9 ms·

I feel like the XPS 13 trackpad is fine, what's your beef with it?

kibwen 6y ago
In terms of hardware, IMO my XPS 15's trackpad is superior to my MacBook Pro's trackpad. The gesture support from the OS obviously isn't as good, but the XPS sure does feel better to use.
- indymike 6y ago
  Honestly, my xps is the only laptop that comes close to my macbooks... Yo be fair, the touch screen and pen on the XPS blow away the ones on the Macbook.
bscphil 6y ago
XPS trackpads have always been number one, from the very beginning. I'm working with a 10 year old laptop and its trackpad has performed flawlessly and is superior to any MacBook I've ever used (but especially older ones). My XPS has the advantage of two physical buttons for left and right click. They require just the right amount of force to press (like a slightly softer mouse button with deeper travel). It makes dragging things around (which I do a lot because I don't use a tiling window manager) very easy. Which doesn't feel like something I should have to comment on, but doing this on a MacBook is pure suffering. Trying to hold down the giant button (which takes quite a bit of force) while trying to drag your finger... ugh. It's miserable. Because of the physical buttons I can actually play some games on my XPS without needing an external mouse (or putting up with misclicks) In terms of hardware, what people are looking for is mostly surface feel, size, features. It's the former where cheap laptops fall down. Most of the ones I've used really suck, actually. Some of them are bad enough that the manufacturers actually texture the surface to try to slow your finger down, I guess because the accuracy of the touchpad isn't very good. High end touchpads like the one on the XPS or MacBooks have flawless feel: extremely low friction surfaces. It's not commonly noticed, but software contributes at least as much to how a trackpad feels as hardware. Given the limitations of its hardware, I have no quarrel with Apple's software quality. (Though the defaults are weird, like not being able to tap-to-click. They really want you to have to use that damn button.) Windows has historically sucked at this. I've seen about half a dozen trackpads that seemed absolutely terrible, and no Windows settings could make them better. After moving them over to Linux (on the synaptics driver) they suddenly became quite okay to use, even if the hardware was crappy. I'm afraid this era might be ending, sadly. I've had nothing but bad experiences with libinput. It lacks the kind of configurability you need to improve on the performance of a bad touchpad. (It's even quite bad under Wayland for the XPS touchpad - you can't set the combination of low speed, high acceleration that feels natural to me for this touchpad.)
- zimpenfish 6y ago
  > Trying to hold down the giant button (which takes quite a bit of force) while trying to drag your finger... ugh. It's miserable. Not wishing to detract from your personal experience but "quite a bit of force" is at odds to mine - on this M1 MBP, it takes less force to activate the trackpad click than it does to activate a keypress. And once you've clicked, you can use a second figure to drag; no need to try and drag with the force finger (I use my thumb to click for power*, then index to drag for accuracy.)
  - bscphil 6y ago
    Yes, your point is entirely fair. I should have clarified that I was talking about an older (mid decade) MacBook Pro. It requires enough force that, with my arm just positioned normally, I can actually feel the torque applied down the whole of my forearm. My understanding is that Apple has made the clicks much lighter in their later models - along with doing the exact same thing with the keyboard keys, which for me goes much to far in the other direction.
    - charrondev 6y ago
      The latest iterations as I understand are like this: - keyboards were reverted similar to how they were around 2015. - all the new trackpads are don’t require a physical actuation to activate. You can apply the same amount of minimal pressure anywhere on the trackpad and it “presses back” at you to simulate a physical click. It’s quite convincing.
      - fomine3 6y ago
        Force touch is useful feature last missing on other PCs.
    - easton 6y ago
      On 2015 or later MacBooks, you can adjust the force required for a click: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204352 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204352 (“Adjust trackpad settings”)
arsome 6y ago
Yeah, I'm not sure about any of this, I grew up with PC trackpads, used them on Linux all the time and other than a few annoyances with accidentally tripping the trackpad when typing, never had a problem with them. The Macbook actually took quite a bit of time to get used to and many settings had to be adjusted (looking at you backwards scrolling). In fact, I think I like the trackpad on my cheap Logitech K400 just as much as the Macbook, I'd be hard pressed to point to a significant problem with either.
- ryukafalz 6y ago
  Do you use gestures at all? I have both a MacBook Pro (for work) and a Logitech K400+. Two-finger scrolling on the MBP is fine; light pressure on the touchpad is enough to scroll very smoothly. Two-finger scrolling on my X230 is also fine, if a bit jumpy - I can at least keep my place while I'm scrolling, and it still takes only light pressure to recognize the gesture. Two-finger scrolling on the K400+ is painful. (Actually physically painful; I have RSI in my right arm and poorly-tracking touchpads can be a trigger.) It requires fairly heavy pressure on the touchpad to trigger gestures consistently (though they can be triggered inconsistently with light pressure which is also frustrating). And especially on macOS, it's difficult to actually scroll a consistent distance with a two-finger gesture with the K400+. I'm fairly certain this has to do with the K400+'s touchpad not being recognized as a touchpad by the OS. The device is instead emitting mouse wheel events in firmware when a two-finger scroll gesture is detected. macOS will then, of course, apply mouse wheel acceleration, which makes sense for some mice but absolutely does not make sense for a touchpad.

