Dell XPS Opinions

[G.K.Jnr.]

Hi, I've more or less short listed one of these laptops for my PP work. Its got to be a laptop that I get as I spend so much time travelling and would need to be able to work while I'm travelling.

I'd appreciate the comments from anyone who can offer me an opinion on the unit I have listed below, as I don't really know too much about the innards of a computer ie just what's a good graphics card etc, etc. The price I have to pay is not as important as getting something that is of good quality and up to the job.

Dell XPS 15 7590 4K
i9-9980K OLED
NVIDIA Ge Force GTX 1650 4GB GDDR5
1TB SSD
32GB DDR4 (2666 MHz) (16 x 2)

Many thanks.,

George.

 

[toohuge]

That’s a serious machine you’ve chosen there. Should be ample for what you need - however not sure on the battery life with an i9

 

[Fuji Dave]

If it`s a great as my Dell 2in1 17in then you will be very happy with it George.

 

[nandbytes]

Seems well spec'd out. As mentioned above the battery life and also the size may not be ideal for travels.

My mum bought a Dell XPS 13 about 5 years ago as it's smaller. It still works really well. The battery recently died but apart from that no issues. These are really well made machines and might be worth considering an XPS 13 for a more travel friendly option.

 

[G.K.Jnr.]

That’s a serious machine you’ve chosen there. Should be ample for what you need - however not sure on the battery life with an i9

Many thanks for that very much appreciated, battery life is not too important as when I’m travelling I do have access to plug in power more often than not.

George.

 

[G.K.Jnr.]

If it`s a great as my Dell 2in1 17in then you will be very happy with it George.

Many thanks for that very much appreciated, that’s good to hear.

George.

 

[G.K.Jnr.]

Seems well spec'd out. As mentioned above the battery life and also the size may not be ideal for travels.

My mum bought a Dell XPS 13 about 5 years ago as it's smaller. It still works really well. The battery recently died but apart from that no issues. These are really well made machines and might be worth considering an XPS 13 for a more travel friendly option.

Many thanks for that very much appreciated, as mentioned the battery life is not so terribly important and at the moment I take an old 18.4 screen Acer running W7 with me so I’m kinda guessing that a 15 inch OLED screen might be a bit of a bonus with regards to size. I’ve tried travelling with my 12.9 iPad pro with a reasonable amount of success but really do prefer to work with a proper computer. I’ve also considered a 15 inch MacBook pro but the lack of ports, no SD card slot etc means I’d need to take too many extras with me which cuts down the portability.

George.

 

[Snapsh0t]

I'd consider whether you really need the i9 CPU or if the i7 would be adequate. The previous generation 8xxx CPUs had severe problems with thermal throttling which was especially bad with the i9s but this may well have been fixed in the 9xxx series. Other than that it's very close to what I was considering as a replacement for my XPS13 although I would go with 16GB RAM and i7 as that's enough for my use. If you're not going to game on it the GTX 1650 should be more than adequate and I've just ordered one for my main PC.

If you do want to re-consider the MBP then the lack of ports, etc. can be sorted with a single USB hub. I use one with my little Galaxy Book and it's less hassle to pack than the charger.

 

[G.K.Jnr.]

I'd consider whether you really need the i9 CPU or if the i7 would be adequate. The previous generation 8xxx CPUs had severe problems with thermal throttling which was especially bad with the i9s but this may well have been fixed in the 9xxx series. Other than that it's very close to what I was considering as a replacement for my XPS13 although I would go with 16GB RAM and i7 as that's enough for my use. If you're not going to game on it the GTX 1650 should be more than adequate and I've just ordered one for my main PC.

If you do want to re-consider the MBP then the lack of ports, etc. can be sorted with a single USB hub. I use one with my little Galaxy Book and it's less hassle to pack than the charger.

Many thanks for that very much appreciated, with regards to “Thermal Throttling” I’m afraid I don’t even know what that is so naturally I have not considered it. I had heard ghat OLED screens in general can suffer from “Screen Burn” which I do know what that is and have considered it, probably why most of the OLED screen T.Vs in Walmart have a label on them saying guaranteed against screen burn.

Thanks for letting me know about the GTX 650, as all I know about graphics cards is what they do. I really don’t know anything else about them ie speed, power etc, etc. I presume a better one would give better colour accuracy but ones again I’m only guessing so appreciate advice on that. I don’t play any action games etc but I do watch videos.

I also do realise that the unit might be a little over specced for my needs at the moment, but I’d much rather have something that can do far more than my needs at the moment than something that can’t with possible future needs.

George.

 

[Kei]

In principle, if you aren’t using the full potential of the cpu or gpu, then thermal issues are less likely to rear their head. (It’s a problem common to any thin laptop using an i9 processor as there is insufficient space for an adequate cooling solution) You will need to ensure that you keep the vents clear whilst using it. With respect to the GPU, you will not get any great gains from a low end one to a high end one for photography. Colour accuracy does not improve, primarily, it would be 3D and computational workloads that see the benefit. (games and complex mathematical jobs like protein folding) Research whether any of your uses will actually even use a gpu and if so if there is any improvement with increased gpu horsepower. I’d guess that it’s a no as even video encoding doesn’t scale all that well so raw conversion isn’t likely to see much benefit either.

I’ve got an old XPS 15 9530 that is coming up on 6 years old. Still serves my photographic needs well. That said, the battery is showing it’s age and should be replaced soon. Everything else still works as it should.

