“Dude, get a Dell!”
Remember those old ads on TV? It used to be that people would turn to a company like Dell to get an inexpensive laptop that was reasonably reliable and while Dell still has products that lean toward that end of the market, they’ve also got offerings for the higher end of the market too. One such example is the Dell XPS 15z, a premium performance notebook with a huge splash of style.
We’ve already shown off the XPS 15z in detail in one of our glorious High Definition Product Overviews. Now it’s time to give it a proper shake down? Is it really the same as its fruit-flavored cousin from Cupertino? Let’s find out.
Dell XPS 15z Product Overview Video
As we alluded to in our overview video above, it’s pretty obvious that the Dell XPS 15z borrows much of its design inspiration of the 15-inch MacBook Pro. It has the same kind of latchless design, the same kind of aluminum finish, and a similar kind of slot-loading drive. The battery is sveltely integrated with the laptop as to prevent any unsightly bulges.
Aside from the Dell logo on the back, the other dead giveaway comes from when you open up the laptop. The darker finish around the keyboard, as well as some other design cues, are a distinct departure from the Cupertino style. Even so, I think the overall styling works and it’s obvious that this is not meant to be a “cheap” notebook with cheap looks.
Build quality is good, ports are plentiful, and the weight is within reason for a performance laptop of this size. It certainly isn’t as thin and light as many of the smaller alternatives out there, but it’s not meant to compete in that market.
Keyboard and Trackpad
Like so many other notebooks these days, the XPS 15z once again opts for the chiclet or “island” style keyboard. Each key is distinctly separated and has a slight inward curve to it. This makes for quite the comfortable typing experience, though given the width of the notebook, I almost would have liked to see a separate numeric keypad. Key travel is good and the backlighting is a plus.
The trackpad, while certainly responsive, did feel a little on the finicky side at times. It is certainly ample-sized, but it seemed to pick up the occasional errant (and unintentional) “tap” when scrolling across the screen. The two buttons underneath are well-sized, but the travel feels cheap in comparison to the keyboard. There is too little resistance and not enough of a springy “bounce” to them. These aren’t deal breakers, but they are something you’ll want to keep in mind.
Display and Viewing Angles
The trouble with most glossy displays, especially those that are geared mostly toward the consumer market, is that they offer far from ideal viewing angles. Unfortunately, the Dell XPS 15z also suffers from this fate, even if it’s not quite as pronounced as the displays on its cheaper Inspiron stablemates.
Yes, the colors are reasonably bright and vibrant when they need to be, but the backlighting starts to wash out quite a bit of the content as soon as you leave the “sweet spot” of viewing. This makes it less than ideal to share content with the people around you and I noticed this washing out in as little as 30-40 degrees from the center.
The Dell XPS 15z As Tested…
As with all other Dell notebooks, the XPS 15z comes with a huge array of options for specs and features. At its core, you get an aluminum-built laptop with a 15.6-inch HD display, svelte looks, USB 3.0, SD card reader, Gigabit LAN, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. There are choices for different processors, hard drives, screen resolutions, RAM, video cards, and so on.
For the purposes of this review and for our tests, we took a look at a unit equipped with an Intel Core i5-2410M (2.3GHz) quad core processor, 6GB pf RAM, 750GB HDD, a 1080p HD display, slot-loading CD/DVD drive, and NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M (1GB) with Optimus. This is toward the lower end of the pricing scale for the XPS 15z; you can spec it up to Core i7, 256GB SSD, 2GB graphics, 8GB dual channel DDR3-1333 RAM, and more.
Pricing will of course range depending on what customized options you choose, but our test unit will run you in the neighbourhood of $1299US depending on promotions.
Benchmark: PCMark05
To give the performance a fair shake, we ran the Dell XPS 15z through our usual battery of benchmarks, starting with PCMark05. While a total score could not be calculated (due to the lack of an HDD score), we were able to see a CPU score of 8236, a memory score of 7916, and a graphics score of 5813.
To put that into perspective, the Asus G51Vx from some time back had CPU, memory, and graphics scores of 5043, 4509, and 11208 respectively. The Dell wins on the processor and memory, but loses out on graphics.
Now that we’ve got a look at the daily productivity abilities of the Dell XPS 15z, let’s see how it performs when we’re gaming and how it fares when given a fair shake as the daily driver.