In terms of hardware, IMO my XPS 15's trackpad is superior to my MacBook Pro's trackpad. The gesture support from the OS obviously isn't as good, but the XPS sure does feel better to use.

indymike 6y ago
Honestly, my xps is the only laptop that comes close to my macbooks... Yo be fair, the touch screen and pen on the XPS blow away the ones on the Macbook.

bscphil 6y ago

XPS trackpads have always been number one, from the very beginning. I'm working with a 10 year old laptop and its trackpad has performed flawlessly and is superior to any MacBook I've ever used (but especially older ones). My XPS has the advantage of two physical buttons for left and right click. They require just the right amount of force to press (like a slightly softer mouse button with deeper travel). It makes dragging things around (which I do a lot because I don't use a tiling window manager) very easy. Which doesn't feel like something I should have to comment on, but doing this on a MacBook is pure suffering. Trying to hold down the giant button (which takes quite a bit of force) while trying to drag your finger... ugh. It's miserable. Because of the physical buttons I can actually play some games on my XPS without needing an external mouse (or putting up with misclicks) In terms of hardware, what people are looking for is mostly surface feel, size, features. It's the former where cheap laptops fall down. Most of the ones I've used really suck, actually. Some of them are bad enough that the manufacturers actually texture the surface to try to slow your finger down, I guess because the accuracy of the touchpad isn't very good. High end touchpads like the one on the XPS or MacBooks have flawless feel: extremely low friction surfaces. It's not commonly noticed, but software contributes at least as much to how a trackpad feels as hardware. Given the limitations of its hardware, I have no quarrel with Apple's software quality. (Though the defaults are weird, like not being able to tap-to-click. They really want you to have to use that damn button.) Windows has historically sucked at this. I've seen about half a dozen trackpads that seemed absolutely terrible, and no Windows settings could make them better. After moving them over to Linux (on the synaptics driver) they suddenly became quite okay to use, even if the hardware was crappy. I'm afraid this era might be ending, sadly. I've had nothing but bad experiences with libinput. It lacks the kind of configurability you need to improve on the performance of a bad touchpad. (It's even quite bad under Wayland for the XPS touchpad - you can't set the combination of low speed, high acceleration that feels natural to me for this touchpad.)

zimpenfish 6y ago
> Trying to hold down the giant button (which takes quite a bit of force) while trying to drag your finger... ugh. It's miserable. Not wishing to detract from your personal experience but "quite a bit of force" is at odds to mine - on this M1 MBP, it takes less force to activate the trackpad click than it does to activate a keypress. And once you've clicked, you can use a second figure to drag; no need to try and drag with the force finger (I use my thumb to click for power*, then index to drag for accuracy.)
- bscphil 6y ago
  Yes, your point is entirely fair. I should have clarified that I was talking about an older (mid decade) MacBook Pro. It requires enough force that, with my arm just positioned normally, I can actually feel the torque applied down the whole of my forearm. My understanding is that Apple has made the clicks much lighter in their later models - along with doing the exact same thing with the keyboard keys, which for me goes much to far in the other direction.
  - charrondev 6y ago
    The latest iterations as I understand are like this: - keyboards were reverted similar to how they were around 2015. - all the new trackpads are don’t require a physical actuation to activate. You can apply the same amount of minimal pressure anywhere on the trackpad and it “presses back” at you to simulate a physical click. It’s quite convincing.
    - fomine3 6y ago
      Force touch is useful feature last missing on other PCs.
  - easton 6y ago
    On 2015 or later MacBooks, you can adjust the force required for a click: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204352 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204352 (“Adjust trackpad settings”)

arsome 6y ago

Yeah, I'm not sure about any of this, I grew up with PC trackpads, used them on Linux all the time and other than a few annoyances with accidentally tripping the trackpad when typing, never had a problem with them. The Macbook actually took quite a bit of time to get used to and many settings had to be adjusted (looking at you backwards scrolling). In fact, I think I like the trackpad on my cheap Logitech K400 just as much as the Macbook, I'd be hard pressed to point to a significant problem with either.

ryukafalz 6y ago
Do you use gestures at all? I have both a MacBook Pro (for work) and a Logitech K400+. Two-finger scrolling on the MBP is fine; light pressure on the touchpad is enough to scroll very smoothly. Two-finger scrolling on my X230 is also fine, if a bit jumpy - I can at least keep my place while I'm scrolling, and it still takes only light pressure to recognize the gesture. Two-finger scrolling on the K400+ is painful. (Actually physically painful; I have RSI in my right arm and poorly-tracking touchpads can be a trigger.) It requires fairly heavy pressure on the touchpad to trigger gestures consistently (though they can be triggered inconsistently with light pressure which is also frustrating). And especially on macOS, it's difficult to actually scroll a consistent distance with a two-finger gesture with the K400+. I'm fairly certain this has to do with the K400+'s touchpad not being recognized as a touchpad by the OS. The device is instead emitting mouse wheel events in firmware when a two-finger scroll gesture is detected. macOS will then, of course, apply mouse wheel acceleration, which makes sense for some mice but absolutely does not make sense for a touchpad.