Dell XPS 15 9560 Review
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I can give many other examples with drivers support. For example, if I unplug the notebook from the dock the audio playback doesn't work again if I don't reboot the computer or remove/reinstall the driver.
It would ve nice to hear about a critical analysis in Linux.
What other people seem to have done is get Dell to swap the Killer NIC with an Intel one which has much better driver support.
I don't know what these guys are doing but even in Windows, I would get IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL after deep sleep.
I fixed the issues by swapping with an Intel card (didn't want to have to wait months for driver updates), but in my opinion that is unacceptable for a premium laptop. Why is Dell skimping on parts? I paid $1500 precisely because I didn't want to deal with crappy parts, but instead they took my $1500 and gave me a worse browsing experience than my $150 Chromebook...
Isn't this entirely broken, surely no one designed it so you couldn't fix applications in safe-mode?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Installer
They're right though. It doesn't run in safe mode and it's a fucking pain in the ass. Makes fixing issues harder when you can't uninstall shit in safemode. Drivers especially.
I refuse to buy any board which has these chips and will pay a small premium for an Intel or Realtek instead.
I always thought of them as purveyors of snake oil and reached for Intel NICs with great results every time. I used to like Atheros for radios back in the good old bad days of WEP and MadWifi.
Actual 4K resolution works way better on Linux than it does on OS X. By default, OS X will use 2560x1440, even on a display that's capable of 3840x2160. If you try to set it to the latter on OS X in your display settings, it looks really terrible.
The experience is less consistent on Linux in 3840x2160, but overall it's much better, and it's well-supported by the common applications that Linux users would use (Firefox/Chrome, terminal emulators, any GTK+ 3 or Qt 5 applications, and more).
That said, the 4K support in Fedora is nice. The only problem is with Qt4, Gtk2 and other apps using legacy toolkits.
Yes, it will use it, but it looks terrible. Even the native system UI isn't designed for it, let alone Cocoa-based third-party applications or third-party applications that don't use Cocoa.
Also, exactly what applications do not use Cocoa? Apple had made extremely difficult to talk directly do display server, the two non-private-frameworks-without-stable-abi ways were Carbon and Cocoa. Carbon is already dead.
I use the same monitor as well. Until recently, I had the 15" version of that laptop, and now I have the latest 15" Macbook Pro. Both use 2560x1440 on the external monitor even though it's capable of 3840x2160, because that's what OS X defaults to, and every time I try increasing the resolution, I only make it a few minutes before I can't stand how terrible the experience is and end up switching back.
> Also, exactly what applications do not use Cocoa?
I'm saying that native Mac applications look really bad on OS X when set to 3840x2160. The UI and text don't scale consistently, and that's true both of the system-level UI and of application UI. The situation gets even worse when you're talking about applications designed for X11[0], which I could forgive, but on the other hand, those applications scale just fine on Linux.
By contrast, all of this works out-of-the-box in (for example) Unity. I don't have to deal with dialog boxes that are out of proportion with the system bar, or text that's impossible to read unless I squint on some applications but perfectly readable on others.
[0] We could get into a debate about whether XQuartz really counts as "cocoa" or not, but I'd rather not.
I would suggest to try using different DisplayPort cable.
OSX defaults to "best" resolution for the given display. In case of this monitor, it is 3840x2160, but - it will tell you is 1920x1080 and use it in HiDPI mode. Like this: http://imgur.com/a/infej
Once you change resolution, it will remember, what you changed it to on that specific display, and will use it next time you connect to it.
> I'm saying that native Mac applications look really bad on OS X when set to 3840x2160. The UI and text don't scale consistently, and that's true both of the system-level UI and of application UI.
In my experience, they scale perfectly. The ones that are non-HiDPI aware, are scaled by the system to the proper size (and thus are pixelated).
XQuartz is another matter. It should be taken behind the barn and shot long time ago. Running X11 apps is better done using a linux vm.
However, what I don't understand, why you have wrong scale. XQuartz is a not DPI-aware app, thus it is scaled by the system.
It has nothing to do with the cable. I've had this issue on every single 4K monitor I've used with these laptops - which is at least three different monitors, with different cables - and it even manifests with HDMI 4K output (at 30Hz). All of these setups work perfectly fine with my XPS 13 running at 4K on Linux. I don't understand why you think that the OS's inability to scale the system UI or applications in a reasonable way would have anything to do with the cable.
