Dell XPS 13 2015 Broadwell Infinity Display Owners Thread

The problem is that none of the options that worked for other laptops appear to be working for this current model.

 

Is this problem for both touch and non-touch models?

 

Successfully replaced the wifi card with a 7260ngw. The wifi card slot is a M.2 (NGFF). If I did it again, I'd probably get the 7265 instead since that's what will most likely come with the Linux models.

 

Is anyone here considering swapping out the stock ssd with the Samsung XP941?

 

How's everyone's battery life?
I am using the non touch i5 model and my battery life is absolutely horrible. Lucky if I can get 7 hours with web browsing and screen at 40-50% brightness

 

Mine is horrible as well. Might try to return for a replacement.

 

Does anybody have a issue with the placement of the webcam? How does it work? Maybe post a screenshot or 2?

 

Does anyone know if the matte version will be available in the UK? Only the glossy touch versions are listed on the UK dell site, yet it says on the same page "it also has the world’s first virtually borderless infinity display with OPTIONAL touch".

Are there any plans to sell the matte version in the UK? If not, then do you know if Dell USA ship to the UK?

 

Just got mine yesterday, love it so far!

What's everyone doing for laptop sleeves? I'm trying to see if a 11" will fit or if i should go with a 13" with some slack

 

Oh never mind...

 

Hi guys,

could you please check at what kind of tempreratures and under which conditions the fan kicks in?
I usually use HWinfo64, which I find to be a great program but whatever you use I am really interested in the cooling scheme of the laptop.
http://www.hwinfo.com/img/HWiNFO64_2.png

For example: the fan kicks in at 50 degrees Celsius, turns off completely at 45 C and it is enough that you browse this forum that makes the temps high enough for the fans to kick in. Or it is i.e. necessary to run a youtube video for the fans to kick in...

Is the lowest fan speed about as noisy as a conventional hard drive (or more/less noisy)?

If you could also test what kind of speeds the fans use (Hwinfo shows that to you), that would be great. I think these are firm criteria that would let everyone make his own image about how quiet is the laptop cooling (many people keep asking). No reviews state that, moreover some say it is usually "absolutely quiet" some say "the fans are almost always on".

Also basic feedback about the battery life with casual wifi surfing would help a lot (again some say 6 hours, some say 10 hours).

Thanks for the clarification. Much appreciated!

 

I don't have any serious issues with it. It is more up an upward angle which of course is unflattering. I just try to lay the laptop out a little further on my lap or set it on higher surface when I skype. Also when typing during a video chat your finders will be visible. Because of the camera placement, when you are looking at the screen/person you are talking to it looks like you are looking away more than usual. I just position the other persons video screen in the lower left corner so it looks like I am looking at them a bit more.

I am not going to post an ugly pic of my mug but this review includes a decent webcam picture that represents what you should expect.
My new Dell XPS 13 with non-touch display is frankly amazing | Windows Central

 

Is this laptop any good for photo/video editing with adobe photoshop, premiere and after effects?
What about web design? I'm about to pull the trigger - just want to make sure I won't regret my purchase.

EDIT: Also what fps can you get out of this laptop? Both HD and QHD.

 

Hi everyone. I received my Dell XPS 13 on Friday and have been testing it out throughout the weekend. I have the matte HD model with a Core i5, 8GB RAM, and a 256 GB SSD.

Overall I'm very satisfied with the device. Some early thoughts/impressions:

--The screen quality is good (although not exceptional IMO...we'll need next-gen OLEDs for that). Brightness uniformity is better than average. The color calibration is decent, too, although there's some room for improvement for future models. Black levels are better than average for a PC display but obviously no where close to OLED or even VA panels. I'm thrilled that the display is matte, although as is often the case with Dell matte displays, the anti-glare coating is heavily textured and somewhat annoying at lower brightness levels. I know that I'm being somewhat harsh, but I believe that the display is arguably the most important component of a modern laptop. Overall I would rate the display an 8/10.

--Industrial design is excellent for a PC. I love the aluminum unibody as well as the generous use of carbon fiber. It lends the device an air of luxury and makes it a pleasure to touch and hold. The device is as thin as I would need it to be. I think Dell made the right tradeoff with the thickness as they would have had to sacrifice battery capacity if they had made it thinner. It's no Lenovo LaVie, but at 2.6 lbs it's still lightweight. What makes the 2015 Dell XPS 13 a standout though is undeniably the 5.2 mm thick bezels. Bravo to Sharp for making this possible. I hope all manufacturers going forward incorporate thin bezels in their designs.

