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Comment by kart23 | Hacker News Reader

My old xps 13 with the i5 had great thermals on the other hand, but was still snappy enough for almost everything I threw at it. Didn't like it b/c the screen was just a tad too small for me and I had some problems getting good audio on the machine. Also, coil whine. It was awful.

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Same here. 13 inch XPS, coil whine is insane. Had the motherboard replaced 3 times, no improvement. It was a replacement for my ageing Air 13", and I honestly wish I didn't swap. At first glance it's just as nice, the build quality and form factor are identical - and then you start using it, and see that Dell charges just as much if not more than Apple, but quality of several different elements is ages behind apple.

I was thinking about getting an XPS 15 soon so this gives me pause.

> Dell charges just as much if not more than Apple

Not even close. XPS 15 with 6 core, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD is $1500. MBP is $2400 for the same specs.

What I really like on the XPS 15 is the 97 WHR battery. I haven't seen any other notebook with this capacity.

Yes, I mean obviously right now the brand new MBP is absurdly expensive. But when I got the XPS 13 it was actually more expensive than an equivalent MacBook Air(with the caveat that the XPS had a higher resolution screen).

MacBook Air is not comparable to an XPS...

The one I have(9333) is literally identical in form factor and inside construction to the Air - if you open the bottom cover, the layout of everything is exactly the same, it's as if Dell copied the whole design as-is. Nowadays the XPS 13 has exceeded everything the Air can offer, but just couple years ago that was not the case.

I bought a Nvidia/i7 XPS 15 in March and have never understood the coil whine complaints, yeah there is some but nothing too bad (comparable to my 2012 MacBook Air). Alternately everyone else has super hearing or I’m deaf, YMMV.

You can buy older (but unused) Macbook Pro with these specs (except it's 4 core instead of 6) for $1000 and it has way more battery life, nicer screen and better touchpad.

The Aero 15 has a 94WHr and a better gpu

What model XPS 13? My 2018 9370 has no coil whine even when I hold the keyboard to my head.

I think it's a fixed issue, but only in 2018 models, so YMMV.

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