Try it with a Linux laptop running Unity, and you'll see the difference.
Because that's not the experience everyone else is having. That leaves possibility, that something is broken on your end.
> Try it with a Linux laptop running Unity, and you'll see the difference.
I know how Linux handles HiDPI. See my comment about Fedora elsewhere in the thread.
If it's scaling to 1080p for you, that's because either your monitor or your cable doesn't support 2560x1440 at 60Hz. If it does, it should default to 1440, assuming you're on an rMBP.
In terms of "what I expected to happen" - well, I expected an actual 4K resolution (like 3840x2160) to work. Maybe not by default, but at least when I enable it, it should be able to auto-scale the appropriate parts of the system and application UI in a consistent manner. That means that I'd be able to actually view a 3840x2160 image at its full intended resolution (not 1080p or 1440p) without scrolling, while also not having to squint in order to read the system bar or do anything else on the OS.
That works pretty much out-of-the-box on Linux with Unity. Even with tweaking configuration everywhere, I can't find any way to do that on OS X and have it look halfway decent.
That's what it does. OS X will by default render at the panel's native resolution. But it scales everything to a lower effective resolution. Say you're running a 5K monitor at "2560x1440" (as in the iMac 5K). And the app displays a 32x32 icon at (0,0). The OS will see that you're running in 2x mode (real resolution = 2x effective resolution). So it'll pull a 64x64 version of the icon from the app's art assets. It'll take up 32x32 on the virtual 2560x1440 display, but a 64x64 image will be what's copied to the frame buffer. Text glyphs, and images, likewise, will be rendered at full resolution.
When you bypass the default setup and tell the OS to run at 3840x2160, you're not telling it to render at that resolution. You're telling it to size things as if you're running on a standard definition monitor of that size. So when the app displays a 32x32 icon, the OS will see you're running at 1x mode, and pull a 32x32 icon from the art assets. The result will be a tiny icon.
I have a load of problems with the virtual keyboard on my Tablet, I've had to work around it with a chrome extension that manually lets me pop the keyboard up.
I just spent 30 minutes this morning dealing with this exact issue on my laptop that I've docked into two nice external monitors.
To fix it, open the display settings and set one of the external monitors to the primary display. Then log out, and log back in.
I have no idea why this works, but if it hadn't I'd have chucked the laptop out the window by now. Windows 10 is almost great, but for a dozen little stupid things like this.
Look also at this future update: https://www.google.com.ar/amp/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/artic...
Another issue is that audio to the headphones will sometimes just stop until I restart pulse. Not even a reboot will fix it, only a pulse restart.
It's a fantastic machine otherwise, but the drivers are pretty buggy.
Mine actually bricked itself so hard it couldn't boot at all. I had to send it back to dell. This was after installing a firmware update _distributed with their tool_.
Eveything except HDMI out from the USB-C dock works. I think that's a kernel patch merge away.
- less precise trackpad than my 3 year old rMBP
- palm-sensitive trackpad
- failure that politely states that I need to reboot (if I try to use fingerprint reader to login too quickly after opening the laptop)
- unplanned reboots due to updates
- laggy and choppy video on a single external 4k monitor (compared to no apparent lag when the old rMBP drives 2x 4k monitors)
- very slow Bash (ubuntu subsystem) - but at least they're making an effort
- Cortana seems less effective than Siri, and she wasn't great; and Cortana still only uses Bing search and displays results in Edge browser
- louder and more frequently spun up fan compared to old rMBP (which was also an i7 with an Nvidia GPU)
- occasional crashes when opening laptop or logging in
- very slow unzipping of files (on new 1TB PCIe SSD), regardless of whether 7z is used or built-in unzip is used, and regardless of where I unzip/extract to
In summary, it's just a sexy little game machine. In that regard, it does pretty well. You do have to wear headphones to game because the fan is so loud. And you can't play on an external monitor... too laggy and limited to 30Hz refresh.
Too bad Apple no longer caters to my crowd. Thankfully this old rMBP I use is still running well (despite the screen covering deterioration in weird spotty ways).
What is "your crowd"? Only thing I wish my rMBP had was more than 16GB of RAM for some of the dev I do. Other than that, I can't see switching anytime soon.
How has apple stopped catering this crowd? Let me give you my opinion.