--Performance is as good as I need it to be as I use a self-built desktop system for heavy-duty work, although I wouldn't mind a PCIe-based SSD for ultrafast read and write speeds. Bloatware is minimal and can easily be removed. Battery life is slightly disappointing. While not bad by any means, in my own real world usage I'm seeing less than 10 hours. I haven't run my battery down to 0% so I can't say for sure, but based on the battery bar estimates it looks like I might be averaging something like 7-8 hours while browsing the web and viewing online videos. I've done everything I can think of to prolong battery life--I've disabled Bluetooth, uninstalled bloatware, disabled unnecessary background processes, and keep the screen brightness low (I'm at 20% brightness at the moment). Despite this I don't think I'll be able to get 10 hours on a single charge.

--I'm pretty happy with the keyboard and touchpad. The keyboard still isn't as good as on a Thinkpad nor is the touchpad on par with a Macbook, but they are better than probably 95% of Windows PCs. Two-finger scrolling works fairly reliably for me and I fortunately have no issues with accidentally activating the touchpad while typing.

--My only major gripe so far is the fact that the battery is integrated. Does anyone know where a replacement battery can be purchased? I plan on using this laptop for at least four years, so I'd like to replace the battery at some point when it begins degrading.

EDIT: What is the best way to maintain battery health? Battery University recommends adhering to the 40-80 rule (start charging at 40% and discharge at 80%), but I've also read that it's actually better to just keep your PC plugged in if you're going to be using it extensively.

 

I'll have to test the temperatures at which the fan spools up later when I have some time. There's an option under advanced power options to change the CPU behavior. By default it's set to "passive" on battery power and "active" when plugged in. That is, on battery power it'll throttle the CPU clockspeed to keep a consistent temperature, but while plugged in the CPU will ramp up and the fans will kick in to make full use of the thermal headroom available. This can be changed if you value silence over performance.

I would say the fans are moderately quiet but definitely audible. People who value silence will probably find them annoying, although the noise doesn't personally bother me much. The fact of the matter is that in 2015 it's impossible to have a laptop that is thin, fast, AND quiet. You can, at best, have two out of three of those things simultaneously. As I said, you can change the CPU behavior if you value silence more than performance, but if you are planning on doing heavy duty work or gaming on this machine then you can't expect silent operation.

Regarding battery life, I have been a little disappointed. I should add the caveat that I haven't actually run my battery down to 0% yet, so I'm basing things on the battery bar reading which may not be totally accurate. With light to moderate web browsing including video watching I'm getting something like 7-8 hours of usage, but this is with the brightness turned down to 20-30%. If I didn't watch any videos I might be able to get 10 hours. I use Chrome in desktop mode with uBlock. If I used IE I would probably get better battery life.

 

Does anyone have a 4k 60hz monitor they could check to see if Broadwell can handle it at 60hz? Specs say "yes" but I've yet to see this being confirmed anywhere.

 

Ok, found a sleeve for mine, fits perfect! : http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00L661Z6U/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I do have one for my Surface, tried it out. its a perfect fit for my new Dell. Its not real leather, but it is better than a neoprene sleeve that dell sells.

 

..............................60hz

 

The most important part of the 40-80 rule is not going under 20% , or in other words avoid unnecessary battery discharge.

When using extensively keep PC plugged in, the wear from keeping the battery fully loaded will be smaller than the one induced by repeated charge-discharge cycles. If the unit offers control over battery charging, charge the battery to 60-80%, stop charging the battery, and use the unit plugged in.

When mobile, charge often. (40-80)

 

CPU's hovering at around 44-50 degrees, fan is audible at least in the quiet bedroom.

 

I'm getting about the same as you, which is about 7 hours from a FULL charge with 50% brightness and WiFi on. I'm quite confused because I've seen some reports of users with the same specs getting about 10 hours. Others, including yourself and Laptop Mag's review, have reported the 7 hour range.

If more users can report their battery life, we can get a better estimate of what is supposed to be the "norm."

 

I received my XPS 13 several days ago; mine's the i7 / 256GB SSD / 8 GB RAM / QHD+.

My unit has some obvious light-leakage on the left and right sides. It's visible enough at normal viewing angles, and only not-noticeable if you're looking at the screen exactly head on. Would like to check if this is an issue faced by other owners too.

