Dell XPS 13 2015 Skylake Infinity Display Owners Thread

Can you maybe post a battery report?
Thanks

 

I have to regress on that last statement. I just received direct word from Dell (literally just this moment) that the tool they will be releasing does not, in fact, work on FHD models; apparently it will only work on the QHD+ panels. That's a real bummer for anyone who is bothered by this feature and the lack of control over it which the machine provides. I will be updating the review with the pertinent information later tonight.

Just wanted to let you guys know.

 

Thank you for keeping us informed, even if it's very bad news.
I don't know what Dell guys were thinking when they decided to activate this "feature" by default...

 

Do you guys think buying the QHD+ panel and then setting resolution to FHD would save on battery life significantly (or is it the screen panel mainly that causes higher drain)? Anyone know of any upcoming Skylake 13-14" ultrabook that has 9 hours of battery life? The optional Intel dimming feature on my current laptop bothered me, so don't know how I'd like one which I wouldn't be able to disable.

 

Just received my new XPS 13 i5-8Gb-256 QHD Microsoft Signature Edition laptop. Noticed that several owners have had some display driver issues, and I went to the device manager and checked the display adapter driver for updates. The Intel HD 520 driver that was installed was from back early in Sept. I updated the driver, and now it shows 10/28 for the driver date. I did get the error message about the display driver crashing before I installed the new driver. Disabled pinch to zoom, but scrolling with the touchpad seems like a struggle to get all the way down the page. Love being able to reach up and scroll with my finger on the touchscreen though. The display seems fairly bright, but I haven't noticed the adaptive brighutness yet, although I've only used it in a few different lighting situations.

EDIT 11-11-15: The problem with the screen flickering was still there. I did as suggested below and went to the Dell support site and downloaded the latest drivers and it seems better. I was still having some issues with the Edge browser. I've downloaded Firefox browser and it seems to be performing better than Edge.

 

Hypothetically, no, because identical amounts of power are still drawn by individual pixels on the screen. Screen contents is merely blurred/spread out between pixels to accommodate the lower resolution.

The only thing this really accomplishes is a lower load on the GPU in heavier graphical scenarios (such as gaming, of course).

 

Just wanted to chime in regarding the "display driver has stopped responding" error that some have commented on. I bought the i5-8-256-QHD Microsoft Signature Edition. Repeatedly got the error on stock drivers. I clicked on "update driver" in device manager and it updated to a driver dated 10/28/15 I believe. Still got the errors. Downloaded the display driver from Dell's site, removed my driver, rebooted, installed Dell driver, rebooted. I don't have any display errors popping up or errors / warnings in event viewer, but, even as I type this post I've gotten a few freezes for 2-3 seconds followed by that chime noise that occurs when a pop up box pops up in Windows, but nothing actually pops up. Very strange. I'll give it a day or two but will probably end up exchanging or returning. Never had this issue before in any computer ever. Too bad, she's a thing of beauty

 

That sounds like a software issue. I'm not sure I would return a computer over that... there is very likely an easy fix.

 

There's a new BIOS version just out (11 November):

XPS 13 9350 1.0.4 BIOS
Fixes & Enhancements
Enhancement:
1. Improve NVMe SSD function.
2. Improve system stability.

 

Hope so. Everything else about the laptop is perfect.

Nice! Thanks for this info I will have to try. I just was on the Dell site and didn't see this BIOS. It must've just been posted.

 

Updated the BIOS to 1.0.4, display driver error problem seems to have gone away. Ran CrystalDiskMark and sequential write speed is only about 311MB/s, so there's still some room for improvement with future updates.

 

Duplicate post, deleted.

 

This is bad news. I've found the auto-dimming the most (supremely) annoying feature on an otherwise perfect (for me) laptop.

 

It seems Dell may have improved the SSD behavior - ie it is not faster in general seq write speed but could be faster in 4K write speed or could go to sleep when idle and thus is not consuming so much battery power. I hope so. The battery discharge rate should go down (can be seen in Battery bar, HWinfo64 or similar) otherwise the PCIe drives would be just battery hogs and not much of benefit for most users. It should be improved/fixed or Dell should stop putting these drives in their current laptops.

I am sad that Dell showed us a finger regarding the FHD model and adaptive brightness. Why are they going to fix just the QHD+ screens? I hope it is not going to bother me when viewing pictures from my DSLR or watching movies. Is it really that annoying and very visible? Does it do that also while plugged in? I hope it is also not going to transfer this "feature" to external display.