The new macbook pro's main feature is one that is totally useless to professionals. The touch bar is an interesting idea for the casual user, but for anyone who uses any software professionally, it provides no value as it is much slower than keyboard shortcuts. Not to mention that the lack of tactile feedback means you need to look away from the monitor to use it.
The new design has force a redesign in the keyboard, giving it much lower travel, and it is now a lot more uncomfortable to use (this one in particular is quite subjective)
16GB is just not enough in the era of containers.
The price. It's just absurd and some of the most expensive features (TB) are just useless as I stated above.
All I was hoping for was this exact form factor with upgraded internals (faster CPU, faster GPU, 32GB), swapping the two existing Thunderbolt 2 ports for Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports. But no, apparently we all wanted lighter and thinner, no function keys and only poorly supported (so far) USB-C ports. Who knew?
By the way... TB is not useless. I use it everyday. I plug my rMBP into power and then plug a TB cable in from my computer to my LG Thunderbolt display with builtin USB-3 hub and TB passthrough.
Switching to the 9560 (from a MBP) wouldn't be as easy as one would hope. WSL is very very slow and awkward to use compared to the macOS terminal. Part of the performance problems are related to forking: on *nix forking is a lightweight operation and used a lot, especially in all of those convenient BASH tools that we use (like RVM) but on Windows it's a very expensive process--I'm rewriting GVM2 to speed it up for Go development on WSL. Then there's the whole deal of having to double up on your installs (e.g. installing ruby dependencies on both Windows and within WSL for code completion support, etc., from within VSCode) and not editing WSL files within Windows or risk corruption.
Then there's that single 2-lane Thunderbolt/USB-C port and the 9560's 130W power requirements...sadness. While an HP Zbook Studio G4 (also quad core i7, all the way up to Xeon) includes two 4-lane TB3 ports, it has older Quadro 1200m graphics and comes with a 150W power adapter (!): way way out of the max 100W USB-C spec. And yet the new rMBP still only draws something like 87W. In short, you can't charge any of these machines over USB-C unless they're idling.
It's like being stuck between a rock and hard place right now: Apple caters only to the mass consumer while everyone else is spread so thinly across all markets that they can't seem to focus and make a truly awesome MBP replacement for power users (engineers, creatives, scientists, gamers, etc). And I look at this 5-year old rMBP with its totally smooth underside, still incredible display, properly placed speakers and webcam, and wonder why Windows notebooks still can't compete with this Jobs-era design.
This! I sound like a broken record, but what is wrong with the PC manufacturers not getting the trackpad right/close(r) to how (well) Apple MBP trackpads operate?
Yes, they may have been improving, but going back from MBP to PC laptop is simply infuriating as a result of lack of accuracy of their trackpads. And to back up my subjective assessment of the situation, I have been making a point to make a walk through of the Microsoft store about every 6 months to test out (the trackpads) of all the shiniest PC laptops on display. </rant>
I bought the laptop because I didn't want a new Macbook. I ended up regretting it a little bit since I don't love the trackpad.
I don't get why it is so hard to make a decent trackpad today when Apple did it more than 5 years ago :(
Sadly this seems to be par for the course for non-Apple laptops. I will say that the Asus ZenBook seems to get pretty close though.
> Thankfully this old rMBP I use is still running well (despite the screen covering deterioration in weird spotty ways).
I'm using a mid-2010 MBP (upgraded the RAM and replaced the drive with an SSD) and it's awesome. Still very usable, runs the latest MacOS, and still gets really good battery life. The Apples of that era seem shockingly well built.
Did you use an HDMI cable or USB-C to HDMI adapter? Since the spec says the HDMI port is 1.4 only, I'd like to know if using a USB-C to HDMI 2.0 adapter will give you more bandwidth, allowing you to do 4k at 60hz with 4:4:4 chroma support.
If it's like images at [1] you may be eligible for a free screen replacement. I got Apple to change mine after it started showing the defect (granted, I went to an Apple Store mere weeks before the Apple Care+ coverage ended). Mine is a late 2013 rMBP. The new screen, however, is starting to show the same kind of damage around the edges.
I may just go into the store and ask them what the situation is for me.
Literally the only reason I continue to buy MBP's. If PC manufacturers could give me a trackpad which was even close to as good as Apple's I would hop the fence tomorrow.
Does it look similar to this - http://www.staingate.org/ https://www.macrumors.com/2015/10/17/apple-mbp-ar-coating-qu... . My rMBP had the same problem and I got the screen replaced for free (outside warranty).