As for battery; haven't had the full-run down yet, but at maximum brightness, WIFI + Bluetooth one, and doing office productivity work + a two hour presentation output to an external screen + about 30 minutes of media play back in-between that, I judge it the battery sufficient to run for about 5.5 to 6 hours.

 

How is the screen brightness? Is it fine or do you have to put it on maximum?

Do you have any problems with some programs regarding so high the screen resolution?

Are any issues with light refletions?

How is the fan for this model with QHD+?

Any other comment about QHD+?

In Europe only QHD+ is available so I am very interested on owner feedback ...

Thanks

 

Many thanks for your replies!

@ the battery life - that is what I expected. Last year I was testing one haswell zenbook and I didnt think that Dell could manage anything close to 15 hours with 52 Wh battery at any other states than idle. Great program is the HWinfo64, where you could see minimal, maximal and average discharge (since every time you reset). So you could easily check these discharge rates. If you turn off the laptop at 10% battery left and there is some battery wear rising as well (like 2-5 % and rising with time), you would probably use about 45 Wh battery capacity out of the 52 Wh. So you have to work with the computer the way that you have about 4,5 mWh discharge rate. The new Sharp display technology saves more battery than the new chipset. Turning the brightness down from 100% to like 20% could increase the battery life more than you expect (it could be more than 50-70 %), but I am just guessing.

@ fan noise - Okay so yet again some official reviewers are talking bull (pardon my language, cant help myself). I hate it when they say something like "the fan barely kicked on" or "the fans are off" with the office tasks and they definitely arent. I do not understand why they do not come up with something more objective. I prefer to have the option - when surfing the web, reading/writing, doing "office stuff" I like to keep as quiet as possible. I dont mind a little more heat. Of course when doing more demanding work - I would like the full performance boost and dont mind any fan noise! But how could it be easier than just go to settings and just change with a few clicks?

I was able to run Zenbook UX32LA completely passive with light web usage (I had to turn the fans off manually). The CPU temp was from 49 C (idle) to 70 C (playing youtube video). And when I was playing games or on longer YT video playback I turn them back on. But it was a SW tool and it was not working perfect...

 

That's what i was thinking. I have seen reviews where the QHD model last for 7-8 hours and the FHD 10-11. For example, Lisa of mobiletechreview reports up to 12 hours, claiming thus that this is at last a better laptop than the MBA.

 

The maximum brightness level on my unit isn't as bright as I would like. I just came off a Macbook Pro 15" Retina (late 2012), and at maximum brightness, the new Dell XPS 13 seems slightly dimmer than the Retina.

Working in a bright office environment, my XPS 13's brightness level is about 80 to 90%. At home with more muted/warm lighting, I typically at around 60% to 70%.

Against the MBP, reflections against direct light sources are a more serious problem on the XPS. But again it depends on the amount of direct light that gets cast on it (it's not an issue for me at home or at work).

The fan on mine doesn't normally kick in in office productivity work, unless I'm running 3D content (e.g. a game).

The resolution I'm running at is 2048x1152, and at 115% text sizing. It's largely for convenience, since my secondary display is a 27" 1920x1080 - and I don't want to fool around with text sizes on secondary displays.

All in; I think the QHD+ is a decent display and almost as good as the MBP Retina's. I'm however annoyed at the light-leak, and want to again check if others are having this issue too.

 

I have some questiosn.

1) Is the keyboard 'normal size' (same as on XPS 15, say?). Is it comfortable to type?

2) Some people said that mousepad was inaccurate. I don't need special gestures of Windows 8.1. Only need to read PDF documents all day. Hence, I need 'accurate selection' + "two fingers on mousepad for up/down scroll." Are these features working properly?

3) All the previous dell XPS13,XPS15,M3800 had the famous "coil,cpu whine" problem. Is this fixed the new model. Are there any users experience annoying whining noise?

4) Is the no-corners (infinity display) amazing? Or does it also have negative aspects for User Experience (say, distraction of surrounding vs. focus area of screen)

5) How bad is the reflection (Europe does not provide anti-reflective coating). I have had an XPS15. The glare/reflection was very prominent.

6) Other important issues people are experiencing?

Thanks in advance!

 

If it possible that battery life highly depending on the browser you use? Chrome for 7 hours, modern IE for 12 hours. Chrome is known to be battery hungry, however, I didn't expect that much difference.

 

What monitor do you have?

