Dell XPS L502x i7-2720 - Observations and results

Hello all,

I'm involved with tons of other car forums but never a computer-esque one but was prompted to register upon researching the latest XPS update that was released.

On 3/4 I ordered an XPS 15 L502x that looks like this:

XPS 15
2nd generation Intel Core i7-2720QM processor 2.20 GHz with Turbo Boost 2.0 up to 3.30 GHz
6GB,DDR3,2 DIMM
Backlit Internal Keyboard - English
15.6FHD TLF B+RGLED LCD L501X
Camera Software 2.X, Factory Install
NVIDIA GeForce GT540M 2GB graphics with Optimus
640GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
Elemental Silver Aluminum (WLAN)
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
Integrated 10/100/1000 Network Card
Tray Load Blu-ray Disc BD-Combo (Reads BD and Writes to DVD/CD)
Creative SoundBlaster X-FI MB 1.2
Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1000
92 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery


I've been using a Latitude D630 for the last two years through college with 0 problems with it (and a pos VAIO for one before that) and it was just time to upgrade. Hopefully it gets here well before the 3/30 expected time of arrival.


The point of this thread is just to record any information such as benchmarks, battery life, etc. that I can provide from it just for the sake of knowledge. I've spent a lot of time looking for some myself without much luck which is understandable since they just came out.

I'm fairly computer savvy but honestly am not a gamer but I do use CS5 and Lightroom a good bit and am an impatient person in general so I'm all for performance What I'm getting at is I may not cover everything so if there is anything that anyone would like to see, let me know.

Personally, I'm after benchmarks and battery life but if there are any other suggestions, I'm all for testing for the greater good

 

Did you receive your system?
If yes.

Could you please let me know does it run warm at keyboard, palmrest, touchpad.

How much time it takes for explorer to open once desktop is loaded.
Does it show that waiting windows circle or opens immediatley after the desktop is loaded.

And how long is the boot time from press of button to desktop loading.
And how much time it takes from press of power button to opening internet explorer.

 

And the quality of the new island keyboard. I'd like to know that as well.

 

I bought something similar - ordered March 3 and expected delivery date is March 30. I'm hoping it arrives before then, but I don't think it will by too much.

XPS L502X
92 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Batt
Intel Core i7-2630QM 2.00 GHz
6GB,DDR3,2 DIMM, 1333MHz
JBL 2.1 Speakers with Waves Maxx Audio 3
BluRay Combo Drive
Elemental Silver Aluminum (WLAN)
15.6FHD TLF B+RGLED LCD (upgraded screen)
NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M 1GB US
Standard Internal Keyboard - Eng
750GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive

 

Have not received yet, of course. Just ordered a week ago.

I'm articulate with keeping track of information so I'll be sure to have as much as possible.

 

I'll be doing the same thing as you, basically benchmarking in oem form, then after the ssd, ram, and gpu oc updates. Right now I'm on the factory 640GB drive and 6GB of ram. I'll be doing some tests tonight before I change a thing to the factory settings or specs. I'm also still on 7 Premium. Won't install my upgrade untill the ssd comes in and I do a fresh install.

 

I'm excited. My status just changed from Production to Shipped. (3/11/2011 4pm central time). Interestingly the Fedex info indicates that it had shipped earlier

Mar 10, 2011 10:05 PM Left FedEx origin facility CHICAGO, IL
Mar 10, 2011 4:14 PM Arrived at FedEx location CHICAGO, IL
Mar 10, 2011 Picked up CHICAGO, IL
Mar 8, 2011 2:18 AM Shipment information sent to FedEx

So maybe the data entry has been slowed down on the US side.

 

Mine changed today too to show 'shipped' - so I'm excited (and a little surprised). The 'order status' on the Dell site was not functioning all day long until about an hour or so ago. It looks like they were updating it a bit as the options changed for a while but it still wouldn't work.

I even called the automated order status telephone number and was told that they had my order, placed April 3! Obviously their systems are a bit wonky if the date they had for me placing the order is still a month away.

This is on the Cdn site - but I would assume that the order status info is the same for dell.com and dell.ca, so perhaps the info wasn't accurate for the last day or so... but at least now I can track the shipment with Purolator and hopefully get it middle of next week.

 

Ordered: 3/4
Shipped: 3/14

Hopefully it gets here by the end of the week. I have enough to do with school this week that time should go by fast.

 

Got it in yesterday. First thing I did when I got home from work with it was watch a movie on it with my girlfriend. Sound turned up, screen brightness up all the way too, I believe. 2 hours later, 75% battery life left.

It'll take awhile to gather more data on that cause it takes forever to kill the damn thing

 

Windows Experience Index

Processor: 7.5
Memory: 7.5
Graphics: 5.9
Gaming graphics: 6.6
Primary Hard Disk: 5.9

 

It's surprising you still get that much battery life with this laptop (considering you have a quad core i7).

I'd like to order mine without the 9 cell one, mostly because it's ugly and i hate my laptop to stick up like that.

I'm going to get the i5 2520 though.

I have a couple questions if you could answer them, I'd appreciate it:

- What was your brightness levels when you watched the movie?
- What are the temps?
- Can you post some pics

thanks.

 

Yeah, I'm amazed by it so far. Even earlier in class, set power option to 'Power Saver', turned the brightness all the way down (which is still way legible, anyway) wifi turned off, running Microsoft Word: went from 100% to 90% in exactly an hour.


When I was watching the movie, I don't think I turned the brightness level down at all.

I don't have any temperature information just yet, I'm finishing up midterm stuff and headed to spring break so haven't had much time to really install anything.