Regarding the fans, highly recommend using an overclocking tool to undervolt the CPU and iGPU -- reduced temp under load for me by nearly 15C, runs stable with cpu at -130mV. Stops the fans from turning on as often or running as aggressively.
I too was unlucky in receiving a Toshiba as the vendor of my 1TB SSD. There is a reddit thread out there about switching from Intel RST to AHCI with OCZ drivers -- this improved my random write performance significantly.
The most annoying part of the system to me is the "coil whine" coming from the internal DC/DC converters. Lots of different pitch and erratic high frequency noises come from the laptop. My colleagues can confirm that my ears are not particularly sensitive to high frequency noise but this laptop is very audible. Just do not feel like it should have this kind of defect on such a high end machine.
It was included: problem with CPU and random freezes, Coil Whine, Swollen Battery, SSD problem and problem with misaligned Jack port with a hole in case.
In total, my device was repaired 3 times (within 10 months) and from the original device I have a case, touch-pad and screen only.
I'm not here to complain, because after the battery fix was done, it works perfectly. The Dell Service is super helpful and reactive, D2D warranty is just awesome.
My question is: Have somebody seen any indicators of problems listed above in 9560?
Dell and their like, obviously, aren't at the for-front of laptop design. They are still using plastic and calling Carbon fiber a "premium" laptop material (it isn't). They are using second rate network adapters. They are using second rate SSDs which have terrible write speeds. Windows trackpads arent any better than they were 10 years ago.
To top it all off? You'll need to do a whole damn Windows reinstall to get rid of the tons of bloatware they pack in.
I've always been lucky with touchpads on high end HPs. I've been using Ubuntu since 2009, maybe it's a Windows problem.
HP's competitor to the 9560 would likely be the just-released Zbook Studio G4 but it does not offer a 4k touch screen option. Lenovo doesn't really have a competitor right now, the closest would likely be the P51s but it's only dual core...I think the regular P51 (not the slim) is at least one pound heavier.
I haven't had any other problems but the fact that they won't allow end-users to replace such a simple part as the battery will make me think hard when I replace this laptop.
Pro equipment means pro support. Why is only Apple getting this ?
My rMBP, fully loaded, had an issue with the logic board (one of the many that affected the 2013 rMBP).
Took it to an Apple Store. They wanted it for a week and a half for "replacement and testing".
Dell absolutely has Pro Support, up to and including same day replacement if you need it.
The biggest issue is the power throttling. When the CPU and the GPU get a bit hot, the VRMs area get hot too and they drop the CPU to 0.7GHz. You play for few minutes and you are amazed, you can play last gen games quite good. But suddenly everything is crap. The VRMs area is hot and is dropping the voltage of the CPU to cold down. Really bad air flow design. Where I said games you can say another application that uses GPU and CPU like deep learning, or maybe watch a video and compile the kernel.(Message for Dell: why do you put a great CPU and GPU in a laptop if we cannot use both for more than few minutes?)
The other minor issue with this laptop is the thunderbolt with 2 PCI lanes. If it had 4 PCI lanes it could be you all day computer as you could connect external GPUs without losing too much. But 2 PCI lanes is not enough.
As a side note some people also have problems with the Wi-Fi. I had to buy another Wi-Fi card for my router as it couldn't connect, but with others routers that it connects it works quite good.
P.S. I run Windows 10 Pro and Archlinux in this computer. The fingerprint does not work on linux yet, everything else is fine.
Point being, when buying a laptop, always ask about the thermal.
It needs a very specific combinations of driver update and bio flashing to work, charging using USB-C sometimes just stops, making it work with a dock took me a good month to figure out, the battery last only a few hours, the webcam is weirdly placed. Worst of all, the sound has suddenly started to act wildly and is now full of cracks.
Given the price I paid for it (2500 € to include a 1 To hard drive and 32 Gb of RAM), I found it less than satisfactory.
But what is infuriating is that some very big problems (like BSOD level) where brought to the attention to the Dell staff on their support forum and the post have been dormant without clear answer from their part for months.
My previously positive perception of the dell brand have been seriously ternished. This is not just bad manufacturing, it's really bad marketting.
Case reports: http://news.kynosarges.org/2017/04/23/dell-alienware-reliabi...
