A mate of mine is happy to resell a brandnew Dell Xps15 7590 for around $2500 with the following spec. From a OzBargainer chart 1 being not worth it, to 10 once in a life time bargain, what is your rating?
9th Generation I7-9750H
Windows 10 PRO
NVIDIA GTX 1650 4GB GDDR5
16GB DDR4-2666MHz 2x8G
512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD
15.6 4K UHD Touch IPS 100% AdobeRGB 500-Nits display
FINGERPRINT READER
Mate, thanks for sharing your thoughts. Would you say the new Inspiron 15 with same spec for around $21k a better deal?
It really depends on how much which design you like and whether you care about design.
Personally, I would shell out extra $300 to get the XPS15 rather than an Inspiron. To my eye, the XPS15 is the better looking one out there, (and it is probably the best looking among all the offering from Dell to me). You bet if this thing is super ugly, no one will buy it for such a premium. I know a lot of OzBargainers out there don't care about the design, they rather focus on getting the best specs for their money.
I owned a XPS15 9570 for a brief period of time and what I can tell you is that the build quality and machining on the XPS15 is outstanding, it is probably among the best build quality wise, probably just behind Surface Laptop. There is just something that you can't tell by looking at the spec sheets like the so called "carbon-fiber composite" palm rest, It just added that extra bit of comfort when you are typing, especially so during winter, since your hand is not contacting the cold aluminium.
However, the XPS15 is not free from problems,numerous reports about DPC latency(seem to be fixed on 7590),annoying fan ramping up when idling, thermal throttling, VRM overheating leads to thermal throttling on GPU then framerate crush(still being reported despite the fact that the VRM is covered with heatpipe on the latest iteration of XPS15), so to me this is a work computer and depending on your workflow you may or may not have those issues.
That being said, I would like to point out some alternatives if you are looking for a device that tailor towards the balance of work/gaming since XPS15 , to me, is a "work-first" laptop, not ideal for marathon gaming session, or anything that stress the system for extended period of time.
For 2600$ , you can get ASUS GX502GV on sale right now, (9750H,16GB RAM,a pantone-validated, factory calibrated 100% sRGB 144hz with G-Sync, 512GB SSD ,actually this laptop has two M2 slots, and you can even config raid 0, RTX2060,a huge upgrade from GTX1650, better thermals, but it lacks Thunderbolt 3,has worse battery life,slightly worse build quality and there is NO webcam ) Side note:I like this one because there is no webcam :)
For around the same price you can get an Gigabyte Aero 15 with RTX2060 or GTX1660TI or hack last gen GTX1070, all of them are an huge upgrade from GTX1650 with the same processor, ram, and storage option and comparable battery life, a UHD panel with 100% sRGB, AdobeRGB without touch from AUO, but the design is a bit dull while the upcoming Aero 15 is too "gamery" for my taste.
There is also a razer blade deal recently for 2500$ that gets you pretty much the same spec that I already mentioned, but their QC is questionable, buy from a reliable seller with good return policy.
MSI GS65/PS65 might also worth a look but they have a upside-down mounted motherboard, a bit flimsy keyboard deck with more flex than I would like to see. The good ? They are really quiet, even under load, the best demonstration of Nvidia Max-Q design.
Edit: Oh, the speakers on XPS15 are bad, they are really bad,they don't have a lot of volumn, especially so if you uninstall the waxx audio software, bring you headphones if you are looking for content consumption.
Thanks for providing such detail feedbacks. I forgot to mention this is going to be a 100% work laptop which means web browsing, watching videos online, checking emails and ms office, plus occational work on photoshop.
I am looking for something that will last, good for entertainment, semi portable and able to future proof.
From your comment, Xps does sound like a all rounder for my requirements.
@Rilakkujay: Then yeah, get it. From what you described, the 16GB of RAM and 9750H will last you quite a few years. It is one of the few laptops in this category that can be charged from USB-C, and I can see that feature comes in handy sometimes.
Note: The screen from XPS15 uses PWM to regulate brightness, which can cause nausea,headache, eyestrain(it is the reason why I returned my XPS15) so be sure you check it out in person before pulling the trigger.
OLED version is worth pursing. Otherwise can save yourself some coin, get a lighter chassis (starting at 1.6kgs) and even a numpad by getting a UHD Dell Inspiron 7590 for $2159. Same other specs (16GB, 512GB, GTX1650):
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/323809191579
Betters the XPS 9570 by offering dual M.2 storage slots.
Side-by-side pics: https://i.redd.it/p76k22lz4q831.jpg
Gees the inspiron 7590 is indeed a good price with very similar specs.
The extra ram and ssd slot and number pad will definitely come in handy.
But hows the built quality comparing to a Xps? Isn't Xps a more premium line up and will I get more stable performance out of it?
You have not talked about what you want, how you will use it.
The XPS make up a portion of our work laptops, overall you get a good machine (form factor, IO, processor and battery, etc), with a hefty price tag.
When paired with a monitor that charges over the USB-C cable, it will do all I ask (a lot of multitasking ans light GPU req).
It is going to be a work laptop with occation work with photoshop.
Portability and the tendancy of future proof is probably more important for me.
From most of your feedbacks, I dont think I can go too wrong with this XPS 15, but whether or not I'm getting the best value for money or is there better choices for my requirements?
9750H isn't that an upgrade from 8750H, the all-core turbo only goes up by 100Mhz and Dell set the PL1 limit to 56w afaik so once the turbo runs out, it is going to power limit throttle. In short, you will not see any significant performance gain. However, there is some noticeable performance gain from GTX1050TI Max-Q to GTX1650.
So I feels like this is a good deal if you are looking for a laptop for work(definitely not for hard-core gaming, numerous reports of framerates crush,plus the high response time of the screen, and there are better options at this price point for gaming), need the added graphic processing power and don't mind this 4-year old chasis, 5-8 out 10 depending on your situation.