Honestly, we’re a little late to the party. The XPS series was regarded as one of the best laptops of 2020. I mean, the build quality is beautiful, the screen is magnificent, the specs are decent, and overall just good things. Well, the entire XPS series last year was pretty much the same across the XPS 13 9300, XPS 15 9500, and also the XPS 9700.
So, since we already reviewed the XPS 13 9300 last year, most of the things told in this review will be very similar to the XPS 13 9300 instead.
And just as full disclosure, since we’re a part of the #DellInsideCircle, this laptop was sent to us to use, which is why it’s accessorized – but Dell didn’t regulate what’s said in this video. They’re watching and reading this review at the same time as you are.
We’re also going to make some more videos about the XPS 15 9500, so let us know what you want to see in the future. For now, we’ll proceed with the review of this laptop first.
We’ll begin with the design of the XPS 15 9500 first. It’s the same as the XPS 13 9300, but larger in size – of course. The build quality is still the best I’ve seen on a laptop so far – it’s entirely made out of metal and it’s really solid overall. And playing the “strings” at the bottom, we can hear this.
Though, since it’s now scaled up to a larger size overall, the weight starts to become noticeable. It’s starting to become what I’ll call “heavy” – or at least dense in this situation.
Opening up the laptop – which we can do with just one finger since its hinge is so magnificently made – reveals a massive 15.6-inch 3840×2400 pixels in resolution. Yes, it still retained the 16:10 aspect ratio with supremely thin bezels around all the sides, and especially because of how the hinge is positioned, the bottom bezel is almost nonexistent.
And Dell still manages to fit both a webcam and Windows Hello facial recognition module at the top of the screen.
This screen here is also a touchscreen. But my complaint is the same as the XPS 13 for this case – if you don’t want a touchscreen, then you’ll only get the 1080p resolution version only. And you’ll also get a matte screen instead. I really hope Dell offers a 1080p touchscreen version with a glossy screen.
As for the trackpad, I don’t have any issues. It’s a good big trackpad with good palm rejection too. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than a majority of laptops out there – and I can still use the touchscreen if I want to.
For the keyboard though… it’s a strange situation. I said that the XPS 13 9300 has a pretty good keyboard – better than the XPS 15 9575 with its MagLev keyboard. But after using the XPS 15 9500 for more than a month, I realized that the keyboard has some wobbly keycap. I don’t mind it much, but I gotta hit the keys more accurately.
Another complaint that I have since the XPS 13 is Dell’s choice to have a dedicated “insert” key but not a dedicated “print screen” key. That is something that I find to be annoying but I do have a solution for that. Perhaps in the next video about this laptop.
And also because the XPS 15 9500 has such big gaps on both sides beside the keyboard, it does take some time to get used to this layout. But, that big gap is housing the speaker – which to me, actually sounds pretty darn good for a laptop.
Then, of course, the specs. The one that we have here is the top of the line configuration available in Malaysia, which means we have:
- Intel Core i7-10750H
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti
- 2x16GB of DDR4-2933MHz
- 1TB NVMe SSD
While the specs don’t look impressive – well, the purpose of this laptop – in my opinion, is more like a laptop that’s created to provide the ultimate experience for work first, but still being able to play some games on the side. I generally use this laptop to do office work and whatnot and also play some games on the side.
By the way, you can squeeze a bit more performance on the XPS 15 9500 through the Dell Power Manager utility, which we’ll get into in the next video.
The battery inside this laptop is an 86Wh battery which lasts me for about 6-7 hours on my usual heavy tasks alongside some other background tasks because it’s my main work laptop now – and IMO, that battery life is insanely good.
And when I’m plugged in, I am able to edit our videos on this laptop without issues at all, and that’s a great thing since that small little preview window in Premiere Pro is at nearly its native resolution.
But I realized that the temperature on the XPS 15 9500 is not that good, mainly because Dell’s performance governor is pretty aggressive in boosting its performance, and also that the bottom panel is a little too close to the table surface. Which I way, I got this little kickstand feet thing to help prop up the laptop a little to provide better cooling and the fans also spin at lower RPM, which means less noise.
And best of all, as opposed to the XPS 13, the XPS 15 9500 can be upgraded. There are two RAM slots that are accessible but in our case, it’s occupied – and also has two SSD slots. One of them is already pre-occupied, and another one can be added later on. Do this at your own risk, though.
As for ports, we have two Thunderbolt 3 ports on the left and another USB 3 Type-C at the right, alongside a full-sized SD card reader and a combo audio jack.
Dell also included a dongle that converts a Type-C port into a USB 3.0 Type-A and an HDMI output. Its cable folds inward – which is nice and compact but that also means I’ve embraced the dongle life.
But at the end of the day, the XPS 15 9500 is a fantastically beautiful yet powerful laptop in its own regard. I mean, it’s in a class of its own – and so is the price. Our top-spec configuration comes in at RM10,999 – which clearly is hefty. You can opt-in for the Core i5 version at RM7,999, but there are a lot of different changes to the specs.
From the looks of it, it seems like Dell is going to refresh the XPS 15 9500 with the Tiger Lake-H chips – or the Intel 11th Gen chips, as soon as they’re released – just like what they did with the XPS 13. So, if you’re thinking of buying the XPS 15 9500, I actually suggest you hold off your purchase a while and see how do the newer 11th Gen Intel H-series chips perform in comparison.
Even if Dell doesn’t make any changes to the XPS 15 for its Tiger Lake-H refresh, I’ll still say that this is an excellent laptop – and Dell didn’t pay me to say that.
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