 

I had to go return/swap mine out due to the track pad left side upon clicking it would get stuck while pressed. The new one is way better, even the keyboard is firmer. Maybe i got a less well built one my first time. Still have the display dimming ( hopefully we'll find a way to disable that soon ). No light leakage on mine ( HD matte screen ) No coil sound or cpu whine at all. The Infinity display corners don't distract one bit, I think this laptop is awesome, and this is coming from a guy who's owned an macbook air 11/13, Macbook pro 13 Retina, Surface pro 3. I love the size of the machine, very well built. Battery life I still haven't used it to a full drain.

 

Thanks for the advice. Is it sometimes necessary to run the battery down in order to calibrate the battery gauge? Say once every few months?

Does anyone know where we might be able to purchase replacement batteries in the future? If not, would it be possible to have Dell replace the battery for a fee?

I think 7-9 hours is a realistic estimate if you have the FHD model and you keep the screen brightness under 50%. If you have the QHD+ model, are doing CPU intensive work, or have the screen brightness cranked up, then getting much more than 6 hours is probably unrealistic. This is assuming you do moderately-intensive web browsing and watch a few videos. You should be able to get better run times if you exclusively do lighter tasks (i.e. light web browsing, no video watching, email checking, word processing). I haven't run any scientific tests myself, so these are just my estimates--take them with a grain of salt.

On the subject of battery life, Anandtech mentions that the audio DSP is integrated into the PCH with Broadwell ( AnandTech | Intel Releases Broadwell-U: New SKUs, up to 48 EUs and Iris 6100). As they put it, "This removes a couple of Realtek components from the motherboard and allows Intel to bring it under their own manufacturing process, as well as configure the power gating needed." The image below demonstrates the power savings this results in:

http://images.anandtech.com/doci/8814/Slide%2012%20-%20Battery%20Life_575px.png

The Dell XPS 13 uses Maxx Audio 3 audio processing. Does anyone know how this might work? Does it bypass the DSP, or is it just a signal processing algorithm that runs on the CPU itself? Can battery life potentially be improved by disabling it?

I can see a little bit of light-leakage. It's not too bad. I only find it slightly intrusive when viewing very dark images or scenes. I have the FHD and not QHD+ model.

If you go to Advanced Power Options-->Processor power management-->System Cooling Policy, you can change the CPU throttling and fan behavior. By default it's set to passive on battery and active when plugged in. That's why the fan doesn't spool up as much when you're on battery power. You can of course modify this to your liking depending on whether you need more performance or prefer a quieter system.

 

Are these that the windows power options? Cause my experience is that it doesnt work very efficiently if the hardware (cooling system) is not designed the way it allows such things.

 

1) The keyboard is "full size," although the keys at each end are truncated (e.g., Backspace, Enter, Tab). It only took me a few minutes to adjust to it. Key travel is fairly limited, but now that I've gotten used to it I really like the keyboard. Keyboards are such a personal thing though. Only you can be the judge of whether it's comfortable to type on.

2) I'm also pretty satisfied with the touchpad. It's not on par with Macbooks, but in my opinion it's better than 90+% of Windows laptops. I think it's reasonably accurate and two-finger scrolling works well for the most part, too. If you think this might be an issue for you then maybe you could stop by a Microsoft store to try out the touchpad yourself?

3) I haven't experienced any coil whine. There was a video review that mentioned that this was caused by a supplier issue that has since been addressed by Dell, so coil whine shouldn't be a problem with this model.

4) I really like the Infinity display. Personally I don't think there are any drawbacks. In fact it would be great if future laptops could have even thinner bezels or no bezels at all.

5) The FHD model has a matte display, so there is very little reflectance. I can't speak for the QHD+ model with the glossy display.

6) So far I haven't really experienced any issues aside from battery life being far less than advertised (but still better than average for an ultrabook). My only real concern at this point is finding a battery replacement in the future when the battery starts to degrade.

 

Yeah, I'm referring to the Windows power options. When on battery power I've found that the fan doesn't spool up all that much, probably because of the passive system cooling policy. If you really want a silent PC for web browsing/video viewing, maybe you should consider a fanless Core M device?

 

How's the performance? The kernel should be GTG!

 

Im getting around 14MB/s. I've never been able to push more than 14MB/sec out of my wifi. Even with a mbp with 802.11ac and a 802.11ac time capsule. I should muck around with access points sometime.

 

It'll be real interesting to see what those figures are for the Linux only version. Do you reckon this will have a special kernel with a PPA (I'm assuming Ubuntu) or stock kernel with Intel hardware?

