a little more than a year ago we got the dell xps 15 to use as part of a workstation the goal was to get a good value laptop with a large display comfortable keyboard and a good track pad a laptop that is both portable enough to take with us and would also work great as part of a dedicated workstation with an external keyboard mouse and an additional monitor so now looking back at it was it a good choice mostly yes but let me explain starting off with form factor i absolutely love how this laptop looks with the frost exterior and the arctic white interior there is one problem i don’t want to call it major and maybe it’s me but i’ll get to it in just a minute i remember seeing this laptop for the first time and thinking that’s a sweet looking laptop it also comes in a platinum silver exterior with a black interior but this is definitely my favorite colorway the laptop itself is pretty thin it’s .71 inches or 18 millimeters and we’re
looking at about four pounds in terms of weight so obviously it’s not the smallest or lightest laptop around but it doesn’t feel or look bulky in any way for a 15 inch laptop it’s still plenty portable as far as build quality the xps 15 is very solid and there’s no flex on the keyboard plate like there is with some other laptops the display is super thin and i can easily open the laptop with one finger i’ll talk more about it in the dedicated display section but for now let me just say that i’ve been super happy with the design and quality of the display on the left side we have two thunderbolt 3 usb-c ports with power delivery and displayport and on the right side we have a usbc port with power delivery and then we also have an sd card slot and a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack i like that we have three usb usbc ports and we have them on both sides because it makes charging and attaching accessories more convenient with some laptops all the ports are on one side and then you have to wrap the cable around which might mean that you need a longer cable or at the very least it’s putting additional tension on the port there are no usba ports on this device which wasn’t a huge deal for me except for when i had to set
it up as a workstation at home i added an additional display a dedicated keyboard and a mouse and i wanted to use the logitech unifying receiver because my favorite modesty mx master 3 uses that receiver and i had to either attach a usbc to usba adapter which comes included or get a usbc hub and by the way you also get a usbc to hdmi adapter in case you want to use an external monitor that doesn’t support usbc or if you don’t have a usbc to hdmi cable one thing that i wanted to mention about the finish on the sides of the laptop is that if you’re not careful when you’re plugging in an accessory or when you’re charging you are going to scratch it i don’t want to name names but someone scratched the side of this laptop i’m just saying now i know this will matter to a lot of users but personally i really like having the integrated sd card slot obviously i shoot a lot of photos and videos and i like not having to remember to bring a card reader with me and then finally like i said there’s a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack if you want to use wired headphones or headset now let’s get to the display which as i mentioned i really like so it’s a 15.6
inch display with a 16 by 10 full hd plus aspect ratio full hd would have been 1920 by 1080 but here we’re getting 1920 by 1200 which is the same resolution that i have on the monitors in my main workstation now i don’t know if it’s the wallpaper that came with it and how it fits with the white interior but i love how this looks and i haven’t changed it since i’ve gotten it i love the small bezels on the display which is something that i appreciated even on my older dell xps 13 but that one still had the larger bezel on the bottom with the dell logo on the 15 inch 9500 the small bezels are all the way around and that gives you a larger display while maintaining a smaller footprint as far as the quality of the display i’ve been really happy with it i was a little worried in the beginning because in terms of resolution it’s at the lower end but it’s bright and it’s crisp and it’s worked great the display has a maximum brightness of 500 nits which means you can use it in fairly bright situations and the anti-glare coating on it is really good here it is next to another great laptop the m1 macbook pro and you can see that it’s significantly less reflective now if you watched my laptop buying mistakes video then you know that this is one of the things that i recommend that you look at when choosing a laptop and this way you can get a laptop that works well for what you
need now the m1 macbook pro also has one of the best keyboard and trackpad combos that i’ve ever used so this is a good place to transition the xps 15 has been really good to type on with one exception so let me start with the things that i like and then i’ll get to the one thing that wasn’t my favorite as far as the size the keys are big and have a nice feel to them if anything i would say that the layout might be a tad too wide for me it’s about a half an inch wider than the macbook pro but it is something that i noticed now of course that’s super specific to what’s comfortable for me and christy on the other hand that has smaller hands in me absolutely loves typing on this thing again i always share my personal experience so there you have it the keys themselves have a good amount of bounce to them they’re comfortable to type on for a long period of time and in terms of sound they have a lower pitch to them which is quieter than something like the macbook pro let me give you a sound test another thing that i liked when typing on this keyboard is the palm rest it’s large it has this cross stitch pattern on it so it’s really comfortable to rest your hands on moving on to the trackpad it’s an absolute monster that might be the biggest trackpad that i’ve ever used on a laptop i really liked it it’s very accurate extremely responsive and it