I very much regret this decision. I spent ~100 hours trying to get it to work properly and to configure Ubuntu (including supposedly simple things like switching Alt and Ctrl keys). At the hourly rate I'm charging, this is more than enough to buy ANY laptop. Next time I'll swallow my pride and just buy a top of the line Macbook Pro.
Out of the box Ubuntu works great, but it is very fragile to updating. For example, updating BIOS to a version that fixes an important CPU bug causes the computer to freeze and shutdown every few minutes at random.
Updating the OS itself caused weird bugs such as being unable to click on app menu items with a USB touchpad. Ditching the default Unity for Gnome3 fixed this particular bug.
The recovery image that Dell provides for Ubuntu simply does not work a few months after release – craps out when it's unable to either fetch or install some package. So I don't even have a way of getting a working version of Ubuntu on this laptop if anything happens to my hard drive.
Oh and the touchpad configs are appallingly bad out of the box. Impossible to use. I fixed 98% of palm interference issues with a few lines of xinput config. I don't know why Dell didn't do that themselves.
And of course, Dell only provides only 7 days of Ubuntu support. After that you're on your own.
Now I'm trying to sell this laptop, but no one on craigslist wants it even at 35% ($900CAD) off the original price. A few months old laptop in perfect condition that is still on warranty.
Speaking of Ubuntu itself, it has been a profound disappointment as well. I will not be trying Dell or linux on desktop for another 7 years at least. My 9 year old Macbook Pro is far superior to this mess.
PS I also tried hackintoshing this laptop, and it worked 95% of the way, but it requires the latest BIOS to work, and that causes random shutdowns regardless of the OS.
Any idea what you will move onto?
> So I don't even have a way of getting a working version of Ubuntu on this laptop if anything happens to my hard drive.
You could simply download Ubuntu directly, or any other distribution. Dell isn't doing anything special to the version they distribute.
> For example, updating BIOS to a version that fixes an important CPU bug causes the computer to freeze and shutdown every few minutes at random.
Have you tried talking to Dell about this issue? Their support, particularity around BIOS issues on their XPS and Precision range has been fantastic in my experience, and they often supply pre-release BIOS versions if they believe it will help, otherwise they tend to replace the laptop.
From what I've read on their website, they actually do bundle it with custom software like drivers. But really my bigger point is that a lot of things do not work the way they're supposed to if you deviate from the happy path just a tiny bit. In my experience.
> Their support, particularity around BIOS issues on their XPS and Precision range has been fantastic in my experience
Hm, I'll give it a shot, thanks for the heads up.
I'd return it at this point.
It's defective by design.
I've been hoping to upgrade to the 15-inch for a while, because I like larger screens. It's nice to see the review of this point release version.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Adapter-Type-Ethernet-470-ABQN/d...
The standard dell one doesn't seem to work as well on both (yeah...).
Over all these years, this is the first time that my primary machine is a mobile device (laptop), and that I might have to use dongles with the hardware that I'll be repeatedly connecting and disconnecting as I move around.
It's not a big deal, but it'll take time to transition from the last "single connector for everything" to the new one. The only problem I have is the rabid USB-C fans telling me I'm being left behind for sticking with my current hardware for a few more years.
See also: https://plus.google.com/+ThorstenLeemhuis/posts/fZLWWPJEQts
All in all the 9560 has replaced my Mac as a daily driver.
Edit: Incase, to save time for someone, put this in kernel mode parameters in the file /boot/grub/grub.cfg and rerun grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
nouveau.modeset=0 acpi_rev_override=1 enable_psr=1 disable_power_well=0
The build quality is top of the line, the drivers are solid, and everything just works. The trackpad is industry leading, and the keyboard is great too. Performance is exceptional, especially in the 15" which comes with a HQ processor (not ultrabook-grade) and a discrete graphics card. It has a PCI-e SSD. The price is reasonable compared to the competition.
But despite being IMO the best laptop available, the main reason I choose them is because every so often I need to boot into OSX for testing, or to do something Mac-only. And nothing else can do that.
No thanks..
And my Mac runs for weeks, sometimes > 2 months, without a reboot. I've had to reboot the XPS on average twice a week (due to crashes, or updates, or really weird performance drops).
As for Apple, it's a shame they don't ship 32gb laptops with touch screens.
