5 ms·

Better GPU and 4K screen make the XPS 15 a MacBook Pro for PC users

40 points by artsandsci 10y ago

steve918 10y ago
Except there is not a 'pro' level Macbook anymore. There is just emoji-bar / no emoji-bar.
BlackjackCF 10y ago
I've been kind of flopping back and forth on whether or not I want to buy a XPS 15. I can max out the specs and get a laptop that I actually want for significantly cheaper than a Macbook Pro. However, even though the build quality is good, I've heard some stories about the XPS 15 breaking down after a year or so, and then... having to deal with the horrors of Dell customer support.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  Dell support, and I say this having used it for years off and on, is either seamless and painless, or mortal agony. Which you get seems to depend largely on the quality of your last animal sacrifice to the darkest of gods. Bleating in background "Hush goat!"
  - StillBored 10y ago
    Its not just the support, its the variable quality across products (or updates). I have one of the ~2014 venue 7pros (exact model number escapes me) which came with win8 and I upgraded to win10. I disabled instantgo, and its a fantasic device, the battery lasts for days with my usage patterns, it resumes from standby in a couple seconds/etc. So, when it started having some serious cosmetic issues early this year, so I sprung for a newer one with a slightly newer (and in theory lower power CPU). The new one is a complete POS, the back gets hot, the battery lasts 1/4 as long, it takes literally 10's of seconds to wake-up and get out of the BIOS, the s3 standby options are actually disabled (no bios support), the wifi driver gets stuck. BIOS updates, driver updates, config changes, nothing fixes its load of issues. About the only thing that is better is they swapped the power and windows buttons which on the old one were inconveniently placed. So, there are reviews of people having similar problems with the older tablet I have until dell fixed it sometime right before I purchased mine. But, good luck convincing dell's tech support that their firmware is a load of crap, and isn't working right. Rather they are like, did it boot, you must have a virus, please reinstall.. I might ask for a replacement but I suspect that won't fix anything.
- intopieces 10y ago
  Test the trackpad before you decide to pull the trigger. I had an XPS 13 for a while and I thought I'd live with it, but in the end it was just not good enough.
- vanattab 10y ago
  I worked in computer repair in college and at least back then I thought that Dell had some of the best customer support in the industry. I have only interacted with them a few times since but I have had no problems.
- marklyon 10y ago
  Shell out for the 5 year next business day onsite warranty. You get an entirely different tier of phone support and the onsite folks are the same ones who come to take care of my Lenovo stuff. Did this with my XPS 13 (9343, early 2015) and they have been wonderful. Had an issue with the space bar double-clutching and they showed up at my office the next morning with an immediate fix. It's been a great machine.
  - justinc8687 10y ago
    I concur. I bought with "ProSupport" and they come next day to fix things. If you don't need the absolute latest, I'd also highly plug the refurbished models. I recently bought a refurbished Precision 5510 (XPS 15, but more configurable) and saved $1000. Also avoided some Kaby Lake / Linux kinks still being worked out.
rayiner 10y ago
How does Dell manage to get only 2/3 the battery life of the MBP despite having a 25% larger battery and an extra half pound of weight to work with?
- Eridrus 10y ago
  Probably by optimising for battery life, rather than the specs & price. A lot of the things that people on HN like about non-macbooks like 32GB of RAM or a real GPU or a 4k screen, all use extra power. I'm not an Apple fan by any stretch, but these things aren't free from a power perspective, and throwing a larger battery at the problem isn't always enough to make it equivalent.
- justinc8687 10y ago
  I had bought (and returned) the new 15" MBP, with my workload of a few VMs and lots of stuff running, I was only getting 3-4hr. I run Ubuntu on this and was able to tweak the power settings (and use containers instead of VMs) to get 8-12hr.
- zumu 10y ago
  From what I understand, Apple engineers a lot of subtle power saving techniques into their hardware, e.g. powering down USB controllers when not in use. There was an article a few months back on hn that I'm trying to find.
johnwheeler 10y ago
PC laptops nowadays have some sorry ass keyboards, this one included. Dells used to have scissor switch keyboards IIRC.
mixmastamyk 10y ago
I wanted to buy one, but then they didn't release it with Linux as expected! Looks like they want to upgrade you to a Precision instead. Not sure I have a need for a workstation graphics card. Also, I don't like the 16:9 ratio and glossy screen, sigh.
- interknot 10y ago
  I've been exclusively using Linux (Antergos) on the XPS 15 since mid-February. Installing was remarkably easy, though I haven't had time to mess with the fingerprint reader or GPU switching due to work. My only complaint is that the glossy screen somehow seems more reflective than my Macbook Pro and iMac--and FWIW I'm typing this with all three machines on my desk right now. However, I'm not too bothered by it. IIRC the 1080p configuration of the 9560 is matte.
  - kitsunesoba 10y ago
    I may be mistaken but my understanding was that touch panels can't reduce glare as effectively as non-touch because they need oleophobic treatment in addition to anti glare treatment, and this is why MacBooks of all flavors have better glare mitigation than touch-equipped laptops.
    - mixmastamyk 10y ago
      The irony that is that I don't want touch or glossy but I do want 4k.
- justinc8687 10y ago
  The Precision 5520 at least has a matte screen option and I think the costs are comparable. They are basically the same machine. If you are running Linux, you don't want a 4k screen (at least I've found DPI scaling to be terrible). They do offer the 5520 preloaded with Ubuntu as well.
  - mixmastamyk 10y ago
smacktoward 10y ago
Have they worked out the "coil whine" issues that have plagued recent Dell laptops yet?
davidbanham 10y ago
That's very surprising if the article is correct about it not charging via USB-C. My latitude (basically just an XPS with a different NIC and GPU) does. Dell also have a good line is USB-C docks.

