XPS 15 (Haswell) Owner's Lounge

That price is very low, but not criminally low. Somebody may have gotten a pair of those 30% off coupons Dell offered for a while and bought two XPS 15s with them, in which case he'd actually be selling at a profit. Or this could be someone who works for a company with a really great Dell discount. And sometimes there are cases like the guy in this thread who bought a top-spec XPS 15 for his son and his son said he'd rather have a MBP, even if it would be the lowest-end offering.

There's no mention of the warranty length on that system, but you can extend that yourself if needed. Just make sure that you get the seller to complete Dell's Ownership Transfer Form so that you can call Dell for any warranty issues. If the system stays registered to someone else, Dell won't help you when you call.

And wow, $50 shipping!

 

I bought the same deal!

9 days in and I am loving mine!I have been looking at the Samsung mSata 1tb drive.... it draws less power idle and load than the current drive and 1TB of SSD would be awesome

 

So I've had my laptop for over 2 months now and I gotta say it's still as great as it was when I first got it. It's actually even better now that I upgraded my browser.

Firefox is a horrible browser now even on the power this laptop comes with and it's quite powerful for it's size and slim body. I was a regular Opera user but the menu fonts looks ridiculously tiny.
I spent a full day researching all kinds of browsers from IceFox, Midori, Comodo Dragon, Pale Moon, GNU, etc etc etc...

The #1 browser I could find for this computer as far as speed, SCROLL SMOOTHNESS (this was the huge dealbreaker with all other browsers), and overall functionality is Torch browser.

It's based on the Chromium open-source code so it's similar to Chrome without all the privacy issues. It also has a built-in torrent engine and media-download button to download your favorite youtube videos.

There is only one problem that I have with this browser that definitely isn't a deal-breaker but more of the last icing on the cake kind of thing. The font in webpages looks slightly choppy at times. When I used Firefox the font was absolutely perfect for the resolution on our laptops. I'm thinking that Torch hasn't updated their browser for higher-def screens and I wanted to ask if anyone knew of a workaround for this? I think I will also contact their development team and request an update for 3200x1800 screens. It's not horrible or anything even close to that but I can see the difference compared to Firefox only I'll never use Firefox again. I recommend Torch browser for this laptop 100%!

 

I am one of the few lucky owners of this Dell top tier model. I purchased mine for 979 + taxes for a refurb deal through Dell outlet back in February and ended up asking for an exchange for overheating issue.

I waited about 3 weeks for them to find the exact same model at that price and couldn't find any so they ended up just building me a brand new one and it has been flawless. No coil whine, no over heating, just a perfect laptop. Dell has been great for me.

 

Sweet deal especially with the $100 ebay bucks which were the icing on the cake. Have you successfully transferred ownership with dell? I filled out the web form and called to verify but unfortunately the warranty is not in my name yet.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

 

Hi everyone,

I seem to be having trouble connecting my android device to my mid-tier model. I know this has been talked about before, but is there a definitive fix yet?
My problem seems to be unique that when I connect my phone to the USB port (checked all 4 of them), it detects it at first, but immediately rejects it. I don't know if it's Windows 8.1, or USB 3.0 port, or whatever, but it's been frustrating the hell out of me. I've tried changing the cable (no use), tried my old computer (Windows 7, and connected fine so I know that there's nothing wrong with my phone). I've downloaded Kies and since the computer does not detect the device at all, Kies is no use. It doesn't even show up as "Unknown Device" in Device Manager.

Has anybody fixed this yet or is anybody else having the same issue? I don't know what else to do anymore.

 

Putting a usb hub in between will fix it I think. My at&t beam only works that way on mine.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

 

no I did not, and didn't know I needed to. ill look into it.


Thanks, for illuminating this to me!