I'm currently on an ageing OG X1 Carbon (i7/8/256), which has a sensational keyboard and track pointer, with a superb light and strong chassis; for my next, I'm hoping they'll upgrade the core count to 4+ and memory to 32, and an AMOLED display.
I use it a lot for document reviews, working with spreadsheets, and anywhere that touch corresponds more with manipulation of the object on screen.
I completely disregard it when the laptop is docked though. For me, mouse/kb habits take over.
Apple refuses to open up their dev space, like the worst kind of community citizen, and your response is to support that behaviour?
There are some things that I think could be better. I think Windows is a bit ugly, hardware does not feel polished like in Apple but it's not nowhere as bad as Dells used to be. The only thing I go back to Mac when I need to do iOS stuff and sometimes when i get something from designers in Sketch format but it is unlikely that I will return to MBP anytime soon.
I find myself touching the screen when reading, on actionable wizards etc. So, it is mostly usability bonus for stuff that I could do in mouse. Funny thing is that I really didn't notice first that I started to touch screen.
And since I'm often working in Kenya it can be quite difficult to get service for Apple, having parts I can switch out with a screwdriver is a huge blessing. And it's stupidly tough, I've fallen directly on it and it's survived in the past.
Can't speak for the touchscreens.
No thunderbolt 3 (strange one that) but otherwise exactly what I wanted and with discount comes in around 250 cheaper than the XPS15 with a 1080 screen.
Went through 3 of them. A well-specced model with 4k screen, 16GB memory, and 512GB SSD.
First had a bad screen, second had sticky keys, and third had faulty video card.
Third time I took it back, I was still willing to get it repaired but the support staff wouldn't do it. They told me they've had so many XPS 15s returned for service that they just recommended getting a totally different machine...
But it was a brilliant machine when it worked.
I had lots of annoyance with a previous Optimus based notebook. How has the situation of bumblebee and primusrun and dualbooting improved in the past two years?
I have upgraded an Ubuntu laptop over a few years and every upgrade it broke, requiring some new incantation to fix it the next time. I don't think it's considered the future?
I believe the future is called "Prime Synchronisation", announced a few years ago. Good luck getting it to work though: https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/957814/prime-and-pr... I gave up after a while.
We're probably nearing the time when I'll give all the methods another go, but currently I'm back into the "change setting and log out + in" camp.
As an aside, bumblebee also seems to break my i3 environment... I get hangs & magic sysreq won't recover. I've had to go back to the default DE.
Very slightly, but you're better off getting a notebook that actually has FOSS graphics drivers, for a much more stable and reliable experience.
It's unfortunate that you can't upgrade the XPS15 to the 4K display or a quad-core processor without getting the nVidia graphics along with it. IIRC, some previous models included 4K configurations without that.
FWIW this NIC is a huge liability, wifi instability is common and it will bring some machines down hard (bluescreens/kernel panics, just check /r/dell).
Dell US apparently has instructions to replace this POS by a compatible Intel NIC (7200 or 8000 series) if you have issues and complaint, that seems not to be the case for Dell EU.
An Intel NIC costs $20~30, some folks just order a 8260/8265 at the same time as the laptop and install it before even booting.
The only thing that worked was uninstalling all Killer software and just letting Windows install the wifi driver.
(I don't want to use Windows 8 or 10 because of telemetry, nor do I want to spend countless hours trying to figure out how to disable all telemetry, and worry about future updates that introduce more telemetry. I'm happy staying at Window 7.)
Also they haven't tried to be creative with the keyboard layout, which includes page down/up keys which the xps lacks, quite important for shortcuts.
Other than that, it is so much more performant than my old MBP. Couldn't be happier to have 32GB of ram and the infinity display.
Specifically, the version I have comes with a i7 7700HQ, 32GB RAM, 1TB SDD and 4K screen.
Hardware wise, the laptop is lovely, and the build quality of mine is good, although it hasn't been perfect as I'll get to later. The screen is honestly the best I've ever used, although I do sometimes notice ghosting due to slow response times, I understand in that regard it's comparable to the retina displays used in MBPs.
Performance wise, the hardware speaks for itself. It's a very powerful machine. I haven't experienced any of the lag or video issues that others are reporting. It'll happily play games and crunch whatever data you throw at it, without any thermal issues.