Benchmark: 3DMark06
Given the graphics performance in PCMark05, I didn’t expect my mind to get blown by the performance of this notebook in 3DMark06 either. In the end, it got 7229 3DMarks with SM2.0, HDR/SM3.0, and CPU scores of 3030, 2659, and 3191, respectively. This beats out its Inspiron 14z cousin quite handily, which only had 4375 3DMarks, but it could not defeat the Asus G51Vx (8793).
Benchmark: Street Fighter IV
Granted that this is not meant to be a gaming laptop, but even svelte media moguls want to play from time to time. We put the XPS 15z through the Street Fighter IV benchmark using virtually the highest settings. This included a 1920×1080 resolution, high model quality, high background quality, highest soft shadow, high self shadow, high motion blur, high particles, and no extra touch.
Even with those higher settings, the machine was able to pull out an average of 53.95 fps for a rank of B. Only a few minor tweaks got it up to a ranking of A; for instance, dialing it down to a 720p resolution instantly shot the frame rate past 60. This is perfectly ample for most gaming experiences.
Benchmark: PowerMark Battery Test
My previous battery test wasn’t the most scientific method in the world. I’d let the laptop completely boot into Windows, leave the Wi-Fi on (but dormant), and set the brightness and volume to 70% and 50% respectively as a 720p video played at full screen in Windows Media Player. Based on this configuration, the XPS 15z standard battery lasted two hours and fifteen minutes before the notebook put itself to sleep.
With this review, we decided to try a new battery benchmark called PowerMark Professional Edition. There are multiple scenarios available in this benchmark, so I opted for the balanced test. This “uses an even split between the web browsing, word processing, video and gaming workloads. Under that environment, the benchmark yielded an estimated battery life of 3:01. That makes sense, as this is a lighter load than a constant full-screen 720p video.
In either case, getting no better than about three hours isn’t exactly ideal. This is even with NVIDIA’s Optimus technology at play. While that is enough time to get some work done over an extended lunch break, you will likely want to reach for a wall outlet if you plan on settling down for a little longer than that.
Abuse and Daily Use
To truly test how the XPS 15z would stand up in a real world environment, I used it as my primary computer for several weeks. This included taking it out to coffee shops, lugging it around the house, taking it with me on flights, and so on. I took the same level of care as I would if the notebook were my own, but this gave me a good feeling of how tough and reliable it could be.
I can safely attest that the build held up just fine. The performance, which I’ll describe in further detail in a moment, was perfectly adequate for a mobile workstation. From editing high-definition video to a little bit of casual gaming on the side, the XPS did everything it needed to do.
Unlike the usual glossy plastic that you get with the lids on most consumer notebooks, the aluminum here was reasonably rugged and was able to stand up to abuse. There were some minor scuffs and such, likely from bouncing around in my backpack, but clean finish was able to survive without too much trouble.
Like the Inspiron 14z, the XPS 15z is also pre-loaded with the Dell Stage software. Once again, this is meant to give you a big graphical way to gain access to your media and games, but I found it to be mostly useless for my purposes.
Final Thoughts
How can we sum up? It’s obvious to anyone that the the Dell XPS 15z is being positioned as an Apple alternative. The higher end performance coupled with the aluminum design make that message loud and clear. Does it succeed?
Yes and no. People who want to have a Mac and Mac OS X will still turn to an Apple MacBook of some form, but products like the XPS 15z demonstrate that the Windows PC folks in the audience have stylish choices too. The overall performance is definitely several steps up from the usual budget notebook and the build quality is there to match too. Battery life could certainly be a lot better, though, and the trackpad does feel comparatively cheap for what should be a premium (or premium-like) product.
I probably wouldn’t recommend an XPS 15z at the higher end of its SKU family, but one right around the $1,000 price point seems to offer a reasonably good value.
Pros
- Sleek aluminum styling with latchless design
- Good performance across most benchmarks
- Comfortable backlit keyboard
- No shortage of ports and connectivity options
Cons
- Cheap feeling trackpad and mouse buttons
- Less than ideal battery life
- No dedicated numeric keypad
- Mediocre graphics performance
Overall Rating: 7.5 / 10.0
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