Dell XPS 15 Haswell Edition: QHD+ with a Refined Design
by Jarred Walton on March 6, 2014 7:00 AM ESTDell XPS 15 Conclusion: Almost There
At the end of the day, what can be said about the XPS 15 is that it’s a great looking laptop and on paper it checks all the right boxes. In practice, I’ll be frank and state that it’s been a bit of a love/hate relationship with the XPS 15, but the hate comes more from being frustrated by my inability to get consistent results. If the system always throttled (which is what happened with the previous generation Ivy Bridge XPS 15), it would be easy to point out the problem, but that’s not the case. When it runs as it ought to, the XPS 15 offers a great blend of style, build quality, performance, battery life...and let’s not forget the awesome QHD+ display. The applications on Windows may still have issues with High-DPI right now, but long-term I’d rather have a high quality display than not, and the XPS 15 gives me exactly that.
This review is possibly one of the longest of my career, at least in terms of finishing and posting it. Originally I had planned to get the review posted ASAP, but when I started encountering issues with the GPU clocks I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what precisely was going on. I really like the laptop in general, and if I hadn’t been pounding on the system specifically running benchmarks and games and checking for throttling, maybe I could have missed that. Even with that particular issue cropping up from time to time, I still like the XPS 15 more than the vast majority of laptops I’ve tested. There was a time when performance mattered more, but these days the keyboard, touchpad, screen, and overall design end up being far more important to me, and I suspect that’s true for many of our readers.
Since the first XPS 15 rolled out several years back, Dell has clearly been trying to create a laptop – and a line of laptops – that offers a premium experience. Each generation has improved, sometimes in small ways and sometimes not. This round, the optical drive has been kicked to the curb, making way for a slimmer and lighter laptop that doesn’t have to sacrifice on battery life or performance. Everything seems to be in place for the XPS 15 to succeed, and if I were personally in the market for a new laptop the XPS 15 would certainly be high up on my list. It’s just that one item of inconsistent GPU performance that gives me pause.
If you don't care about gaming but like everything else on top, the Haswell XPS 15 a great laptop and I could easily give it an Editors' Choice award. On the other hand, until/unless the need to reboot on occasion to fix the GPU and CPU temperatures (and the resultant throttling) is addressed, those who occasionally/frequently play games might be better off waiting or looking at other options. There are quite a few laptops coming out with high-DPI displays, and some may be able to top the XPS 15. Others may be lacking in the style or build quality departments but should come with lower pricing (and a caching SSD at best). Even If Dell can fix the need to reboot on occasion to get the GPU running where it ought to be, this is a premium quality laptop with a premium price, so it’s not for everyone; it is however one of a very few options that can even think of challenging the MacBook Pro Retina.
As far as competitors go, it’s pretty simple really: if you want to run OS X, get a MacBook, but if you’re happier running Windows I don’t see much point in going that route. There really aren’t many other laptops in the same bracket right now. Razer’s Blade (and Blade Pro) is close in many ways, but it has much more of a gaming slant and a higher price tag to go with it. Otherwise, you can either wait for the upcoming spring refresh of notebooks, or you can look at some of the Ultrabooks that skip the discrete GPU entirely – Toshiba’s KIRAbook and Samsung’s ATIV Book 9 Plus might be a couple to consider. Last year’s ASUS UX51VZ is another great candidate, but it needs a refresh to Haswell (and GeForce 800M perhaps?) now. In other words, there’s very little in the way of direct competition at present.
The bottom line is that this is a laptop that has style, battery life, build quality, input devices that work well, a high-end QHD+ display, and the option for a 512GB SSD, 16GB RAM, and a discrete GPU. Fix the thermals, whatever the cause – or maybe go with Crystalwell and forego the discrete GPU – and this laptop would be golden. Instead I’m left in the uncomfortable position of really liking a laptop that has a potentially serious fly in the ointment. Hopefully we can clear that up in the coming weeks.
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Meaker10 - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
Is the largest cache really an advantage though. I thought tests showed in everything but gaming on the igp it had no impact on performance.willis936 - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
That really isn't the case. Go back and check the compute numbers on crystalwell. It blows every other mobile SKU out of the water. Sure if you don't need compute don't spend $2k on ittipoo - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
The weight there in the first page, the Dell website says it starts at 4.4 pounds, but is that still the case going from the 6 to 9 cell battery?edzieba - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
"and perhaps give the user the option to enable/disable the scaling if it causes problems"It exists: http://i.imgur.com/Duy2Igv.png
edzieba - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
I'll add that (not using chrome) I've had minimal issues with hiDPI scaling for applications. What's really annoying is when docking a laptop, you can set the internal and external displays to have different scaling factors (125% for the laptop display, 100% for the external monitor), but that these only take effect AFTER a logout/login. Until then, applications will be the correct scale, but using the old non-DPI-aware method (rendered at equivalent lower resolution and bitmap scaled) and will be slightly blurred. Upon the logout/login, everything will scale normally.Silma - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
Can you make a video of it or a step by step, I never could find a way to get 200% on the laptop and 100% on the external monitor.jphughan - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
There isn't a way to set separate scaling percentages on each display. Windows 8.1 lets you specify a baseline size, and it will then do post-render zooming in/out on the non-primary displays to make things look the right physical size. Mac OS X does the same thing with the "Optimize for Retina" or "Optimize for external display" options. Actually having multiple DPI scaling values on multiple displays simultaneously would be a huge headache for Microsoft to support and then for developers to adopt for all sorts of reasons, and I'm betting it will never happen because as soon as HiDPI becomes the norm, the need for this setup will disappear. So instead you can either optimize your scaling for the HiDPI display and have everything essentially zoomed out on the external panel (which looks pretty good but not as great as native optimization for that panel), or you can optimize for your external panel and have everything zoomed in on the QHD+ display, which as you can probably imagine doesn't look great. Still, it's better than having to pick a single scaling value for both displays, since there's no single value that would perform acceptably in both cases.edzieba - Thursday, March 6, 2014 - link
I don't do it with simultaneous displays (lid closed when docked) which is why I have to do the logout/login fandango, but there is a Windows Blog post that explains the new features including independant scaling for each display: http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/extremewindows/...Penti - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
Which isn't independent if you read the article. Set your primary display to 125% and your secondary to 200%, then the secondary will be a rescaled (bitmap/DWM) version of the 125% DPI. IE solves the problem by not doing any scaling, but rather zooming at different levels on different screens. Basically just ignoring the DPI-settings and handle it (resizing) themselves by not supporting the native ways.jphughan - Friday, March 7, 2014 - link
Correct. But supporting multiple DPI scale factors simultaneous would require a ton of work from Microsoft and then a ton of work from app developers to support it properly. Apps would have to dynamically rescale their elements (and possibly load different art assets if the scale factors are large enough) as they were dragged across displays -- not to mention what would happen for applications that users want to use spanned across two displays. It's certainly not impossible, but given that HiDPI will eventually become the norm, I'm betting that Microsoft isn't going to engineer true multi-DPI support because they know that by the time they figure it out AND third-party developers build in support, it will basically no longer be required. It's worth noting that Apple hasn't engineered multi-DPI either despite having a multi-year head start on HiDPI support and full control over both the software and hardware platform; instead they still use the same type of scaling that Windows 8.1 does in that situation.