When it comes to solid performance and top of the line laptops, Dell XPS Series isn’t going to be written off the list. Instead, it is going to be there amongst the toppers, and so will the Dell XPS 15 2-in-1.

Contents

If you are looking for a premium branded 15-inch notebook, which could also be rotated 360 degrees as to your liking, then this is the laptop you were looking for. Courtesy Intel’s Kaby Lake G processors, topped with AMD Radeon RX Vega M graphics, performance is nothing short of a powerhouse. With a 4K screen as an option, rest assured of the best quality graphics, with much vivid color tones. Also adopting a Maglev keyboard, you won’t be disappointed with the typing speed, even with a lower travel.

Though all that glitters is not gold since the laptop’s webcam isn’t up to the par because of its positioning. Furthermore, the laptop also fells short of a great battery life, which might be the deal-breaker to some. A quick description before we begin a detailed review would be that the laptop wouldn’t let your down with its performance at all, although you might have to sacrifice battery time as a result.

Design

It might be true that XPS hasn’t really got a major design overhaul over the years, but the new 2-in-1 combination with its elegancy is certainly a standpoint. The lid is still the same, with a silver coating and a Dell logo embedded in the middle. Yet at the same time, you would admire, how thin it is, thus making it lighter and easy to open and close.

When you open the lid, you would be welcomed by a 15.6-inch display with 4K as an option. The soft-touch carbon-fiber deck is an excellent support for your wrists and houses a new “Maglev” style keyboard as well.

Perhaps the Dell XPS 15 2-in-1 is the slimmest ever when compared with other laptops of this segment. It measures just 13.9 x 9.2 x 0.6 inches yet still housing a 15.6 inches screen, with a narrower bazel from the top. With a weight of 4.4 pounds, the laptop is still portable enough since other laptops in the industry weigh more or less the same. The Surface Book 2, 15-inch MacBook Pro, and the 15 inch Lenovo Yoga Z20 measures, 13.5 x 9.8 x 0.9 inches, 13.8 x 9.5 x 0.6 inches, 14.3 x 9.5 x 0.8 inches and weighs 4.2 pounds, 4 pounds, and 4.6 pounds respectively. Thus, the Dell XPS 15 2-in-1 is an excellent choice when it comes to portability since you can easily carry it around.

Security

For anyone who wouldn’t look close enough, he would surely miss out on the finger print reader embedded into the power button itself. Thus, you can easily login to your Operating System at the ease of a finger placement.

Furthermore, with infrared cameras, you can quickly use Windows Hello to log in with facial recognition, thus saving time.

There is noble lock slot too on the right side of the laptop.

Ports

Beware though, there aren’t any USB 3.0 ports on the laptop, so you might have to shop for an adapter or just buy a new Type-C cable. This is good in a way, since the 3.0 ports are rather obsolete now, and what you are getting in return is 4 Type-C ports; two on either side. Two of the Type-C on the left side is ThunderBolt 3 ports, and one of them is for charging. There is also a micro SD card slot too. The best thing is you can now view your remaining laptop battery pretty easily since there are dedicated led lights on the left side for this.

While on the right side, there are two USB Type-C ports with a DisplayPort. The headphone jack is still there and thankfully hasn’t been ditched as of yet.

Display

We would certainly recommend the 4K display on the XPS 2-in-1 albeit if your pocket allows. The 4k panel has a sRGB color gamut percentage at 160 percent. This clearly beats any other laptop’s display out there since its way above the industry average of 111 percent.

Not only this, but you would find the display quite bright too, since the Display recorded 387 nits on the display meter, while the average is 294 nits. Only a handful of competitors might be brighter with notably the Apple MacBook Pro with 460 nits.

In all, the laptop’s display is incredible without any doubt.

Keyboard

The laptop has what is called is a “Maglev” Keyboard, which new to the scene since it used magnetic levitation. The keyboard isn’t that thick since magnets and a metal plate is employed to create resistance. Even with a low keyboard travel of just 0.6 millimeters, this works perfectly fine rather surprisingly. With a required actuation force of 71 g, your typing experience would be quite smooth certainly because of the added comfort.

TouchPad

The Touchpad measures 4.1 x 3.1 inches and is spacious enough for you to move the cursor from one end of the screen to the other quite easily. With it being a Windows Precision TouchPad, Windows 10 gestures can be performed much quickly and efficiently.

Audio

The speakers won’t disappoint you either, as the sound from them is quite loud and clear, though the bass might not be that strong.

Battery Life

Battery Life is one thing which will disappoint you. With a recorded 6 hours and 28 minutes in which the laptop was tested for a continuous gamut of web browsing, graphics benchmarks, and videos at 150 nits of brightness. It is way below the industry average of 8 hours and 48 minutes, thus the portability which the laptop offers might not really be useful when you will have to find a charging port quite sooner.

Webcam

The webcam is another issue, because of its positioning. The webcam sits below the display rather than the top, but now its centered. It can cause some awkward angles to be honest, though the 720p camera quality didn’t disappoint us at least.

Price and Configurations

The base-model Dell XPS 15 2-in-1 costs a hefty $1,499 albeit with specifications like an Intel Core i5-8305G processor with Radeon RX Vega M GL graphics, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD and a 1080p display. That’s surely a reliable processing unit. The one with a 4k screen and an Intel Core i7-8705G CPU with Radeon graphics, 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD storage would cost you $2,199. If you want you can bump up the storage to a 1TB PCIe NVMe SSD for a model priced at $2,549.

With these specs, it is likely that the laptop would last quite a long period of time, and wouldn’t be obsolete anytime soon.

All new Dell XPS 15 2-in-1 – Great Display and performance, yet below par battery life