The webcams with the XPS 14 and 16 are surprisingly good—higher than most different built-in net cams I’ve examined this yr.
{Photograph}: Scott Gilbertson
Fairly Dear
Dell is promoting quite a lot of configurations between these two sizes, however I completely don’t suggest the bottom mannequin. The issue with the bottom mannequin is the display, which is a 1,920 x 1,200 display. At 14 inches, that works out to a pixels per inch (PPI) of 154. Whereas I’ve not used this mannequin, I’ve spent loads of time testing related specced screens, and it is best to by no means pay $1,700 for a laptop computer with 154 PPI display (for comparability, a 14-inch MacBook Professional has a PPI of 254). Worse, the 16-inch base mannequin additionally ships with a 1,920 x 1,200 display, which is a PPI so low that, frankly, it ought to solely be in low-cost laptops below $500.
Simply do not buy the bottom mannequin, mmmkay?
The fashions I examined each had the beautiful 3,200 x 2,000 OLED screens, that are issues of magnificence, however do convey the bottom worth of each fashions up by $300. That places the value of the minimal config I might suggest at $2,000 for the XPS 14 and $2,200 for the XPS 16. Remember the fact that that worth will get you solely 16 GB of RAM, no devoted graphics, and a 512-GB SSD. Whilst you can all the time add your personal SSD, the RAM just isn’t upgradable.
Including the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 bumps the value of the 14-inch mannequin to $2,400. That is the config I examined; efficiency was wanting in demanding duties.
Efficiency Issues
I used to be stunned by the benchmarks I acquired from the XPS 14 with the RTX 4050, and never in a great way. My outcomes had been notably decrease than with different laptops utilizing the identical chip, notably in Geekbench, which measures graphics efficiency. After wanting up some specs and puzzling by means of the check outcomes, I’ve come to the conclusion that Dell is underpowering the RTX 4050 graphics. The XPS 14 offers the RTX 4050 solely 40 watts, which is simply above the naked minimal of 30 watts that Nvidia recommends. On one hand that retains down warmth, which suggests the followers spin up much less and the battery lasts longer. Certainly, the followers on the XPS 14 and 16 ran lower than different laptops I have been testing, a minimum of till I began doing extra demanding issues like modifying video.
The price of that efficacy, although, is efficiency. The XPS 14 carried out roughly on par with equally specced Home windows laptops we have examined this spring, and may be very snappy for common duties like looking the net or modifying paperwork, neither of which ever prompted the followers to spin or the laptops to get heat. The dangerous information is that if you’d like a video modifying workstation, the XPS 14 just isn’t the reply.