 

I have the FHD model, and I don't mind the adaptive contrast. Unlike the early 2015 model, this one may have it, but it seems to be really fast. I'm not even sure if there is fading in at the test ( http://www.tylerwatt12.com/dc/ ), but if it is, it is in the sub 1s range, and personally I don't really notice it.

 

So it is not as slow and visible as in this case?

(it takes quite a while for the white background to turn up to full)

What bothers me is that someone stated here earlier that this FHD model is dimmer than early FHD XPS 13 ("Ativ book 100%, FHD early 2015 80%, FHD late 2015 50%").

 

That was me. Still don't know if there is something wrong with mine or whether they are all as dim as mine. I don't have another 9350 FHD to check it against.

Either way, I've gone back to using my 9333 xps13 and it's a huge relief to see what I'm doing again.

 

Sorry, I'll have to take that back; I was stupid and didn't do the test with in full screen. Takes a few seconds for the Logo to appear, so adaptive contrast is definitely still present.
It hasn't bothered me, personally, so far, and it does not seem to happen when the tab/settings bar in the browser is present. (Standard Firefox very light grey)

And yes, the screen is not particularly bright, not sure if it'd be very usable on a bright summer day, outside.

 

Personally, I am not worried about bright summer day outside more than comfortable 8-10 hours workday in brightly lit office. I usually use full brightness on my Acer Aspire 3810T (about 250 nits, glossy display) and am very pleased with it. I would like to have at least similar bright whites for my office use (not "grey" whites).

So you mean the 9333 xps 13 has far better screen? I am not sure I understand your last sentence. Would have any chance to compare the screen to some in any local shop? I havent seen the Dell yet and cant check the screen anywhere close

 

At the moment, there are no xps13 models in shops here in Sydney, Australia. I asked Dell tech support if I could take it to their office to check it against another one but they said not possible. They just ship the xps13 in from the manufacturing plant in Malaysia and deliver it. There's nowhere to go and see one for comparison purposes.

 

Okay, mine is definitely usable in a brightly lit office. The library I usually work in is quite brightly lit, and I use my screen at 50%-70% brightness there. It's nowhere near the brightness levels of my phone, but according to tests my HTC One M8 goes up to 490 nit, so that's expected, I guess.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-XPS-13-9350-InfinityEdge-Ultrabook-Review.153376.0.html

Notebookcheck measures it at about 270 nits, which seems about right.

 

Yeah Notebookcheck states 270 nits but some people compared it to their MB Air which has around 300-330 nits and they said it looks like the Dell has 50% of their MBA. That would definitely not be sufficient for my me.
In fact 270 nits was quite good even a few years ago but still I have read many people complaining this one is too dim. I am not sure I can trust plain test figures here if real-life comparisons of others say something else.

yellowpup: How does your XPS 13-9350 stand next to your old 9333?

@ALL: could you please try, if the fan does kick in more often when you plug in? The previous XPS did so I am just curious if here it is different or the same. Highly appreciated.

 

My old Laptop did about 200 nits and this one is brighter. Not too much, but definitely brighter. Definitely bright enough for any indoors situation I can imagine. I typically have it set between 30 and 70% for work tasks.

I've only ever had the fan kick in when doing stress tests, or during some light gaming, so far.

Currently checking how much undervolting the CPU likes, it's been stable over a four hour long x264 encoding stress test at -80mV, so far. -100mV crashes the system pretty quickly though, so if this is stable over a few more hours, I'll stick to that.

 

I would say undervolting will not save as much battery if you dont do many CPU intensive tasks. The display is very hungry, even keyboard backlight eats some 1Wh of energy, then of course wifi, SSD drive...
I still wonder if some regular SATAIII drive would allow for noticeably bigger battery life. We will see if the new BIOS improved the NVMe SSD power cons.

 

That makes sense, but if it's stable either way there is little reason not to, is there?

 

I'm still having issues with the Edge browser, even after installing the latest drivers from Dell. Their graphics driver was not the newest one from Intel however. I've installed Firefox and it is performing much better than Edge.
I did install the latest bios as well.
Still crashing the video driver occasionally. Maybe they'll get this driver working soon.

 

I had crashing video drivers as well. I downloaded the latest ones from Intel, removed the Dell ones (had to do that first, otherwise it refused to install), rebooted, installed the Intel ones, rebooted again. Haven't had an issue since, but it hasn't been long enough to be sure.

edit: Aaaand I had them crash.