 

Hey everybody,

I'm planing to buy the XPS 15, but I'm not quite sure which display option to pick.
I have searched this thread, but I was not able to find reliable information about the display technology used in the 1080p Version.
Is it a TN-panel as some mentioned or is it IPS?
I don't really need the qHD+. But if the lower res display is a TN panel, I think I will spent the exta 100 bucks.
I'm planing to use this laptop a lot and for a longer period of time due to the heavy price tag, and I want to make sure not to regret my choise later on.
What are your experiences with the full HD Display and do you thing the higher resolution affects battery life a lot?

 

Main reason for getting this machine for me is the QHD. I'm tempted to say it's a nobrainer.

 

Well, there's the post quoted below from this thread. It even has a link to a review of another notebook that uses the exact same panel in which the panel is evaluated rather comprehensively. Fyi, AUO = AU Optronics. And as for this poster's minimum brightness comment, I'm wondering if he/she didn't know to disable adaptive brightness -- but since I've never seen the FHD version of this system, I can't comment on the subjective appearance of its minimum brightness setting.

Higher resolution by itself doesn't affect battery life. The panel is still driving all of its individual pixels, and I don't think the Intel GPU has to work noticeably harder to display regular content at 1080p vs QHD+ -- but I also haven't tested this scientifically. Games might be another story, but I doubt many games would be playable at QHD+ resolution anyway; you'd likely get a very low frame rate and/or UI scaling issues caused by the game not having been designed to handle QHD+ on a 15" display. In any case, I would definitely argue that the benefits of QHD+ would outweigh any battery life consequences. Also keep in mind that the QHD+ panel uses IGZO transistors, which consume dramatically less power -- so even if the higher resolution does increase power requirements, the IGZO design may cancel that out or even create a net reduction in power draw.

 

Ohh no!

Since 2 hours my xps (Nov. 2013, one of the very very first ones) has a broken screen: a continious green line of green pixel in vertical! - Resolution independend, bios and 2 operating systems. on hdmi not --> it is a line of hot-pixels. no graphic card.

What a shame, broken display now and the coild whine. Called Dell here in Germany, a good and friendly support. They will send out an technican to my working office at monday or thuesday to exchange the panel. ....
Hope it will be a good one without hairs and dead pixels (otherwise dell is absolutely finished for me).

I also had some chat with the support man about the coil whine. Supprisingly he knew the problem spontaneously. there in germany dell refuses MB replacement. He said, that it would origin from the CPU and would be intels fault (we know that it is not direcly the CPU, but the inductivity. - but maybe the MB layout and the choice of inductivity is fixed by intel (chipset layout)?!). Accordingly to the support man, dell (and also other manufactures) whould be in contact with intel. .And accordingly to the dell man, just some charges of the CPU would be affected

... He said if ever any re-call / replacement would be decided, they would contact the people with the faulty MB-design (almost everyone with a 9530?). ... But he guess that the chance for an officall re-call is almost 0%.

So I guess, we will have to live with the coil whine forever.

 

Just find any laptop with i7 4702HQ without coil whine and prove Dell wrong.

 

Either that, or this answer sheds some extra light on why the latest BIOS update for this system adds support for a new not-yet-released Intel processor, the i7-4712HQ. Looking at ark.intel.com, it appears to be identical even down to the lithography except for a negligible 0.1 GHz clock speed boost in regular and Turbo mode speeds. I was thinking the CPU change was happening because Intel was about to discontinue the 4702HQ after a year and replace it with this, but maybe there's more to the story. The old Microsoft KB article that discusses a noise like this explains that it has to do with how certain (much older) Intel processors handle C-states, so maybe there's still a problem that now only exists in certain vendor implementations.

Then again, this system is also available with an i5 processor. I don't see any notes about a replacement for that CPU, and my (possibly incorrect) understanding is that coil whine affects all spec levels of this system, including ones with the i5, so maybe the new CPU really is just because Intel is discontinuing an older model. After all, updating a coil on a motherboard seems like a much simpler and less expensive fix than changing CPUs.

If on the other hand this IS the proposed fix, since the CPU is soldered to the motherboard on this system, getting a replacement motherboard AFTER this new CPU has been released (Intel says Q2 of this year) and Dell has updated the motherboards they use for warranty replacements should finally solve the coil whine -- and give you a totally insignificant performance boost.