 

[Steeps]

I bought a second hand top spec XPS9550, it's now 3-4 years old and it was a huge improvement over my previous laptops. One thing you might need to be aware of is colour calibration and saturation in the screen, my laptop was very saturated out of the box and even now after a basic calibration it's still "brighter" than what I would consider a regular laptop or desktop screen and my processing needs to take that into account. Also the screen is probably glossy so it will be affected by reflections. 4k resolution gives great detail in photos but you might find some of the text hard to read depending on how you have it set up to scale, a lot of adobe packages struggled with 4k scaling but I think those have been updated in the latest versions.

If I'm doing a batch export or generating 100% previews of a folder I just jack up the back of the laptop slightly so it can get more air in and let it do it's thing, it can get loud but on my i7 it's never gone on long enough to see it throttle due to overheating (cutting back cpu speed to cool down). An i7 might do for your needs, GPU with dell you don't really get any choice over but it's not going to be strained either way. 1tb SSD for photography in my opinion is a must and 32gb ram is more than enough to keep the system capable for many years.

 

[Snapsh0t]

Many thanks for that very much appreciated, with regards to “Thermal Throttling” I’m afraid I don’t even know what that is so naturally I have not considered it. I had heard ghat OLED screens in general can suffer from “Screen Burn” which I do know what that is and have considered it, probably why most of the OLED screen T.Vs in Walmart have a label on them saying guaranteed against screen burn.

Thanks for letting me know about the GTX 650, as all I know about graphics cards is what they do. I really don’t know anything else about them ie speed, power etc, etc. I presume a better one would give better colour accuracy but ones again I’m only guessing so appreciate advice on that. I don’t play any action games etc but I do watch videos.

I also do realise that the unit might be a little over specced for my needs at the moment, but I’d much rather have something that can do far more than my needs at the moment than something that can’t with possible future needs.

George.

Thermal throttling basically means that the CPU slows down when it gets hot and, as Kei says, thin laptops can't cool the CPU as effectively as required when it's stressed.

No, colour accuracy should be constant across a GPU range (and the screen is more important anyway). All that changes is the processing power and amount of RAM and anything more than a GTX 1650 is really only needed by gamers or those of us interested in Folding@Home.

 

[G.K.Jnr.]

In principle, if you aren’t using the full potential of the cpu or gpu, then thermal issues are less likely to rear their head. (It’s a problem common to any thin laptop using an i9 processor as there is insufficient space for an adequate cooling solution) You will need to ensure that you keep the vents clear whilst using it. With respect to the GPU, you will not get any great gains from a low end one to a high end one for photography. Colour accuracy does not improve, primarily, it would be 3D and computational workloads that see the benefit. (games and complex mathematical jobs like protein folding) Research whether any of your uses will actually even use a gpu and if so if there is any improvement with increased gpu horsepower. I’d guess that it’s a no as even video encoding doesn’t scale all that well so raw conversion isn’t likely to see much benefit either.

I’ve got an old XPS 15 9530 that is coming up on 6 years old. Still serves my photographic needs well. That said, the battery is showing it’s age and should be replaced soon. Everything else still works as it should.

Many thanks for that very much appreciated, some of that I think I understand what you mean so I may have a look at a slightly lower specced unit as what I gather from your helpful post is that I wouldn’t need anything like the spec of the one I’ve short listed. Even though I may still go for it.

”Sorry for the delay in replying, I’ve been travelling again all day without access to the internet”

George.

 

[G.K.Jnr.]

I bought a second hand top spec XPS9550, it's now 3-4 years old and it was a huge improvement over my previous laptops. One thing you might need to be aware of is colour calibration and saturation in the screen, my laptop was very saturated out of the box and even now after a basic calibration it's still "brighter" than what I would consider a regular laptop or desktop screen and my processing needs to take that into account. Also the screen is probably glossy so it will be affected by reflections. 4k resolution gives great detail in photos but you might find some of the text hard to read depending on how you have it set up to scale, a lot of adobe packages struggled with 4k scaling but I think those have been updated in the latest versions.

If I'm doing a batch export or generating 100% previews of a folder I just jack up the back of the laptop slightly so it can get more air in and let it do it's thing, it can get loud but on my i7 it's never gone on long enough to see it throttle due to overheating (cutting back cpu speed to cool down). An i7 might do for your needs, GPU with dell you don't really get any choice over but it's not going to be strained either way. 1tb SSD for photography in my opinion is a must and 32gb ram is more than enough to keep the system capable for many years.

Many thanks for that very much appreciated, that’s interesting about how 4k resolution reacts etc. With regards to colour accuracy I should be ok in that department as I do have all the necessary calibration equipment. There shouldn’t be a problem with regards to Adobe as I don’t use their stuff anymore and probably wouldn’t use it with a new unit.

”Sorry for the delay in replying, I’ve been travelling again all day without access to the internet”

George.

 

[G.K.Jnr.]

Thermal throttling basically means that the CPU slows down when it gets hot and, as Kei says, thin laptops can't cool the CPU as effectively as required when it's stressed.

No, colour accuracy should be constant across a GPU range (and the screen is more important anyway). All that changes is the processing power and amount of RAM and anything more than a GTX 1650 is really only needed by gamers or those of us interested in Folding@Home.

Many thanks for that very much appreciated, and thank you for explaining those points too me.

”Sorry for the delay in replying, I’ve been travelling again all day without access to the internet”

George.