 

I just emailed the following message to Dell's sales department and urge anyone else turned off by this CBAC nonsense to do the same:

 

intel 15.40.4300 is pretty new I think it's the latest stable release for the hd 520...

I have the graphic driver crashes when I use the Eclipse IDE (mars) personnally, edge is a no no for me, no plugins and crashes ^^...

i updated to the latest bios and gpu driver, will test that, but overall better SSD performance and yes more stability for instance after the PC was in sleep mode (had some slow down). Promising but there's still room for improvements : more energy efficiency for the nvme and less crashes that'd be great

 

Anybody thinking of replacing the SSD (in my case the crappy NVMe Samsung PM951) with the new NVMe Samsung 950 Pro? Physically the m.2 form factors are identical (I think) and they both use the NVMe interface which should allow the PC to easily recognize the 950 Pro and then install the Samsung 950 Pro drivers. The write speed of the PM951 is a joke at only ~300MB/s, taints an otherwise perfect laptop. Microcenter has $20 off on the 950 Pro and I was going to buy one for my desktop anyway. I will try putting it into my XPS 13 first just for kicks to see if it works. If so, I will head right back to Microcenter and buy another 950 Pro.

 

if i'm reading into things correctly,

one of the still blurry considerations is whether the qhd 128gb ssd version of xps 13 will
fit with the 512gb nvme 950 pro.

not sure which setup you have.

 

Not just the QHD version. Wondering about for both FHD/QHD 128GB.
I think the PM951 is NVMe, unless Samsung released a nonNVMe version under the same name.

 

I have the QHD version. The SSD that my PC came with is the Samsung NVMe 256gb PM951 drive. So physically, I think the 950 Pro will be identical to my PM951 and not only should it fit, but it should be recognized by the PC since I'm replacing NVMe drive with another NVMe drive.

I share your fuzziness re: the 128gb compatibility since that drive is not the newer NVMe interface. But if the BIOS are all the same and *technically* can recognize NVMe, the only limiting factor would be the physical form factor and size variation between the 128gb (sata m.2 ?) and the 512gb Pro being NVMe, no? I suppose laptops that are configured with the 128gb ssd *could* be precluded from being NVMe compatible, that would really stink.

Can only comment on the 256gb, mine is indeed NVMe.

 

Anyone understand if Samsung Magician is a good idea for optimizing and works with their replacement SSDs? With an 850EVO Magician 4.8 has an issue with the Bios Raid (default) setting. I have read that setting "includes the features of AHCI" but Magician doesn't seem to like it (AHCI mode is deactivated (IDE or RAID)). I have also read if you change from Raid to AHCI in bios it kills your windows install....I'm assuming then just use Magician for monitoring the SSD?

 

How 300MB/s is a joke please ? I mean, no offense, but I don't see in what usages 300MB/s will bother you ? Thanks.

 

Maybe because sm950 pro can reach 900-1500 MB/s write speed, depending on capacity.

 

I get it but in real world usage, how is it different ?

 

OK, regarding my earlier posts about the graphics driver causing problems with flickering and basically making watching a full screen video nearly impossible, I finally remembered to boot into safe mode when uninstalling the graphics driver, restarted and installed the latest driver from Intel (entirely using device manager), restarted again and crossed my fingers. I've still had a few driver crashes with the popup dialog box, when loading multiple tabs in the browser while video is streaming on another tab, (seems to happen when I browse to pages with video ads - actually this forum for some reason) but so far I've been able to watch two Hulu shows back to back, and watch HD videos on Youtube with no problems in Firefox and Edge. The QHD display does look awesome, and Office 2013 is running nice and snappy. Battery life for me is holding around 4-6 hrs depending on usage. I haven't even really heard the fan running at all. There are settings that will optimize battery life to get more time off the cord, and the Dell Audio settings really opened up the sound of this thing compared to it's default settings.

 

Probably not noticeable in real world usage honestly. It's just the principle that annoys me. SSDs from years ago are faster than the one that ships in this 2015 laptop, and Dell skimped.

I'm having a heck of a time setting up the 950 Pro. BIOS detects the drive but I had to change the BIOS to AHCI mode from Raid On in order for Windows install to recognize the drive. Anything else and I get the "we can't find a drive" error in the initial Windows installation menu. No idea how / if this will impact performance but if bad then I'll just try and live with the PM951 and put the Pro into my desktop as originally planned.

 

I'm confused, the PM951 is one of the fastest SSDs to date, the 950 pro is only marginally faster.