 

Because you really think that Dell will upgrade you to the new version for free? At least not until the pile of refurbs are depleted...

 

If this is their proposed fix, then I think people getting replacements for this specific reason may well get the updated motherboard even while other refurbs are kept around for replacements required for other reasons. But this is all speculation on my part.

 

Yes it may be, however and sadly experience shows that designs problems are not corrected until a new version is made. Look at what happened with the iPhone 4 and antenna-gate, even with the bad publicity and after the problem was admitted the solution was: refund or free bumper. Impact on sales not impressive, the iPhone 4 was still selling like hot cakes.

As for a recall there is just 0% chance for three reasons:


1) the problem is not public apart from actual owners
2) it is not a functional problem
3) cost: recalls are made when there is a safety concern, when the risks of liability could result in paying much more in case of accident.

For the coil noise if I were Dell I would rather limit the damage: if it is a design fault, never publicly admit the problem and just refund selected customers, without admitting a design problem. So the percentage of refunds would be low in comparison of sales and the parts could be used to repair computers of non-complaining customers. Then discretely improve the design in the next model.

Of course this is my point of view, I am not Dell and I hope they will prove me wrong.

 

I totally missed the discussion regarding the addition of the new Intel i7-4712HQ with the latest A04 Bios.
This very much confirms that a new configuration of the XPS 15 will be available soon, probably introduced at Computex taking place in early June, if not earlier.
I am curious to see if that is going to be the only noticeable change in specs. A lot of manufactures are waiting for Intel's Haswell Refresh, to also bundle their new models with the Nvidia's new Maxwell architecture as well. I am not going to be surprise if the model gets a boost with an updated NVIDIA 850M as well.

 

The QHD+ panel is in a word, gorgeous. It's so sharp it's not even funny, the North American panel is also brighter as well. As stated before, the higher-resolution should have zero impact on battery life unless you run games at 3200x1800 but then you're more likely to encounter scaling problems and issues with the GPU not being able to keep up more then high battery drain.

I use XPS 15 to process my DSLR photos and they look fantastic, I love it. HiDPI support is hit and miss in Windows... I haven't had too many issues since my primary software tool is Lightroom which scales properly. A few others like Adobe Photoshop Elements sadly, does not. People also said Chrome does not scale well but I haven't had any problems with it yet.

Also even if you run things in a lower resolution, the fact that the screen has such high DPI means that it'll still look better and sharper then the displays which run at lower native resolution. I run most games on this thing at 1366x768 but considering how sharp the graphics come out you wouldn't know it.

Yep, I was an iPhone4 customer at launch and got a free bumper from Apple for my troubles.

That is just the state of the consumer electronics industry these days, no companies back up their products or design anymore. iPhone4 had antenna issues, Sony has had non-functional WiFi on their Vaio laptop for years, even the first-gen Yoga by Lenovo was known for really bad WiFi problems as well etc, the list goes on and on.

There's no chance of a recall by Dell, nobody recalls anything unless it poses significant risk of causing bodily harm or injury (i.e. exploding batteries etc.). Will the coil whine be fixed for the next generation of the XPS 15? Probably, will Dell upgrade you for free? I doubt it, if we're lucky they'll give us a $100 e-coupon or something towards the purchase of a new Dell laptop or something.

 

This is why I am glad I used my credit card, I am backed by them, if Dell refuse to play ball at any stage I can do a chargeback. Dell refused to replace my system, I said that is fine, I am starting the chargeback process. My new system shipped 4 days ago. This alone is admitting liability so I can lodge a further complaint in lieu of a revised model without the problem and demand they replace my system with that. if not I get a full refund.

win win.

 

The new XPS 15 configuration with the Haswell Refresh CPU, now appears to various Dell websites across the world.

