Dell XPS 13 2015 Broadwell Infinity Display Owners Thread

I'm thinking of buying the top-of-the-line version with QHD+, i7, 512GB SSD and 8GB ram - but honestly can't make up my mind about if a MacBook Pro Retina 13 would be a better buy. I would have had to install windows on it though since I probably wouldn't use OSX, losing som space on the ssd and - from what I've heard - maybe lose some functionality due to bootcamp driver malfunctions. In that perspective, the Dell XPS 13 Infinity seems like a better option. But the build-quality of the Mac is just...wow.
Any thoughts on this, help me make up my mind?

 

If you change the setting for the mouse that says how many lines to scroll each time it effects the touch pad scrolling.

 

As for the battery life, PC Mag's review for the QHD model reports 7 1/2 hours, which seems pretty good for me.

Dell XPS 13 Touch Review & Rating | PCMag.com

 

Can someone help me get discounts for Canada? Should I call them? I'm a student.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

They tested the QHD+ model. The 1080p model should do slightly better.

 

If this makes you feel any better, I'm selling my macbook pro 13 retina for this machine. Why ? I love the form factor, smaller and more compact but just as powerful, and them bezels! I'm mostly a windows guy but osx Yosemite is really good. A bit of a ram hog but if your into the apple eco system its awesome. Facetime alone to my wife and son while at work make it all worth it. Either way i prefer the Dell for reasons stated before. I got my desktop at home for gaming, design work and laptop for anything mobile.

 

Is it better to get the FHD or QHD?

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Depends on your preference.

I went with the FHD because it is cheaper. I like the idea of a matte screen to help with glare. It has better battery life and the FHD system weighs slightly less. And I will be ok without touch screen, especially for an ultrabook that's in a traditional form factor and not a convertible or 2 in 1.

If you really want a high resolution screen or want touch capabilities, then go with the QHD.

 

Yes, i know. But here in this thread many hava stated 7.5 hours for the FHD model, which is strange.

 

Hi, i'm in the UK so no FHD option yet, any ideas when it will be out here?
If i went with QHD+ instead can you basically run it at FHD instead if you want? Any downgrade on clarity or other negatives?
I've used win8 for about 15 mins and didnt like the tiling but 8.1 might be better.... And can always use start8!

 

Yes, that is exactly what I tell myself: it's smaller and suits my student lifestyle better. But the mac is a fine piece of machinery. Tough choice here, but thank you for giving me some perspective

I have the option of upgrading to a Core i7-5600U plus a switch from Dell (Broadcom) DW1560 wifi to Intel 7265 for ~$100. The CPU isn't really worth it (+200mHz), but what about the wifi? Any thoughts on this?

 

I wouldnt mind Core M device. But there are not many yet. At the moment I am working on Core 2 Solo 1,4 Ghz SU3500 with 8hr battery life (laptop from 2009 also with 4,5 W TDP!) and it has scarcely limited me with my style of office work (but more performance is always good). The Dell is far superior compared to Yoga 3 pro (much smaller, cheaper, better build, same or better battery life, not speaking of the performance) and Asus Zenbook X205 (?) doesnt have illuminated keyboard and also doesnt offer more battery life or smaller footprint than Dell. Simply the Dell is IMO best Windows ultrabook by far at the moment if we also consider the pricing.

If the passive system cooling works for less demanding tasks I might be ok with that (I could set it ON whenever I would like). Also what kind of set up do you have? i5/i7, FHD/QHD?

 

Hi guys,

I've ordered the 999$ version of the XPS 13 and I was looking for a sleeve or a case for it.
The problem is that I don't know if it will fit in an ~11 inch case..
Does anyone of you got a case the the XPS 13 he could recommend?