 

Sequential write speeds are almost 3 times faster on the 950 Pro 256gb (I got a bit over 900MB/s), that's what I meant. My MacBook Pro 256gb pci-e SSD has sequential write speed of 1200MB/s, four times faster than this PM951 with its sequential write of ~300MB/s. While I won't feel much difference in real world usage, this is not insignificant. SATA 3 SSDs from years ago have ~500MB/s sequential write speed. The Surface Pro 4 has two variants of SSD thus far, this Samsung PM951 and a Toshiba, which smokes the Samsung. That isn't right either and I'd be very mad if I got the slower SP4 with the Samsung drive.

I ended up re-inserting the PM951 into the laptop, didn't want to leave the BIOS set to AHCI mode and disable an Intel rapid storage driver. Don't know what I'm going to do re: keeping this laptop. I just got another display driver failure and recovery pop up error...again...this time while using Firefox instead of Edge browser. Smh.

 

The PM951 so far just consumed more battery not giving apropriate write speeds. Read speeds are excellent (over 1000 MB/s) but write speeds are more important (especially 4K write speeds). If they can not manage to use the potential of NVMe they should better put in normal Sata III drive which is and will always be slower but less power demanding.

 

You guys need to calm down a little...the XPS skylake version has been out for a week and you expect it to be flawless...they already released a bios update to improve the nvme performance, there's still room for improvements but at least they're not in idle mode, they're working.

1° The PM951, and PciE M.2 in general throttle because they heat more than your traditionnal ssd, particularly in something as thin as a dell xps 13 (the mbp 13" is way bigger than the xps 13)

2° Wait a little..Microsoft released a driver to improve the pm951 performance, same goes for Dell, it's still a work in progress wether we're talking about the pm951 firmware (updated by the OEM in the bios/ec update) or the bios.

3° Skylake iGPU drivers have problems, see (again) the surface pro 4 or book, you'll see...that this needs a little time too, make sure you have the 4300 intel driver, other drivers are in development as intel is aware of the crash problems.

 

How do we invoice Dell for beta testing?? Maybe we should pay for their products with some unfinished money..? ;-)

 

Unfinished, assassin's creed Unity was unfinished, this computer works very well, the ssd might be slower than its theoritical speed but no more intel driver crashes for me on Eclipse, the bios update that fixed that was released less than a week after i got the dell xps...

You can return your computer and find a skylake laptop that might be more "stable", but i doubt that you'll find that easily .

 

Anybody experiencing better battery life, after the BIOS update?
Maybe you can post a battery report (open cmd --> powercfg /batteryreport --> open the "battery-report.html"). Would be awesome!

 

Are you referring to this driver?
File name: win64_154010.4300.zip
Version: 15.40.10.4300 (Latest)
Date: 10/26/2015
Operating Systems: Windows 7, 64-bit*, Windows 8.1, 64-bit*, Windows® 10, 64-bit

The dell installed HD 520 driver is 20.19.15.4300 dated 10/1/15. This may be a bit naive , but what is the relationship between driver versions...A bit confusing since the installed graphics driver is a very different version even though a different date...? Even the Intel readme.txt file has a different date (10/6/2015)...
Update- After downloading it says it is not compatible with the system, even though it supports skylake....., 64b odd..

 

Has anyone successfully installed Windows 7 or Linux as a secondary OS? I am still puzzled as to why I keep on getting the BSOD whenever I boot Windows 7.. either from an external drive or from a separate partition I made from the SSD inside the xps13. The 9343 model does not have this problem but for some weird reason this 9350 seems to be blocking it.

 

For those interested in charging over USB-C with the XPS 13, I can now confirm:

1. Google's 60W USB-C universal charger works well, with the XPS drawing its standard ~25W. The Google charger has a detachable plug head as well as cable for the charger->socket connection. This makes the whole thing a
bit more compact to carry in the bag than Dell's cables.

https://store.google.com/product/universal_type_c_60w_charger

Bonus: the plug head also fits Dell's charger and works fine with it, so you can leave the Dell cable extension at home - although I'm not 100% confident about using this in the long term.

2. Apple's 29W USB-C charger for the Macbook won't charge the XPS 13, Dell Command Power Manager states that it doesn't provide enough power.

So there you go, looks like USB-C has opened up some more options for us. Really I'd like Dell to make their own detachable plug head, though (perhaps I've missed it somewhere?).

 

Dell's USB-C multi-adapter (HDMI, VGA, gig Ethernet, USB 3) is now available...

http://accessories.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=470-ABQN