New Dell XPS L521X (Ivy Bridge)

Dell XPS L521X - Preliminary info - Dell News and more

yeah!

 

Interesting. Waiting for the XPS 17 L721x?

 

Hopefully it comes with a Gt 640m and 1600 * 900 screen as standard 720p isn't really accepable for a high end multimedia machine.

 

I guess the look will be similar to the new XPS 13, slightly thicker (about 25mm ?) and using a gt640m as the entry level GPU (least powerfull Kepler GPU).

About the screen think Dell will use a crappy standard one with a costly FHD RGB or IPS upgrade as usual.

 

Tbh I think Dell screwed up the XPS 15/XPS 17 design because at that time they missed the opportunity to take a bold leap forward and come up with a thin and sexy design before it became a global trend at some point in 2011.

Something closer to Samsung's series 7 would have been an epic win but they went for a bulky and rather uninspired case instead. They were definitely a better alternative to their Asus/Acer/Hp/... counterparts but they missed the premium feel of the previous XPS and now I wouldn't consider buying one even with a huge discount, not when Ivy Bridge is so close & even perfectly mainstream laptops are getting sexy designs with lighter and thinner form-factors.

So to summarize I sincerely hope Dell can come up with something that lives up to the XPS brand this time around I definitely don't want an ultrabook, but seriously 6.5lbs / 1.6" thick 15" laptops were ok in 2009/2010. Give us something in-between with some horsepower and a broad range of ports.

 

If the gt 640m is the entry level card and there's an ungraded card it's going to be hard to resist an upgrade

 

In a few months we are likely going to see much more thin laptops as the next generation of CPU and GPU are scaling from 32 to 22nm for Intel CPUs and from 40 to 28nm for GPUs.
Intel is even introducing the first 35W TDP Quad core (i7-3612) that is 10W less from the prev gen, this leaves room for much more power in the same form factor, or equal/slightly more power in a thiner case.

Looking at XPS 13 prices this is not coming cheap, I guess from 1100 to 1600$ for full specs.

 

I agree, the only thing that pushed me away from buying the XPS is the ugly design. I probably will buy the 17 inch samsung series 7 when it comes out.

 

Fix the fan Dell!

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

+1

 

I've been waiting since 2009 for Dell to get its premium consumer act together after the notorious Studio/Studio XPS Clarksdale i7 overheating/throttling fiasco, then a couple years of nothing but Inspiron-level junk, finally this year making decent machines but way overpriced with premium specs and, as said by others, bulky, heavy, ugly ducklings. I'm afraid that they see their bread buttered in the enterprise/workstation market and we consumers have to go "where the puck is going" (Wayne Gretsky) because fewer and fewer old line PC makers are finding any way to make money selling consumer laptops. I agree that Samsung, maybe Asus, maybe HP (yeah, I know, look great on paper, great prices, terrible QC ) have more focus on consumers and potential to offer jaw-dropping designs at decent prices than Dell at present.

Lenovo may be the dark horse candidate. At CES 2012, while no one was really looking they unveiled, like, a dozen sexy looking non-Thinkpad models for the coming year. They probably have the greatest competitive positioning (outside of the fruit company ) to grab consumer market share: second fastest growing player in consumer segment (yes, after the fruits ), low cost producer due to large enterprise sales/manufacturing/parts buying-power base, China native still connected to RTP, North Carolina/IBM technology roots, apparently having consumer design orgies these days with some impressive looking efforts (and some not so impressive looking results ) They also appear to be willing to buy market share with cut throat pricing which is fine by me.

While the majority of former PC powerhouses rushing out to make tablets, ultrabooks and amazingly cheap laptops, the few who focus on premium consumer notebook space, with the talent and patience to get it right, may just stop the "orchard" from controlling the Earth!

Just thinkin...

 

I hope they`ll put some nice engine under the hood

 

Yep, my L702X is a paving slab. It's a nice desktop replacement, but it looks like a right porker compared to an Apple MBP 17"....that said, my Dell XPS 17" spanks the Apple for spec and performance. Twin drives and a Blue Ray disc....plus all the crappy 3D stuff. The Apple gains substantially in a far lighter weight and size foot print. Plus the battery life is way way way better on the Apple. The Dell is a bit of a token gesture really.

I used to like the Dell 1640 XPS Studio range, I thought Dell had a really unique and attractive design language going on there....and now they seem to be designing Apple clones....hell yesterday I was in a Costa coffee shop with my XPS 17 and some one asked me if it was "one of the new Apple MBP's"....for crying out loud!

