some things are made for one task and one task only like this 10 gigabit
network card it only does networking and
my car for example is only good for making other people jealous
conversely this xps laptop is excellent
at well
nothing really but it is okay at many things
so is it like a swiss army knife useful in
almost any situation or is it like
a swiss army knife when all you really wanted was a real
knife
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whether you go for the core i5 or the core i7 model you will immediately
notice the snappy performance of the 4
core low power processor but what really separates this puppy from other
non-gaming laptops is the integrated
vega GPU to be clear this
is not explicitly a gaming laptop you
would need a discrete GPU and a fatter
heavier form factor for that so don't expect to be playing any
aaa titles at 1080p ultra details
but it ain't no scrub either gaming on this machine is a night and
day difference compared to Intel's own integrated graphics and lighter
competitive like esports games can break 60 FPS on it but it'll work up a sweat
when it does the CPU can redline at 100 degrees and
you will always notice the keyboard getting
uncomfortably hot over 50 degrees by our
measurements while gaming even though the clock speed gets
significantly reduced when the CPU and GPU are both being stressed at the same
time because due to the way they're designed they actually have to share
their power okay so it performs better than a thin and light
but it's not that thin and light and worse than a gaming laptop
but it's not that thick so all of this makes sense and you got to
think about this in a two-in-one machine
gaming performance is purely just a
bonus and the xps two in one is really intended as a day-to-day laptop
so sure it's a little on the heavy side
and if i'm being honest the design is
anything but edgy but i'm willing to forgive boring design
when you open up a machine and you get to feel some of the best build quality
available today the screen and the chassis are both exceptionally
rigid and like what apple did in 2016
dell has completely removed the usb type a ports but i'm not mad
because unlike apple they included
four type c ports two of which are
Thunderbolt 3. that's something that's hard to complain about in the 2018
dongle era as for the screen it's excellent
fantastic colors really high brightness and touch
functionality i'd actually recommend though going with
the 1080p version instead of the 4k one
because at this size even side by side
it's not that easy to tell the difference with my eyes but with my
wallet with my wallet i can tell
moving down dell has created a completely new type of keyboard for the
xps two in and
that's dangerous because i already liked dell's keyboards a lot
so they're calling this maglev and it's meant to give you a lot of tactile feel
despite a very short throw distance
and actually okay the risk was worth it it took a little bit longer to get used
to than normal having a bit of trouble feeling the
different keys given how close they are to the key bed but
once i got rolling i was able to type extremely quickly and hopefully these
maglev keys don't stop working at the first sign of dust
going further down the line we get to the touch pad which is one of the many
things about this laptop that is good but not excellent
it's sizeable but it has poor palm rejection by default though that can be
fixed by tweaking the settings and unfortunately the settings won't
help you solve some annoying acceleration
issues um it's something that you'll probably get used to
but for us where we're using a lot of laptops side by side it does stand out
next in the pile of things that are kind of meh is the extra hundred dollars for
the dell pen it provides a fairly good writing experience but
it just doesn't feel as natural as the surface pen which has a softer tip with
a bit of give and a tiny bit more friction which makes writing notes and
drawing feel a lot more natural so if you were getting a two-in-one primarily
for drawing you might still want to consider the surface lineup and to del's
credit short of inserting it inside the
chassis this is far and away the best
attachment mechanism that we've seen
bringing us to yet another complaint the speakers sound pretty good at lower
volume but they do start distorting at around 50 percent and at full volume
sound just plain bad and
it has one of those abominable chin bar
webcams which is fine if you flip the screen
around and use a webcam like this but if i was on a conference call and i
was trying to take notes with my keyboard all the other participants would see is
my fingers and speaking of fingers it's a good thing that it has a fingerprint
reader built into the power button because if i wanted to unlock using the
Windows hello ir camera that it actually
has i would end up adjusting my screen basically every time
future proofness isn't a strong point of this thing either besides the storage
basically nothing in here can be upgraded or replaced so make sure that
you get the specs you want including RAM
up front and by the way this massive 75
watt hour battery only got us five hours in our work
battery life test a fairly average result so then
i've complained about quite a bit over the last six minutes or so
but these are the sacrifices that come with
a laptop that is able to do everything
and don't get me wrong overall i actually quite like the xps 15 two in
one what other device gives you excellent
touch support lots of performance
a beautiful screen super high build quality and pretty good
battery life all in one okay the surface book 2 which also has a
better keyboard and a discrete GPU
and on a level playing field yeah come to think of it i would choose the
surface but the pricing of the xps saves it with
what we'd call our recommended loadout coming in at fifteen hundred dollars
it's not really a budget option but it is a full five hundred dollars cheaper
than the cheapest surface book that we think is even worth looking at
so for someone that needs a do it all device and can live without full
dedicated graphics the xps 15 211 looks
like a solid all-rounder
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