Dell Australia - http://www.dell.com/au/p/xps-15-9530/pd‎
Dell New Zealand - http://www.dell.com/nz/p/xps-15-9530/pd‎
Dell Singapore - http://www.dell.com/sg/p/xps-15-9530/pd‎

It is still labels as XPS 15 9530, with the exact same specifications as the current model besides the new Haswell Refresh CPU, the Intel i7-4712HQ.

 

interesting, the only bummer here for us who own the 4702 version is resale value will drop like a rock.... even if the CPU is not much better in any functional use case it will still affect resale value.


Bummer, I like selling my notebooks 8 mo - 18 months after owning them and getting something new.

 

Hi ALL,

I purchased DELL XPS 15 9530 and I thought this is the best laptop I had. However, some application looks very small/tiny and importantly, Cisco Packet Tracer looks messed up on this laptop (but from my other asus laptop, it looks perfectly.), I also tried other software such as Photoshop and dreamweaver, even Remote Desktop, its the same very tiny :-(. real love this laptop, but one downside i can see if the DPI issue on some applications.

Is there any solution to fix the display issue?

Thanks

 

jphughan, Caucasian_Fury:
Thanks for your detailed feedback!
Based on that I decided to went for the qHD, mainly because I'm curious (first fhd+ display and touch screen)
Great timing by myself, with a updated version appearing on the Dell website a few hours later.... :/
However, I'm looking forward to my new xps. intended arrival: 15. May

 

I'd love to see the release notes of that CPU. Practically same TDP and frequency, same iGPU, etc, so there is no much point.

It may be that Intel fixed some bugs and the old CPU will stop being available, and hence Dell (and every other vendor) will have to start using the new model. Or it might actually fix the coil whine issue.

Otherwise, I hardly see the point of updating the design with a new revision which is practically the same (RAM, GPU, etc). Maybe there are other changes under the covers?

 

In case you don't know, if your order is not being manufactured yet, you can cancel it at no cost.

 

The price is way too high. I guess it takes some time before the price settles to a reasonable range.
For mid-tier:
Australia: $2499
New Zealand:$3098
Singapore:$2699

Furthermore, shouldn't Dell America be the first to announce if any new model releases?

However, I still have some hope that they managed to fix the coil whine with this refresh. Maybe someone can ask Dell about this?

 

Thanks for the hint, but the status is already in production.
And I want my new toy ASAP, so everything is good for me.

 

What I mean is that it makes a huge difference whether Dell has communicated with Intel about the coil whine problem and tried to correct the problem with this refresh. We don't need to wait until the refresh model is sold widely and then wait another month to get feedback from users.

If Dell acknowledges that the coil whine problem is corrected in the new refresh, then we can wait and see. If not, I would say there's really little possibility.

 

I doubt it. One of the reasons that Dell has been dropping granular configuration of its models is that the average consumer cares less and less about particular specs; they just want their system to do what they need it to do at a reasonable pace. The smartphone industry has conditioned people to think that way -- few people care about the CPU and memory specs of their smartphones, even though many people spend far more time on their phones than their PCs, and as PCs are increasingly viewed as a commodity item rather than a special necessity, I think that trend will only continue. There's also the fact that consumers' willingness to adapt their work strategy around the capabilities of smartphone and tablet have caused the performance expectations of PCs to drop somewhat. Before I got my XPS 15, I had a Precision M6300 that I'd kept around for over SIX YEARS! Six years ago, having a six-year-old PC would have been unthinkable, but these days, that Precision M6300 once I tossed an SSD into it was still running just fine; I only got rid of it because my parents needed a new laptop, so I took the opportunity to upgrade mine. Of course the PC industry hates when consumers hang onto their stuff for that long rather than buying new stuff, so you'll notice over the last few years PCs have focused on getting thinner, lighter, and more power-efficient (to be more like, you guessed it, smartphones) and not as much on being faster.

Of course there will always be some savvy customers that will be aware of this spec difference, but I think most people will just see an "XPS 15 Haswell" or maybe even just "a shiny thin and light Dell laptop with an awesome display".