 

I would have simply answered; "no, way much better"

 

I wonder if the L521x is going to be more like a combination of the L502x and the L511z?

 

any news for ivy bridge xps 17. thx

 

Unless dell come up with a radically new cooling system I doubt we will see a "slimmer" design.. Remember with a quad core i7 and turbo boost turned off these things only go up to 78° while gaming, we have to sacrifice a bit of sleekness for the added performance or go with ulv processors ? I really like the look of the current xps 15, it just looks bulkier than it actually is, its still quite attractive and easier to carry around than an alienware imo
It would be nice tho if they changed the bezel and went with the edge-to-edge glass design like the xps z series and xps 13 and hopefully they go with gt 640m / 650m also..

 

If Ivy Bridge 45W quad-CPUs are running cooler than Sandy, they could stick them in a sleeker notebook without necessarily needing a more carefully designed (and expensive) cooling system.

Just like putting 45W Clarkdales in a relatively thin notebook was just asking for trouble while manufacturers were later able to stick 45W Sandy Bridge in many designs. Although some Ivy are still marked as 45W like Sandy, consumption should go down and the iGP represents a bigger part of the chip so I expect they'll be slightly better in that respect.

Otherwise they could simply use the 35W Ivy quad-cores (i7-3612qm) which will obviously be significantly more manageable for a relatively small tradeoff in performance. I think these chips are already in very high demand from manufacturers and we'll see a lot of relatively cheap notebooks with quad-cores as a result.

 

Good point :L

 

With Ivy Bridge and Kepler, Dell should be able to make the 2012 edition lighter and thinner and hopefully cooler. Just don't sacrifice the great JBL sound. That and the screen are the two things that make this notebook stand out for many people.

 

I have the L1702x. What is so great about the JBL speakers? They sound average. And the WAVES thing doesn't make anything sound any better...well to me. I'm spoiled by the sound of full speakers and my Westone 3 n_n

 

Have you ever heard normal laptop speakers?

 

Exactly.

Compared to a good stereo, of course the XPS speakers don't have the presence, depth or range. Compared to most laptops, the XPS speakers sound great! It all depends on what you compare to. For a mid-priced laptop, the speakers are surprisingly good.

 

I agree. Most laptops I have owned, crappy speakers were the norm. The XPS speakers do a pretty good job. I watched movies and listened to music and they filled my room without issue.

 

To produce the XPS 15z, Dell had to make a few sacrifices and one of the them is the speakers. We all want the next XPS line to be thinner and lighter but I don't know that many people would be willing to sacrifice the speakers and subwoofer of the XPS to make that happen.

 

It also needs better cooling, a thinner design would make this impossible.

 

With Kepler, Ivy Bridge, and Windows 8 coming out this year, Dell has a real opportunity to make the XPS line stand out. Or it could really fall on their faces if they can't make it thinner and lighter. I wonder if they'll add a touchscreen to the 1080p monitors.

 

I dont need laptop as slim as ultrabook, I know the power for those is not as good. If they could slimmer the XPS now a bit and make it lighter, I am happy to get one, but provided that they still have RG+B 1080p screen and JBL sound. The design of XPS is ok, but I like the old 1640 design more, it was very unique.
I am still hanging in there with my Inspiron 6000 that I got six years ago, it is still running strong, but slow of course, I want to new Dell pls....

 

By the way, anyone could explain what is the TRM about in plaint English? I read somethings on wiki but dont quite understand what does it use for ? for security ? Thx for advance......

 

Details of the new Dell XPS 15 (Ivy Bridge and Kepler):

core i5-3210-dualcore
or Core i7-3612-quadcore

Nvidia GeForce GT 630M 1GB GDDR?
of Nvidia GeForce GT 640M GDDR5

Max 16GB DDR3

Matte 1080p screen with Gorilla glass? (takes out the whole matte part?)

Max 1TB HDD
or 256GB/512GB SSD

+ optional extra 256GB flash?

Sorry for the crappy post, I'm a bit in a hurry

More info:

Foto en details dunne Dell XPS 15 met Gorilla Glass verschenen | Core | Tweakers.net Nieuws

 

Disappointed, I was expecting for a GT 650M GDDR5. Seems like my old Inspiron 6400 will wait a little for an ASUS version with 650M maybe .