40 points by artsandsci 10y ago

Except there is not a 'pro' level Macbook anymore. There is just emoji-bar / no emoji-bar.

I've been kind of flopping back and forth on whether or not I want to buy a XPS 15. I can max out the specs and get a laptop that I actually want for significantly cheaper than a Macbook Pro. However, even though the build quality is good, I've heard some stories about the XPS 15 breaking down after a year or so, and then... having to deal with the horrors of Dell customer support.

M_Grey 10y ago
Dell support, and I say this having used it for years off and on, is either seamless and painless, or mortal agony. Which you get seems to depend largely on the quality of your last animal sacrifice to the darkest of gods. Bleating in background "Hush goat!"
- StillBored 10y ago
  Its not just the support, its the variable quality across products (or updates). I have one of the ~2014 venue 7pros (exact model number escapes me) which came with win8 and I upgraded to win10. I disabled instantgo, and its a fantasic device, the battery lasts for days with my usage patterns, it resumes from standby in a couple seconds/etc. So, when it started having some serious cosmetic issues early this year, so I sprung for a newer one with a slightly newer (and in theory lower power CPU). The new one is a complete POS, the back gets hot, the battery lasts 1/4 as long, it takes literally 10's of seconds to wake-up and get out of the BIOS, the s3 standby options are actually disabled (no bios support), the wifi driver gets stuck. BIOS updates, driver updates, config changes, nothing fixes its load of issues. About the only thing that is better is they swapped the power and windows buttons which on the old one were inconveniently placed. So, there are reviews of people having similar problems with the older tablet I have until dell fixed it sometime right before I purchased mine. But, good luck convincing dell's tech support that their firmware is a load of crap, and isn't working right. Rather they are like, did it boot, you must have a virus, please reinstall.. I might ask for a replacement but I suspect that won't fix anything.
intopieces 10y ago
Test the trackpad before you decide to pull the trigger. I had an XPS 13 for a while and I thought I'd live with it, but in the end it was just not good enough.
vanattab 10y ago
I worked in computer repair in college and at least back then I thought that Dell had some of the best customer support in the industry. I have only interacted with them a few times since but I have had no problems.
marklyon 10y ago
Shell out for the 5 year next business day onsite warranty. You get an entirely different tier of phone support and the onsite folks are the same ones who come to take care of my Lenovo stuff. Did this with my XPS 13 (9343, early 2015) and they have been wonderful. Had an issue with the space bar double-clutching and they showed up at my office the next morning with an immediate fix. It's been a great machine.
- justinc8687 10y ago
  I concur. I bought with "ProSupport" and they come next day to fix things. If you don't need the absolute latest, I'd also highly plug the refurbished models. I recently bought a refurbished Precision 5510 (XPS 15, but more configurable) and saved $1000. Also avoided some Kaby Lake / Linux kinks still being worked out.

rayiner 10y ago

How does Dell manage to get only 2/3 the battery life of the MBP despite having a 25% larger battery and an extra half pound of weight to work with?

Eridrus 10y ago
Probably by optimising for battery life, rather than the specs & price. A lot of the things that people on HN like about non-macbooks like 32GB of RAM or a real GPU or a 4k screen, all use extra power. I'm not an Apple fan by any stretch, but these things aren't free from a power perspective, and throwing a larger battery at the problem isn't always enough to make it equivalent.
justinc8687 10y ago
I had bought (and returned) the new 15" MBP, with my workload of a few VMs and lots of stuff running, I was only getting 3-4hr. I run Ubuntu on this and was able to tweak the power settings (and use containers instead of VMs) to get 8-12hr.
zumu 10y ago
From what I understand, Apple engineers a lot of subtle power saving techniques into their hardware, e.g. powering down USB controllers when not in use. There was an article a few months back on hn that I'm trying to find.

johnwheeler 10y ago

PC laptops nowadays have some sorry ass keyboards, this one included. Dells used to have scissor switch keyboards IIRC.

mixmastamyk 10y ago

I wanted to buy one, but then they didn't release it with Linux as expected! Looks like they want to upgrade you to a Precision instead. Not sure I have a need for a workstation graphics card. Also, I don't like the 16:9 ratio and glossy screen, sigh.

interknot 10y ago
I've been exclusively using Linux (Antergos) on the XPS 15 since mid-February. Installing was remarkably easy, though I haven't had time to mess with the fingerprint reader or GPU switching due to work. My only complaint is that the glossy screen somehow seems more reflective than my Macbook Pro and iMac--and FWIW I'm typing this with all three machines on my desk right now. However, I'm not too bothered by it. IIRC the 1080p configuration of the 9560 is matte.
- kitsunesoba 10y ago
  I may be mistaken but my understanding was that touch panels can't reduce glare as effectively as non-touch because they need oleophobic treatment in addition to anti glare treatment, and this is why MacBooks of all flavors have better glare mitigation than touch-equipped laptops.
  - mixmastamyk 10y ago
    The irony that is that I don't want touch or glossy but I do want 4k.
justinc8687 10y ago
The Precision 5520 at least has a matte screen option and I think the costs are comparable. They are basically the same machine. If you are running Linux, you don't want a 4k screen (at least I've found DPI scaling to be terrible). They do offer the 5520 preloaded with Ubuntu as well.
- mixmastamyk 10y ago

smacktoward 10y ago

Have they worked out the "coil whine" issues that have plagued recent Dell laptops yet?

davidbanham 10y ago

That's very surprising if the article is correct about it not charging via USB-C. My latitude (basically just an XPS with a different NIC and GPU) does. Dell also have a good line is USB-C docks.