You can go over to ark.intel.com, select these two processors (under Mobile > 4th Gen i7) and compare their specs side by side. As I said, according to that page, the ONLY difference is a 0.1 GHz bump in base and Turbo clocks.

You can use the same BIOS without using exactly the same motherboard; you just code the BIOS to support multiple variants of some part. And some parts (like coils) could absolutely be swapped without requiring a BIOS change at all. The fact that the CPU is soldered onto the motherboard in our case means that the motherboard will absolutely be different. Whether the CPU is the only difference is yet to be seen -- though if they DO change the motherboard for the new CPU in ways that may address coil whine or other issues, perhaps those changes (other than the CPU itself) will trickle down to refurb units for the 4702. Only time will tell, I guess.

I wouldn't count on this signaling a refresh model. I think it's far more likely that any refresh will as you say include Haswell Refresh CPUs and NVIDIA Maxwell -- but the 4712 isn't a Haswell Refresh as far as I can tell. And as I've said repeatedly in this thread, for several years now Dell has only offered GPU upgrades within the same generation of a given model for the top-end Precision and Alienware models. Everything else pretty much stays with launch specs for its entire lifecycle, and the new stuff is packaged into an entirely new XPS 15 model, like this one compared to the L501X. I personally think that this system is far too tightly integrated to justify a generation refresh of its CPU and GPU. It would require engineering changes to both the motherboard and the cooling assembly and revalidation of the entire system. That's a lot of effort, so I don't see how people thinking that Dell wouldn't be willing to spend the money to fix a coil whine problem would expect them to go to that effort to update an existing model rather than package the new stuff as a next-gen system. Neither history nor economics would support that possibility.

 

Of course you can change a coil without changing the BIOS at all but seriously, if Dell really cared about addressing the issue it would take them like one man-day to isolate the noise source, and to figure out a new design without using this coil or using another one. They could have integrated that at any time for new motherboards after some tests. Fact is they just don't care, they don't want to spend more R&D resources on an already selling computer, changing the processor soldered or not will not require them to change the MB at all and they will absolutely not do it, the coil noise is an annoyance but not a functional issue and most people even make a confusion with normal fan noise. They will continue to make either MB replacements or refunds that are much cheaper (since they can resell them as refurb anyway).

Time will tell but that's what experience shows. Now a difference can come from the CPU if its power consumption diverges, it may affect the coil noise which is related to current.

 

I just made an account to post here since I did a lot of reading here while waiting for my XPS to arrive. Got it (top model) late last week and so far, no issues. No coil whine at all, it makes almost no sound, no throttling when playing games. Overall I am very impressed with this laptop. The two issues I did have were the intel quick start causing issues with coming back from sleep mode and screen resolution / icon scaling, but thanks to reading through this forum I was prepared for them.

The only thing I don't really care for is the keyboard, its not terrible, I just miss my samsung series 9 keyboard.

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone for their helpful posts and let people know that there are some perfectly fine xps 15's being delivered, something I had started to doubt after reading the forums here after placing my order lol, was really scared about the coil whine.

 

Happy to hear that! Mine is scheduled to come early next week, I will report asap

 

Don't rely too much on Dell's past to predict their future moves, as the company went private and things are working, or going to work much different from now on as we are moving forward, one of the main reasons they took the company private was flexibility and speed. XPS 15, is a significant piece of hardware and one of the first products that marks this new Dell era.
Since the new configurations with the new CPU are already available in some countries, we can put the NVidia 8 series expectation to rest, as we already have a confirmation that the new models are coming with the same GeForce 750M GPU.