has absolutely fantastic palm rejection which was something that i was worried about when a trackpad is this big there is pretty much no way to avoid your palms touching it and with this xps it’s never been an issue it’s a good work dell now the one thing that i’m going to give this trackpad is that it’s a springboard design so you can’t press the top of it now i use tap to click so it’s not really a big deal for me but if you like pressing on the trackpad you’ll need to avoid the very top and then it gets progressively easier as you move down now to the one thing that i didn’t like about the keyboard it’s actually sort of a big thing and it’s something that i just didn’t think about ahead of time the keyboard is backlit which is great when you’re in a fairly dark or extremely dark room but the keys themselves are white so if you’re in a well-lit room or even a moderately lit room if you leave the backlight on then the light almost matches the luminance of the keys and the legends virtually disappear now i’ll try to capture this on camera so you can see what i mean but if i can’t i’m telling you that’s what happens in real life and it happens to the point where i have to turn off the light during the day and turn it back on when i’m working in the dark if i’d chosen the colorway with black keys then i could have just left it on and it really wouldn’t have mattered if you’ve
gotten value from this video give it a thumbs up so that i know to make more of this type of content and if you’re new here hit that subscribe button and i’ll see you again soon as far as biometric authentication we’ve got face detection with windows hello face and the built-in infrared camera or you can opt for the fingerprint reader which is integrated into the power button so you can log in with one touch speaking of the camera let’s take a closer look so first i like the placement at the top of the display so you’re getting a good angle and it doesn’t seem like the camera is looking up at you and it’s really nice that they’re able to make it fit even with the really small bezels it’s your basic 720p webcam so here’s a quick test to give you an example of the quality of the video and the quality of the audio from the built-in microphone all right so here’s a test of the built-in webcam on the xps 15 9500 i like the fact that there’s an indicator light so you can see that the camera is active i think the image quality is plenty good for what most people are going to need which is again just video calls zooms those types of things and this will also give you an idea of what the built-in microphone is going to sound like for your calls or video calls obviously now let’s move on to the speakers which are very good they’re located on both sides of the keyboard they’re pointed up and for laptop speakers they’re loud they have plenty of bass and they’re great for music and for watching content it’s one of those features that i don’t pay a lot of attention to when i’m shopping for a laptop because most of the time i’m wearing
headphones but again these are very very good for laptop speakers moving on to processing power i have the entry level model so i have the 10th gen 4 core 4.5 gigahertz intel i5 processor with integrated uhd graphics is it the most powerful combo definitely not but right now it sells for 10.99 and if you’re looking for a good all-around windows laptop i think it’s still a good value now of course if you want more you can upgrade to an i7 or an i9 and then get a gtx 1650 ti more ram more storage and even a higher resolution infinity edge touch display at which point you’re looking at twice the cost or even more but speaking of upgrades if you want more ram or you want more internal storage you can actually upgrade this laptop yourself and then save some money and before i give you my final thoughts and recommendation i want to talk a little bit about the battery life dell says that the 86 watt hour battery will last for almost 17 hours when you’re streaming content and that’s versus the eight and a half hours on the upgraded 4k display as always 17 hours is going to be under like the absolute ideal conditions and in real life i didn’t get anywhere near that but i would be able to finish a day of work without needing to recharge it unless i was doing something very demanding like photo or video editing which isn’t really the purpose of this laptop for me alright so what do i think about this laptop after a year of use for the purpose that i got it which is general office work browsing the web a lot of typing and then watching content it’s been a really good
choice aesthetically i love how this colorway looks the display is great it’s anti-reflective and i like that i got a larger display with a relatively small footprint the trackpad is huge it’s accurate and it has excellent palm rejection the keyboard again is plenty big and it’s comfortable to type on and my one issue if you want to call it that is the backlit white keys the camera and the mic are as good as most people are going to need them to be and the speakers are excellent we’re getting plenty of ports for most people and i like the fact that i can charge it from both sides personally like i said i appreciate having an sd card slot even though i know the majority of users don’t really care at this point there is a newer version with an 11th gen 6 core processor for an additional 200 bucks so you’ll need to decide whether that bump in performance is worth your money or if you’d rather invest it in ram or storage i have links in the description to all the products i talked about hopefully this video was helpful click on my face to subscribe and then watch one of these videos you know what i always say buy it nice or buy twice good luck and see you soon
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