 

XPX 13 i5 8gb 256 owner here. Pretty good little notebook. If I had to pick out an annoyance it would be the track pad. Its pretty good, but I wish there was more control for it. Such as scrolling speed and scrolling per lines. While this option is listed in the settings, it only affects the external mouse not the track pad.

Anyone know of reg hacks to control this?

 

I found this, but no option to change scrolling speed.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn467318(v=vs.85).aspx

 

Maybe this

Touch Scrolling Friction - Change in Windows 8

 

Yes, this worked. Change the Friction setting to a lower number and log out to take affect.

 

I've had the FHD model for a week now and these are my impressions.

Great build quality, rock solid, no flex at all, feels great Keyboard is fine, I like the soft touch texture on the palm rests. The overall size and weight are great and the small bezels look great.

The trackpad is alright, but its certainly not up to a macbook level. There is a very annoying delay when initiating a trackpad movement, your finger needs to move 2-3mm before your cursors starts moving, once it does start moving it is very responsive, but the initial delay is annoying. For as much a big deal as Microsoft made about their precision touchpad, the lack of actually useful gestures must be a joke, theres no gesture for forward or backward, I had more options on my last laptop with vendor drivers.

The battery life is pretty much as expected, I get about 10 hours of usage at 50% backlight.

The 1080p display looks alright, I immediately noticed the display was off center by about 1mm to the left, as I have almost 1mm of black space on the right of the display between the last column of pixels and the bezel, not a huge deal. I also have a very subtle area of backlight unevenness in the lower left corner of the display, no backlight bleed though. I also notice the dynamic contrast others are noting, its annoying but not a major concern for me.

Speakers can get surprisingly loud.

It doesn't get especially hot and the I haven't noticed any fan noise or whining at all.

I plan on swapping out the 128GB SSD for a 512GB card in the future, not a lot of selection for M.2 SSDs at the moment.

 

Try adjusting the friction setting in the reg. I agree the touch pad is missing all the options for gestures. I hope that Dell or MS would come up with something in the next few months.

 

I've had this laptop for close to a week now and once again I find myself disappointed with battery life in Windows based laptop devices.

I understand that I wasn't getting 15 hours of battery life from this (I have the 1080p version,) I get it. It's always going to be below the stated specs. But to get somewhere around the 8 that I'm getting is ridiculous and to me, just not acceptable. 15 from 8 is a significant difference and 1) All I am doing is web browsing/videos and 2) I literally have the brightness set at 0. I just cannot understand why Windows based devices are absolute crap when it comes to battery life in comparison to their Apple counterparts.

I guess I am just going to have to get an Apple, probably the 2015 MacBook Air but hell even the 2013 MacBook Pro's get just as good, if not better battery life than these. Obviously battery life is very important to me and it just seems like Windows based devices are never going to be able to match Apple devices when it comes to battery life. I was preferring Windows for the compatibility/comfort level but if I have to use an Apple for my laptop uses, so be it. The majority of the stuff I use it for crosses over fine anyway.

I understand that my complaints are probably a bit petty an unrealistic, but it does annoy me that it's nowhere close to 15 hours. I'm not sure why companies are even allowed to release specs that unrealistic, I mean what did they do just put a totally black wallpaper in Windows and just let the PC sit there 15 hours doing nothing?

 

I believe every manufacturer tests battery life differently. I think Dell rated their battery life at 10% dimness and just let laptop sit without doing anything ( I could be wrong but that's what I heard qouted in a review ). I would say 8hrs inst too bad as most Apple machines hover around 10 hrs. Get you whatever works for you.

 

jim1123 where did you get yours from, Dell or MS store? Is it the i5 model? Any chance of a picture showing the mis-alignment? Thanks

 

In my experience the battery gauge will calibrate itself in time even with normal usage. If you feel like it though, calibrate once every few months, but do so with low/steady power usage (browsing or watching movies rather than gaming or stress testing).

I own an Asus laptop with integrated battery: it's my daily work machine (home&office intensive use), and 99% of the time I use it plugged. I bought the machine 18 months ago and reported battery wear is around 11%. Unless your battery is a lemon, I'm sure it will last a long time.

 

I think that made a difference in scrolling, but didn't help with the initial movement delay, thanks.

 

I'm sure battery specs will be about the same, unless there's some tweaking for the display driver.

I do think there will be a custom kernel available via ppa to support the audio. Might also have some touchpad changes.

 

Yeah I figured that's what they had to do. And even then I am not even sure if mine would make it that long just sitting there,