I've seen this on amazon:
Amazon.com: amCase® 11.6-inch Sleeve/Case for Acer Chromebook 11, C720, C720P, C740/ HP Stream 11 Laptop, Chromebook 11/ Samsung Chromebook 2 /Apple MacBook Air/ and other Notebook Laptop Protective Neoprene Cushion Material with Handle (BLACK): Com

 

@ Battery life - first I would try to uninstall all the bloatware and try to kill unnecessary background tasks running and also try to swith from Chrome to IE or Firefox. Check your discharge rate with BatteryBar or HWinfo64 or something similar before and after. You will see immediately if there is a difference and what drains the battery most (i.e. try different brightness levels, wifi, bluetooth on/off, keyboard backlight on/off...). The discharge rate is what matters. If you want 10 hours usable battery life, you should have about 4500 mWh-5000 mWh discharge rate on average. If it is higher, you will simply not get it. For 15 hours you would have to have around 3000 mWh discharge rate and that... probably means wifi + BT + keyboard backlight off, LCD brightness set to minimum, all necessary (so something like minimalistic readers test).
Macs are so good with battery life because their system doesnt consume so much energy, the power consumption is lower.

Here is a text from noteboocheck MBA 2013 review:
"The power consumption heavily relies on the OS used. In general, Mac OS X runs much more efficiently, thus consuming less power. Windows 7 requires a minimum of 5.1 W (brightness level 1, WLAN off) and OS X requires 2.8 W at similar settings. In other tests, the gap between the two grew smaller but the Mac OS could always save one or two Watts more than its Windows counterpart."
(and that one or two Watts make a whole lot of difference)


@ Retina Mac vs. Dell - if you are sure you will use Windows only, get the Dell. I was considering the retina for long long time as it is a beautiful piece of hardware but I definitely need Windows for work (no option for Mac applications). Boot camp is not perfect, you lose some battery life, drivers dont work as well (most importantly the fans go on much more often)...

 

Someone said Dell told them a couple of months for the FHD option but no-one really knows, I'm in the UK as well but I've had a PC die on me so need a replacement now otherwise I'd have waited to see if there was an FHD option and if not, there's the chance of getting a good deal on the outlet.

If you wanted to run the QHD+ screen at a lower resolution with perfect scaling it would need to be 1600x900 as that's exactly half the 3200x1800 screen resolution of the QHD+ screen which means every pixel at 1600x900 is matching to four pixels on the physical display. To have the same with 1080p you'd need a 3840x2160 display (frequently referred to as 4K on PC's)

 

Not knowing win8 at all I assume you can switch to a desktop view from the tiles? If so surely that isn't QHD+ resolution as text will be tiny?!

 

Johnmcl7: Exactly...

Also the QHD+ with 1600x900 resolution will have longer battery life than FHD version. But not by big margin (maybe 1 hour), obviously you lose the extra quality of the QHD+ for which you pay the hefty price tag.
I think 1600x900 is a perfect resolution for 13,3" that doesnt need any strange scaling that cripples older software. What a pity they dont make this one native any more instead of the FHD.

I am curious how is the new Win10 scaling gonna work. And if it finally lets you set separately the scaling for internal (laptop) screen and external screen. With Win8.1 you have to log out and close all apps (= all your unfinished work) to change scaling and that is really annoying.

 

Hi,

Can someone confirm the difference between the touch and non-touch model?

From what I saw on YouTube videos, the touch model is full edge-to-edge while the non-touch has a little raised bezel? Also Mobilegeek's hands on reported that the track pad are different on the two variants? What is the difference in track pads?

 

sry, double post

 

can anyone comment on the brightness of the FHD matte panel? I just recently got my unit and it's very dim. Haven't yet put the colorimeter on it to seen the actual brightness, but I basically have to keep it at 60-70% brightness indoors, which is far from great.

Oh, and is there a way to disable the white LED beneath the trackpad? It's damn annoying.

On another hand, after two days I can say the battery life is good, but not spectacular. I have the basic i5/128/FHD model and I'm seeing 7-8h of daily use and 9 hours of continuously looping a 1080p Youtube video with the screen at 40%. BTW, I have the Signature Edition sold by Microsoft Store, so no bloatware at all.

@kr_clk you're right, the matte model has a slightly raised bezel. Doesn't bother me at all though.