I'll take some pictures when I get home with something a 'little' better than a camera phone

 

I really like it. It's a laptop keyboard, so they thunk rather than click, it's not in any way too firm, as I read in the review that was posted. I touch type without looking, so it usually takes me a while to get used to a new keyboard - loads of mis-keys etc. Not with this one - it's just right.

Mine's not the backlit one, but it is island style.

More generally. I'm pleased. I got the 6 cell battery, as well as the 9 (it's both or just the 9 on offer in the UK) but actually the 9 cell isnt too bad. It's twice the thickness of the 6 but you can kind of hook the bulge over your knees if you're sat with your feet up on a coffee table / etc. The screen is awesome - my impression is that the white is on the warm side but I'm sure that can be corrected. It came with the DPI set to 125%.

When I first got it going the firewall in McAfee seemed to block all my outgoing web traffic and is now nagging me. I can see it's time being short. The Win7 Home Premium install doesn't seem to include telnet, which seems odd.

I'm less happy (though maybe being picky) with the build quality. Mine had a non-working right trackpad button, which now seems to be working. It has what looks like a small scuff in the grey just in front of the trackpad but it's smooth rather than scratched, so maybe it's a mark. The door on the bottom has a bulge, as if someone didnt put it in quite properly when installing the memory. And there's a wierd mark on the aluminium lid, not visible looking down on it but visible from the side. I'm not sure whether I care enough to try to get it swapped, given that I'd then be without it for weeks!

It doesn't have soft-keys for volume control, which I think i'll miss - my old laptop had them. Sound is great for a laptop but not great as a hifi - which the review suggested it was. The hard drive light is on the other side of the screen - is that so that I can't see but people opposite can?!

I've only had it a few hours. All i've really done is installed the mozilla software, listened to music and watched some videos. From that, the fan and heat haven't been any kind of issue (though the fan does come on occasionally, it's quiet). I'll install Photoshop and Lightroom tomorrow, hopefully, and see how it does then.

TL;DR It's not perfect but it's very very nice. Not sure how hung-up we should be about the temperatures being reported. Can't see you regretting buying one.

 

Soooo I've had my laptop on for at least 5 hours today. At LEAST. And I still have 40% on my battery.

Word processing, music going for a good chunk of the time at a decently loud volume, brightness down all the way (don't need it up, inside), and power saver mode. Another thing that probably helps, I bet, is that I programmed the hot key at the top to turn the screen off. Basically, anytime I'm using my other computer to research but still want my music going I flip the screen off.

This is great. I'm gonna try to see how many movies I can watch in a row before it dies, one of these days lol.

 

It is, and it can. I find that I actually prefer the Dell calibration, though.

I just checked, and you are right! I guess my eyes aren't as good as I thought (the fonts were easy to read).

It has hard keys, though (not sure what you mean by "soft keys"). Fn-F11 and Fn-F12.

I love this! I don't really need stuff blinking in my face, not providing useful information, but if you are going to include, out of sight is the way to go.

 

The only times I ever use the hard drive light are if I'm waiting for it to finish going into hibernation, or if it looks like the computer has locked up and I want to know if it really is or if it's just waiting on something.

 

Wow, that's amazing, I could barely get 3hrs on the 9cell on my xps 14 @_@

 

wha? i get a good 4 and a half on my 9-cell xps14.

 

Maybe I need a better power plan for unplugged. But even 4 and a half hrs is no match compared to what comtrang is reporting. Makes me wonder if the 2nd gen xps battery are different.

 

I don't think so. These battery life gains are expected based on the Sandy Bridge architecture.

 

I slipped up on keeping track of when I had the computer on etc. but there's definitely 8 hours in the battery if someone were just doing word processing with brightness down and no wifi. Even with music going at a decent level, battery still held it's ground great.

I'm driving down to Vegas tomorrow and probably won't bring the new one - guess I'll have to wait on doing anymore trials until Sunday.

So far, in short, though: I love the laptop. Track pad is cool, keyboard is super comfortable for me (I type ~130wpm) and the speakers just sound beautiful. For those of you who asked, I can definitely see the difference with the sound card effects being turned on and off. I don't mean that I just hear that there is something different between the two - duh! - but the quality, in my opinion, is well worth the $20. Sound quality is of high importance for me and this laptop definitely delivers through the high quality speakers and even through headphones.

 

I agree. I played the Zombieland Blue-ray movie in mine and turned the headphone settings to theater quality. With my Klipsch s4i headphones in, I couldn't believe how clear the sound was. It seriously sounded like I was in the studio with them during sound recording. I ended up working on my desktop while letting the whole movie play so I could listen and glance over at the movie while working.

 

I'm seriously considering purchasing the L502X model, so I'll resort to your knowledge and experience:

1. Anyone had the chance to test the L502X yet? I'm specifically curious about the heat and noise emissions (both under low load and high load, for instance during a demanding game)...

2. Are keyboards in other languages available or could one have a custom design keyboard, for instance in Turkish (with the Tukish characters which are non-existent in the English alphabet)?

3. Is there anyway I could determine if this specific model will be available in Turkey - with a Turkish keyboard, of course?

Thanks in advance for your replies.

 

Check Dell Turkey

Dell Türkiye'ye hos geldiniz ? Bilgisayarlar, Dizüstü Bilgisayarlar, Yazicilar, Sunucular ve daha fazlasi.. | Dell Turkey

 

Unfortunately there's no sign of L502X on the Turkish Dell site. That's why I wanted to state my questions in this forum...