard & trackpad, you may consider new M2 MBA base model - even though it needs learning process as you move from Windows world.

Even M1 MBA is great option. For people who switch from Windows to MacOS there should be one optional welcome tutorial during first time setup warning users to not just right click on info on multiple folders which causes your entire screen to pop up with property windows for each file and folder selected inside instead of total summary for multiple items 😁 (speaking on difference between just right click on folder properties on Windows and GNU/Linux and on MacOS where you have to hold ctrl key + get info if you only need info on multiple items).

 

[1BadManVan]

As long as the laptop still use intel (or compatible) processor, it’s hard to expect better battery life. If you look for ultra portable, decent battery life, nice screen and keyboard & trackpad, you may consider new M2 MBA base model - even though it needs learning process as you move from Windows world.

Well there’s plenty of windows laptops out there that claim long battery life, just need to find ones that ring true lol

 

[ian87w]

As long as the laptop still use intel (or compatible) processor, it’s hard to expect better battery life. If you look for ultra portable, decent battery life, nice screen and keyboard & trackpad, you may consider new M2 MBA base model - even though it needs learning process as you move from Windows world.

The 7nm ones (eg. Ryzen Zen 3, intel Alder lake) are getting better. They're not as toasty. But of course, they have not matched the efficiency of ARM/Apple Silicon just yet. Still, for those who are stuck in Windows world, it's an improvement.

 

[ian87w]

Well there’s plenty of windows laptops out there that claim long battery life, just need to find ones that ring true lol

It's better to have low expectation. We know that part of the amazing battery life of Apple Silicon comes from the architecture change to a mobile-focused SoC. We cannot expect x86 to suddenly deliver that. But simply look for those fabricated in 7nm (AMD Zen3 or intel Alder lake), as they tend not to be as toasty as older CPUs. Still, for windows laptops, taper your expectation into ~5+ hour of battery life on average.

 

[1BadManVan]

Yup… sigh. Might just have to dip my toe into MacOS after all. I think the turn off is all the reviews I see is all about content creation. I’m just a normal everyday user, so I’m hoping macOS is user friendly for someone like me that’s more about content consumption and just everyday takes

 

[ian87w]

Yup… sigh. Might just have to dip my toe into MacOS after all. I think the turn off is all the reviews I see is all about content creation. I’m just a normal everyday user, so I’m hoping macOS is user friendly for someone like me that’s more about content consumption and just everyday takes

In the end, you need to pick the right tools for the job. I wouldn't force yourself into macOS if you're not comfortable with it. Note that you might need to adjust certain behaviors and even buy new software for mac compatibility. If you are mostly at home, the battery life thing might not be a big deal. I have seen people who simply are more comfortable with Windows. Whatever macOS' benefits, they're pointless if the user is having a hard time figuring out the basic things. Simple things like how to install apps, moving around the file system, task switching, etc. Some people can adapt fine, some people couldn't. Nothing's wrong with either. There are still great Windows laptops today.

 

[1BadManVan]

In the end, you need to pick the right tools for the job. I wouldn't force yourself into macOS if you're not comfortable with it. Note that you might need to adjust certain behaviors and even buy new software for mac compatibility. If you are mostly at home, the battery life thing might not be a big deal. I have seen people who simply are more comfortable with Windows. Whatever macOS' benefits, they're pointless if the user is having a hard time figuring out the basic things. Simple things like how to install apps, moving around the file system, task switching, etc. Some people can adapt fine, some people couldn't. Nothing's wrong with either. There are still great Windows laptops today.

I’m just relectant to try new things but I’m fairly tech savvy and had iPhones and iPads for years now. I haven’t personally owned a windows pc in probably 8 years. I tried windows last year and sent it back with screen issues and never tried again lol. I end up getting an iPad Pro but still feel like missing out.

I couldn’t even book a camping site last month on it because the desktop site wasn’t playing nice on the iPad and had to borrow the wife’s laptop just to complete a simple booking lol.

I’m the “repair” guy for her pc when she’s having technical issues figuring things out so I’m still familiar with the platform