Update: Did a bit of reading. My unit does not have any of the brightness/contrast auto adjustment issues mentioned earlier in the thread. However, the screen's brightness is only 190 nits at max setting, as far as my Spyder4 sensor says. And that's clearly visible with the bare eye in bright light. And yes, Auto-Brightness is disabled. Hopefully there's going to be a fix for that, I can't return the unit as I'm not in the US anymore

 

Yeap, the minimal raised bezel wouldn't be a bother. Have you noticed any difference in the track pads on the non-touch and touch models? Apparently Mobilegeek presenter mentioned that the non-touch has a cheaper quality touch pad to reduce the cost of production.

 

Hmm well this appears to be the desktop with the QHD+ :- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHFeK_FFRoE

Doesnt look too small icon wise and the bits of video showing the browser (IE, although i use Chrome) looks good as well.....
I dont do a great deal of gaming, only Quake 3 Live and a bit of Counterstrike Source which i would switch to a lower res.

I currently have an Acer 13.3" with 1366x768.

 

Just wanted to point out that you can get the i5/8GB/128GB version from Dell right now for $881.99 + Tax using a Student account + Coupon code X0P3BZZB6RKKVR.

 

Windows 10TP? I installed but having an issue getting the display driver for the HD5500 installed. I have installed the chip set drivers, but windows does not like the driver from Intel.

Anyone else try win10 yet on the xps?

txs
M.

 

I'm guessing that's scaled as it looks a similar size to my 11in PC at 1080p, I'd expect QHD+ to be quite bit smaller.

John

 

My new XPS13 baby just came in today - i7/512 and first impression is that I'm gonna love it. In the process of configuring it - but I can officially answer my own question that no one could answer. The 512gb SSD is indeed the Samsung PM851 - for better or worse. The video online that discusses how to change out the drive mentioned that the 256 is LiteOn. I should have waited (figured Dell would raise price if the demand was as good as the reviews), and I probably should have gone with the i5 or blah blah blah. I have it now, no buyers remorse ............................yet.

 

Same here. Video driver wouldnt install. I did manage to get windows 7 no prob. Check out that windows 7 thread i posted my findings.

 

Mine came with Samsung. Darn it I wanted the Liteon one for much faster write speed..

 

That's not nearly as much of a discount as I got. If you purchase a laptop over $999, you get $100 off using a special coupon code. With the discounts on the couple of accessories I got as well, my discounts came to just about $130.

That $100 code is only valid until January 30th, though. If you're interested, I can give it to you.

 

Hi Lirux,

I ordered mine direct from Dell and they offered a couple accessories at checkout, one of them being a case. I also got this small little ultraportable Bluetooth 4.0 mouse that I thought was pretty slick; it rotates to a more flat position for easy storage. Here's a couple pics. The case fits the XPS 13 perfectly.

 

I'm running W10TP on my Surface Pro 2 without any real issues. I kinda like it. But when I installed it on my Surface Pro 3, the display and keyboard froze up. I was forced to do a complete system restore. Ugh.

No way am I installing Technical Preview on the XPS. Early reports on the Surface forums is that it kills battery life dramatically. Way too buggy for now.

 

I ordered the same sleeve. Also bought the battery pack and ethernet/hdmi adapter. It will be a while before I can post pictures, but I will as soon as I can.

:excited:

 

Keyboard: It is bit shallower compared to the previous gen. Not that bad typing to be honest, but it is what it is. They shortened the length of the far left and right keys to fit well without looking crammed. The shortened keys and small arrows keys are of no issue!

Speaker: The speakers have miniscule grill look if you look closer. No photo will capture this detail. The quality is actually pretty good. If your head is actually right in between the computer towards the screen like you are watching something, the balance gets really good and you get that whole room is the speaker effect - kind of like echoing, but in a way that makes it sound like the whole room is filled with sound. So yeah I am very impressed. Not a bass machine, but clearly defined sound. It can get A LOT loud, but the trembling from speaker will make your palmrest vibrate and feel uncomfortable. It does get pretty loud.... LOL

Touchscreen: Works flawless on Windows 7. Overall experience felt better than that of Haswell generation.