My model was a very early version, and came with which I can only describe as a mushy keyboard which often did not register key-presses. I contacted Dell support, who after a short over the phone test, agreed it was not satisfactory and arranged for an engineer to be at my house the next day to replace the keyboard. This fixed the issue, and the keyboard has been fine ever since. Compared to the new MBP keyboards, I much prefer the 9560 due to the extra travel.
I've also had the GPU fan replaced due to it developing a grinding noise. Again, after a short phone call, Dell agreed to send an engineer to replace the fan the next day. The issue has since re-appeared, and although it's not a critical issue, I'll be getting Dell to replace the fan again. This does seem like a somewhat common issue, although I can't find any recent reports which would hopefully suggest it has been fixed on the manufacturing side. On the topic of noise, my particular machine has no coil-whine.
The webcam position is frankly bad. It's not an issue for me personally, but I do tend to place the laptop somewhere higher if I'm doing a video call - I can't be trimming my noise hair for every call I do.
I did try macOS on the 9560, as a bit of fun more than anything else, and it seemed to be usable after some effort. However I generally dislike macOS, so I'm back to using Fedora 26 which runs perfectly. Some older apps have slight scaling issues with the 4k screen, however nothing has proven to be unusable (yet). I haven't had any issues running a clean version of Windows either.
Overall, I'm very happy with the 9560.
I have a dual boot setup with Ubuntu and Windows with no issues.
I bought it for $1699 CAD for the 7700HQ + Full HD Screen (not 4K) + GTX 1050 + 256GB HD + 16GB RAM and immediately upgraded the disk to 1TB and the ram to 32GB.
Is the "premium" really worth the extra $500-$800 or Dell is overcharging because there's hardly any good Windows machine in this space (except maybe Thinkpads) ?
So I bought the 7560 (which had a much better keyboard and was 650 pounds less)..that went back after 6 hours when the hinge broke.
Shop didn't even quibble so I suspect it wasn't the first they'd seen.
Now I'm buying a Thinkpad.
That and the webcam are my only complaints though. I love the speakers, screen, trackpad.. and the single-cable thunderbolt dock is great.
The 7560 was a nice looking/nice spec machine at 950 but the damn chassis bent just from opening and closing the lid in the first day.
Dell can make good machines but mostly by luck I think sometimes.
My current Laptop is an old Vostro 3750 I paid 500 quid for new (stacked discounts on the Dell site) and it has a better keyboard after 5 years of abuse.
Damn thing just won't die.
https://www.cnet.com/news/macbook-pro-october-2016-battery-l...
Yes, touchpad is not as good as MBP, but you can get used to it.
Now I'm looking for 13" laptop with 32gb ram. Do they exist at all?
I have a MacBook Pro with Retina display, but I don't like it for developing - it's mostly gathering dust.
My workstation and personal laptop are running OpenSUSE Tumbleweed/KDE, which I love.
I don't mind using a Windows OS as long as I can launch a VM for my development.
But I guess the Dell XPS 15 9560 may not be my best choice given the real-world problems I am reading here.
edit Yep, on page 2:
> The smaller bezels really do reduce the bulk of the notebook, with the one downside in Dell’s case of a poorly positioned webcam at the bottom of the display. Dell wants to keep the top and side bezels the same size for aesthetics, and heavy webcam users will not appreciate this, with a less than flattering up-the-nose result.
Been researching the Dell alternatives (XPS and Precision) for a couple of months now. Very tempting machines indeed. I just want to see one in real life to see what the build quality feels like.
Pssst.. Mr Schiller... it seems it is possible to stick 32Gb of RAM into a laptop AND have decent battery life. Well, that is unless you're intent on giving your products anorexia which it seems you are.
</end rant>
To be honest though, if I had the budget and Apple weren't being ridiculous with the specs I'd still consider a mac a much better development machine; specifically due to Adobe's refusal to port photoshop to ubuntu. If you do not have any need for photoshop, then XPS developer edition is much better value.
My only concern with the dell line is that drivers really are a problem. For some reason, the audio works perfectly fine under Ubuntu and is really half baked on Windows 10 (with the newest drivers from dell). It's like upside down bizarro world.
I really like OS X because of the *nix like OS with a high level of 'just works'. I absolutely won't go back to Windows, my workflow is so far beyond it- so what're my best resources for finding a high spec laptop that will be compatible with a modern Linux distro?
I've got Windows 7 and Mint running on an old Lenovo T430 (pretty sure it's a 430) and Ubuntu 16.10 on my old 2009 MBP after Apple stopped shipping OS updates for it.