 

Dell making a thinner XPS 15 with Gorilla Glass display and Ivy Bridge CPU? | The Verge

New Info?

 

Looks nice, but at that thickness I doubt we will get a subwoofer so it would be back to crappy laptop sound again. Everything else looks good though!

 

One small thing I hope that dell doesn't change is the arrow keys. Everyone's following apple and making the arrow keys extremely small and really unnecessary.

Does not go well my Tetris playing

But most people don't mind them, so I'm guessing Dell will follow the current trend

 

Notebookcheck writes: "The more uncommon GDDR5 version of the GT 640M should be significantly faster with potential speeds reaching close to that of the DDR3 version of the GT 650M."

see:
NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

There seems to be big difference between the gddr3 and gddr5 cards...

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/650572-xps-l521x-ivy-bridge.html

Wonder what the XPS17 will have.

 

The XPS is not position as a "gaming" machine but a "multimedia" machine?

 

Yes. But you can still game on a XPS.

 

It looks too MBPish and they should have included a numpad. That's just as poor as it gets on the innovative/creative side. But I guess I'll like it.

If the 640M has GDDR5, it's not such a bad thing as it's already a nice mid-range GPU and you'll be able to OC it to the 650M GDDR5 (which is clocked lower than the DDR3 version, at 735mhz).

 

It might have the same cooling problem as all other slimline full power multimedia notebooks. The Acer 5830 overheats, the Sony S also, the oh so good MPB also...Why go for the slimmer chassis after the XPS16 cooling issues?

 

Because that's what sells.

Also, one can hope based on the fact that the GT 640M + i7-3612qm (35W) combo does not sound too ambitious. After all it's 15.6" and it's not an ultrabook either.

 

The 650M isn't much faster than the 640M. 640m's performance is near the 560m.... so this is very nice. > 2x performance of current gpu's the 525 and 540m.

 

Can anyone explain the whole matte screen thing, with the gorilla glass? I mean, whats the use of a matte screen, when you cover is with glass?

 

The same discussion on two threads.

The 640 is Kepler while the 630 is Fermi (previous generation) so if you care about 3D graphics, get the 640. Anandtech has the info on the confusing mobile 600 line. Dell really needs to test the system at high stress because as Razor2 said, cooling could be an issue.
The laptop looks nice (copied MBP) but hopefully they still have the premium speakers. We already have a XPS15z without good speakers so no need to have the regular XPS 15 have bad speakers. Maybe Dell is planning to combine the XPS 15 and 15z into one model.

 

Agree with the speakers! And I doubt dell does ANY heat tests... seriously. They send me replacements and technicians (about 3 times now) but they fail to consider that this issue was this laptop is poorly designed. You can't keep giving me new parts and hope it'll cool down when you put in such a small heat sink and one fan.

Look at the Envy Spectre 15. Same size, bigger battery (About 10 more Watts/Hr battery) better audio (2 sub woofers), 2 fans, 2 heatsinks. ~About the same thinness, the 15z is a little thinner. This shows they're obviously not constrained by space.

If they can't make a thin laptop that performs like they advertises, they should remove the i5, gpu and put in a ulv and sell it as a machine that can't perform intensive tasks.

 

After that Geforce class action suit where the chips melted, you would think Dell would be teting their laptops better. I hope so at least.

If the Envy Spectre 15 is everything you say, it might be a better deal than the Dell. But sites are suggesting it will be close to $2000 US which is way more than an XPS 15. Either way competition is good if it becomes the Envy Spectre vs the XPS 15. April 29 is supposed to be the Ivy Bridge release so we'll see what these guys come up with.

 

Yes HP Envy Spectre's starting price would be $1500 im assuming as the current ones are at that range. And yes, all of those are true. I've seen the spectre's internals. Surely fit in more stuff and more fans than the engineers at dell.

 

The Envy 15 is not bad, however the GPU cannot be used above 600mhz, which is pretty poor, and the screen is lets just say junk. Its an FHD IPS, but if you look at the tests, the colour reproduction so off, that red appears visibly as orange.

 

Don't tell me this laptop is going to have one of those stupid Apple-imitation buttonless clickpads...! >.<

Gee, I wonder if it will be unresponsive and crappy

 

If you look at a current XPS 15 from the angle shown on the picture, you can barely see the trackpad buttons since it's the same color. So it probably has trackpad buttons, just hard to notice on the picture, at least I hope so.