Touchpad: Not that good in Win 8. Win 7 had major scrolling issues (too slow). Navigation is fine. Did not experience random clicks on the touchpad like it did in the previous gen XPS (Cypress touchpads) when typing! This gen uses synaptics of course.

The ac adapter cord is actually pretty darn long. Don't let the pics fool you. I do really like the detail they put into the build quality.

Build quality: Perfection. No cracking, etc. ABSOLUTELY NO KEYBOARD FLEX. PERIOD. END OF DISCUSSION. Hinges are solid and sturdy. Not much wobbling when using touchscreen - something very workable.

Fan noise does not seem like issue doing normal web browsing. But my room is super cold all the time.

I just wish the key travel was bit more deeper. I guess you can get used to it, but yeah it's not GREAT if used to the typical Dell keyboard, but not "bad" neither to be honest.

Backlit keys have 2 light stages.

I am not sure what this display brightness issue people are having. So far everything works well.

Display scaling: I have my QHD+ at 1600x900 with 100% scale on Win 7. There is only one specific app that I use that needs QHD+ resolution, so so far the scaling is pretty decent. Doesn't get much blurry to notice that it's not natural resolution.

I will post back on battery usage tomorrow when I test it out during the day.

UPDATE:

Changed back to QHD+ resolution with 150% scaling on Win 7.

The fan does kick in pretty good! Just a typical wind sound, not a fan sound, so it's not too bad..

From over 30%, the charging rate is around 20whr when operating under high performance mode with just web browsing. That means it will take a good 3 hrs to fully charge this up from full drain to 100%. Again, BIG MISTAKE DELL BETTER FIX THIS WITH 65WHR CHARGER NEXT GEN!!!

 

I'm really happy to hear that about the superb build quality. I'm not gonna lie... given Dell's reputation as an extreme mass-producer of computers (every computer on my entire college campus is a Dell.. every. single. one.) I had (and slightly still have) a somewhat skeptical view of the build quality, and was a little bit worried that they would just start churning these out by the masses and ignore quality control. I've had an old Dell laptop for over 8 years and it still chugs on relentlessly, so given that experience, I purchased this XPS (hasn't arrived yet). I've heard a lot of nightmares from people who's brand new Dell computers croaked right after the one-year warranty was up, though... scary stuff. Might just go clinically insane if that happened to me.

 

............

 

It may just be me...but i feel the Qhd 3200x1800 looks really big. eveything is big.. i cant display much data on the screen. It looks like 1080p or less. Anyone else having this issue? Turning it down to 1600x900 makes it look like 800x600. Some programs have blurry text. Im use to 1080p on 24in, and 1920x1200 on 17in screens. I was expecting QHD to display word and chrome smaller, not just as large or larger than my other displays.

Any insight on this?

 

I just received mine today, the i7 512GB version, and everything is quite great except for one weird issue I am experiencing.

When I close the lid and sleep the computer and then resume it when it is not plugged in, everything is extremely slow and choppy as if the processor was down-clocked. When I plug it back in and then pull the power plug again, things are fine again on battery power. To fix the issue it seems I need to plug in the laptop to fix the issue.

I keep my computer in the high performance power profile and I'm guessing that something on sleep resume is forcing the computer into a power save performance mode and disregarding the actual power mode chosen. This seems to happen on any power profile I choose as well. I poked around the BIOS and didn't see anything that would make a difference. Anyone else noticing this? It is reproducible without fail on my machine.

It's not a huge deal right now because I got the extra battery pack, and when I plug that in it things the computer is actually plugged in, instead of counting it as a separate battery, so I don't need to find an outlet or anything, but I would rather it just behave properly.