Excluding the fact they're on old hardware, I still don't think they 'just work' enough. Power save, WiFi, graphics drivers, fan control, all things that took a LOT of fiddling. Don't really love Ubuntu's desktop either.
You can, using the Thunderbolt 3 port. I run my XPS 13 at 4K@60Hz using the mini-DP port, and Thunderbolt 3 is capable of that and more.
I'd rather have an extra Thunderbolt 3/USB-C port, to be honest. HDMI 2.0 is bigger and clunkier as a port, and Thunderbolt 3 is strictly better as a protocol (we're not even talking about HDMI 2.1). Maybe if you're talking HDMI 2.1, but the protocol can still be carried over a USB-C connector anyway, so keeping the standard connector interface is preferable in my books.
My bet is that TVs will soon start to have USB-C ports built-in (with whichever protocols they're willing to support). In the meantime, an adapter will do the trick; it can even live with the TV, since that's not meant to be portable.
* space bar double-registers once in a while. There is a well-known issue with the space bar, extremely well-documented: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/3ebe6t/dell_xps_13_20..., http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R333HXzT7Ws http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/t/... and so on
* Killer Wifi BSOD'd 5 times in 1 week. Also well-documented, fix is apparently to complain and get an engineer to change it to Intel: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/5r1fu5/xps15_9560_wif...
* Sound was choppy (driver-based issue), apparently this is again well-known: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/5yvsng/xps_15_9560_au... there is no fix, the fix is to send it back (potentially also caused by Killer Wifi, Dell will never recognise that so you'll not get a WiFi card change)
* Mouse has a lag on the screen in 3D applications. Apparently, this is due to partially the XBox app that wants to record and isn't optimized to 4k + possibly McAfee + some other Dell boatware.
So, I returned the laptop. The 2nd thing in my life I ever returned. It was too much, and I wasn't sure I could fix all of the above in 2 weeks (return period in UK). I used Linux for my main OS, where everything but the space bar double-tap was a real issue. But that was painful. I was afraid that the replacement keyboard would be more or less the same. You can apparently just go to a random retailer, and it often double-taps there too (i.e. it will break). Worst about it is that Dell offered a BIOS update to "fix" this. The Dell Knowledge Base (KB) article detailing this has been pulled, BIOSes now come pre-updated (yes, I did update my BIOS, no, it did not fix it). When a BIOS update "fixes" such a basic hardware bug, you really ought to wonder about their quality control.
Besides the stability issues the screen and the keyboard are quite good. However the touchpad is no comparison to the one on a Macbook. I can work without a mouse on a Macbook without missing anything, but not on the Lenovo. According to some reviews the T470 should be better in that area than the T470s, but I don't have one for comparison.
With a full GTX 1050 it pretty much can be. This looks like a great machine. How is Linux support?
So, my advice would be to research thoroughly if you are buying an XPS for gaming.
I'm able to game for hours on my XPS 9560 with no thermal issues.
When I play a game (overwatch, fallout 4, gta v), after some time my gpu throttle and i lost between 20-30% fps. And after more time, my CPU throttle to aroung 0.80 ghz and I lost all my FPS, the game become unplayable.
If they continue to provide a model with a Linux distribution installed, I would like to support them and purchase their products again, but that defect is the only thing I would like to see it fixed.
It's proven for me that they don't, as it's a long standing and massive problem. Consumers should stop buying poorly engineered/manufactured devices, that would be the reasonable reaction.
> If they continue to provide a model with a Linux distribution installed, I would like to support them and purchase their products again, but that defect is the only thing I would like to see it fixed
Normally Thinkpads support Linux very well though don't come with it preinstalled.
I'm from Brazil and over here everything that Dell sells is trash. Dell Inspiron's hinge breaks usually after 1 year, so you better buy an extended warranty... but why in the hell would you buy an middle to expensive notebook that you know it is made with bad quality and that you need to pay more for extended warranty?
Dell doesn't deserve to exist as a company and soon I will help more people learn about how trashy are Dell's products...
I have a feeling it's your country's insane import tariffs that are the real problem...
A quick scan through the comments and you can see that Americans aren't that happy with Dell's hardware neither... and the hinge problem, tons of reports at Dell's USA community forum. So if I were you, would start getting careful with the hinge... or, like customer support from Dell suggested me one time: not open and close the notebook that much.