Regarding the Haswell Refresh, the new Core i7-4712HQ is supposedly part of the new refreshed lineup and not just another SKU of the existing Haswell line.
http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2014/2014041601_Intel_launches_Haswell_Refresh_mobile_CPUs.html
http://wccftech.com/intel-haswell-r...es-confirmed-flagship-core-i74790-retail-303/

The refreshed line is based on the same architecture with minor fixes here and there better power and speed management, slightly higher clock speeds, according to Intel for the i7 Haswell Refresh CPUs this will translate to a 4-7% performance boost, also the new line is now compatible with the new Intel's 9 Series chipsets and supposedly Intel has fixed some major thermal issues introduced with the Ivy Bridge, especially when on TurboBoost, by including a completely new and improved thermal interface material solution. So in summary the new i7-4712HQ is an evolution of the previous line, for sure it cannot be characterized as next-gen solution, but at the same time is definitely much more than just a 0.1Ghz clock-speed boost

 

Which games did you play? Where do you keep the laptop while gaming?

Anybody who doesn't have throttling problem, please reply so that I can also try those games. For those who didn't see my earlier posts, I tried GTA4 & BF4 with nVidia recommended settings. Both throttle within 5 minutes if I play on a non-level surface.

 

It makes sense since the vents are under the notebook. Usually notebooks should not be used on non-level surfaces.

 

In my case, even if nothing is blocking the vents, it will throttle. I have actually tried keeping the laptop in mid air at an angle with as minimal support as possible. It still throttled.

 

Fallout NV, Skyrim, Dishonored, all ran really well for more than an hour.

 

Oh and I played on a wooden table

 

Just for my peace of mind, can you try playing Skyrim for 10 minutes while the laptop is on your lap and at an angle? By angle, I mean it shouldn't be parallel to your floor. I know it sounds stupid, but I want to believe that my laptop is defect free.

 

Sure, ill test it out when I get home from work.

 

Out of curiosity, do you have the SSD or the Hybrid HD?

 

The full SSD one. I bought back in December 2013.

 

What settings are you running the games at? I'm playing Witcher 2 at 1366x768 at medium settings... no throttling at all with over 2 hours straight of gaming on a wooden table surface. I also have the A04 BIOS, did you flash yours? The A03 update was supposed to address throttling.

 

Hi everyone!

Owner of a top-spec model from December here, need to report and ask for advice about a couple of issues:

- Battery: Sometimes happens that, even if I have been working with the charger on for several hours, when I unplug it the battery goes empty or close to. Like from "100% fully charged, plugged in" to "25%" just by removing the charger. Maybe I did not really pay attention at it before, but in the past couple of weeks this happened 3 times already. Moreover, monitoring softwares show a wear level of 9% already, after 4 months of usage.

- SSD: I am not very knowledgeable about SSDs, but as far as I know, this value of "Wear Leveling Count", in relation with the total amount of writes, is not a good sign - especially for such a "young" SSD. Anyone can shed some light here?

 

Your battery seems to be dead or the charging circuit, as for the SSD I don't think it is a good measure, a good measure would be the total amount of data written than you can view in samsung magician if your SSD is recognized.

 

The computer is designed to only be cooled effectively if placed on a stable and level surface. It will not be able to keep up with the thermal demands of gaming while on your lap, or other soft/unstable surface, or while suspended in the air.

Instead of suggesting that others try and force their computers to throttle by using them inappropriately, you could try gaming on a level, hard surface (as has been recommended in this thread many times already), and see what the result is.

 

Someone else has seen that battery behavior in the Precision M3800 thread a few times. I don't think he's identified the culprit or called Dell about it yet. Definitely shouldn't be happening though.

As for the SSD, according to a thread that, granted, pertains to Lite-On/Plextor SSDs whereas you might have a Samsung, that metric is just how many blocks of 64MB data have been written to the disk. SSDs are constantly performing wear leveling in order to, well, level out wear, so that number is only ever going to increase while you use the SSD. Maybe it resets when you power cycle, I'm not sure. Either way, that's totally normal. Thread: My M5pro wear leveling count problem. - Plextor.

 

Hey guys!

Is anyone else getting the following error message: USB Device not Entering Selective Suspend when running powecfg /energy?

I have enabled selective suspend in the power options :/

My battery is suddenly lasting a lot shorter, so I'm trying to figure out what might be the cause. Would really appreciate it if someone else could try running the powercfg /energy command as well and report back if you're getting the same error as above.