 

I do continue to hate this touchpad. In full honesty, it's damn horrendous. Clicking sometimes doesn't register and you gotta give that pressure. If it clicks even with light pressure, it should register click every time, but it often doesn't. That feeling when you are like, "Did click go through? Oh I guess not.' i HATE it. Looks like drivers issue, but that doesn't mean they will fix or improve the situation...

No sunk cost bias here gents. But touchpad continues to suck big time! But the touchscreen got much better in terms of fluidity. Feels now more like android tablet in terms of fluidity. Of course, not as smooth as an iPad!

Palmrest rubberized is the same as previous gen with attracting grease. So do wash your hand!

 

Those are two things I am interested in... but not enough to spend the cash quite yet. I never liked lugging around an external HD, so idk about the battery pack. I normally like my computers to have both ethernet and HDMI.. it almost feels like the computer is lacking a soul without them. But as of right now, I can't justify that purchase without an immediate knowledge of what I need to use those two ports for during my time wandering a college campus. At home? Yeah, use them all the time.. but not here. Not yet, anyway.

But yeah, I'm really pumped too. Estimated delivery date is tomorrow. Hopefully a well-invested $1200. Can't wait!

 

Sounds awful. Doubt they're going to fix it. I might just have to hold off on the Windows 7, and put Classic Shell into 8.1 instead.

 

I tried my best to get the 8.1 into the 7 look and work it out. At the end of the day, it was functionality of 8.1 that bugged me down. I just cannot deal with the 8.1.....

Scrolling is much much better in 8.1. Basically, your touchpad will be SOOO bad with scrolling on 7. On 8.1 it's decent but nothing to brag about as a whole.

 

Running prime95 for 100% cpu usage after coupla mins cpu clock throttles with spike downs at 2.2GHz, even 2.0GHz for split seconds. Temps still around mid 80s. Clocks try to stay at 2.5GHz with two cores at 100% but some brief throttlings to meet temperature drops temporarily. Not too bad.

Pretty sure stressing graphics together WILL throttle even more due to power usage. Has been that way for all low voltage cpus.

 

How does the screen looks when scaling it to 1080? Is it really bad?

 

Not too bad. I reverted back to QHD because I realized that the single software I use to like native resolution.


BATTERY USAGE:

Win 7 - Perfect drivers - Bare minimum startup programs (MSCONFIG) - 60% brightness with wifi on.

At desktop complete idle (no launched program), around 5whr/hr use. When you have a few tabs and start messing with touchpad, spikes to 7-8.5whr usage. I assume in real like browsing, 8.5whr/hr giving 6.5hrs at most. Probably 7whrs close to.

Remember that with these lackluster drivers, using touchpad ends up being one of the highest battery consumption!

 

I just got my QHD 8GIG i5 with 128SSD... I guess its alright... my biggest complain is the touchpad, the input lag is absolutely horrible... and it does not register the clicks sometimes. A lot of web reviews raved about the new touchpad so I had my hopes but I must say im very disappointed. Anyone have any solution for the input lag or better touchpad drivers?

The keyboard is really hard to get used to as well - the placement of the backspace key is driving me nuts.

Also to those who have QHD displays what browser are you using to surf the web?

 

Gizmodo says:

And MobileTechReview says:

So I thought the touchpad drivers were NOT synaptics. But some in-house Microsoft drivers, no?

Or did you do a full wipe of Win 8.1 and reinstall Win7 and use different drivers?

 

Was anyone able to measure the FHD matte panel's max brightness? Like I said before, mine is at only 190 nits which is a lot lower than the advertised 400 (and measures 350 I've seen in some reviews).

Also, is there a way to disable the LED next to the touchpad?

 

About the battery life, you guys recommended the 40-80 rule. So when it comes to NOT using my laptop, is it best to shut down or sleep/hibernate the laptop when not in use to prolong the battery health quality?

This would help put an end to many rumours

Thanks

 

Have you disabled Adaptive Brightness in your Power Plan? That was the culprit when I was unhappy with maximum brightness on other devices.

 

Dellienware, how is the sound quality from the headphone combo jack ? Have you noticed any distortion on higher volume and how is the bass ?

Regards