The best laptop available is this one. There are other laptops that are more suited for you if you’re not seeking for power, which is completely great, but if you intend to work creatively on a large screen, this is the one to have. Start with the screen since it is unquestionably the greatest in its class. Whether we tested sRGB, Adobe RGB, NTSC, or P3, the results were 100% accurate or very near to it. These are the best outcomes we’ve ever seen from a display, which simply goes to show how wonderful Dell XPS is in general. At more than 500 nits, it is also quite bright.
Dell XPS 17 review: Design
Although the Dell laptops XPS 17 (2022) bears a striking resemblance to models from the previous year and the year before, we are appreciative of this. The main chassis, screen cover, and palmrest of the XPS are all made of machined aluminium, and the device is exquisitely designed and constructed. Thanks to the display’s ultra-slim bezels on all four sides, it nonetheless has a contemporary appearance. And this is despite the fact that a 720p webcam with Windows Hello facial recognition functionality is still crammed into the top. Although there is some bend in the keyboard bed, the chassis is very sturdy. The big trackpad on a Windows laptop is as amazing as it gets. Only Apple’s MacBooks have better trackpads. Of course, this is still a large machine, weighing over 2 kilogrammes and being more than 14 inches across, but the greatest 17-inch laptops are never going to be little. However, the thin bezels provide the smallest possible footprint and guarantee that, if you must have something this big, you will at least make the most of its size. With the possible exception of the lightweight LG Gram 17, which has a little bigger footprint but weighs 1.35kg less, the XPS 17 is about as transportable as 17-inch laptops come. The way the XPS proportions correspond to the port choice is where we take problem. One the one hand, it’s excellent that all four of the USB-C ports support Thunderbolt 4’s full capability, including power delivery and DisplayPort alt mode.
Keyboard and touchpad
The speaker apertures are placed on either side of the center-placed keyboard. It is either black or white since its colour matches that of the casing. The mechanics itself still only provide you a 1.3 mm (0.05 in) key stroke, and the typing experience is just fair overall. But the sound of its clattering is also a contributing factor in this. There is undoubtedly potential for growth in this area, and Dell’s business and workstation versions also feature superior keyboards. also you can check our article on Dell XPS 17 review. Although it works well, the white backdrop illumination cannot be turned on automatically by the brightness sensor. The big ClickPad, on the other hand, leaves no room for criticism. It not only functions quite consistently, but it also provides a lot of room for gestures using up to four fingers. The capacitive touchscreen in our model can also be used for inputs, and this also works without any issues. However, pen input with pressure levels is not supported.
Display
Although the Dell XPS 17’s display isn’t equipped with any cutting-edge technology like OLED or quantum dots, it nevertheless appears to be rather excellent. As we’ll soon see in testing, Dell rates it at 500 nits of brightness and 100% of Adobe’s RGB color gamut, and it either meets or exceeds those claims. The yellow, blue, and red of the characters’ uniforms looked striking when I used the laptop to catch up on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and the darkness of space was satisfyingly black while still giving detail in the dim away mission sequences. While we prefer a larger screen for prolonged photo editing, most content creators should be satisfied with this display, especially after seeing the results of our display testing. We also utilized the screen to sort through thousands of photos from a recent vacation to Scotland. The brightness of the XPS 17’s screen falls short of that of the MacBook Pro. Our light meter measured the Dell display at 466 nits, which is higher than the 366 of the Gigabyte Aero 16 and on par with the 464 of the model from a year ago. However, Apple’s rival 16-inch tiny LED display was a tad brighter, measuring 501 nits. However, when it comes to color, the Dell comes out on top, producing 85.1% of the DCI-P3 color space, outperforming both the 16-inch MacBook Pro and the previous XPS 17, both of which barely surpassed 77% of the same color space. With its Samsung AMOLED display, the Gigabyte Aero 16 came a little bit closer, delivering 79% of DCI-P3. However, when it comes to color, the XPS 17 is the best option we’ve tested in this class and screen size. In this test, it easily wins because it occupies 120% of the smaller sRGB space.
Dell XPS 17 review: Audio
Two 2W woofers and two 2.5W tweeters make up the speaker system, which is fired up by grilles on either side of the keyboard. Together, they can generate peaks of 88 dB from a music source and an average volume of 82 dB from pink noise measured at 1 m. That alone is great, but when you add the high level of musicality and impressive amount of detail, you get an audio setup that is quite impressive. The Waves Nx 3D Audio for Speakers was tuned for the XPS 17 by multi-Grammy Award-winning producer Jack Joseph Puig, according to Dell. The MaxxAudioPro, however, does offer a quirky 3D surround system emulator that does provide the hazy sense that the sound source isn’t simply in front of you.
Graphics
The processor’s integrated and effective Iris Xe Graphics G7, which can also easily handle the reproduction of high-resolution videos, is employed primarily in day-to-day operations. The dedicated Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 with 4 GB of RAM and a maximum clock speed of 1875 MHz is automatically engaged if you require even more graphic performance. As previously indicated, only the 60-Watt models of the RTX 3050 or RTX 3060 are used this year, whereas the former XPS 17 9710 had a 70-Watt model. It can also utilize an extra 5 watts of processing power if there isn’t much processor load. Although we did not test the older 9710 with the RTX 3050, the RTX 3060 edition of the XPS 17 9720 still lags behind the older model by roughly 10%, especially in tests with demanding graphics requirements, so we anticipate that the RTX 3050 will follow suit. This is a development that unmistakably goes the wrong way.
Dell XPS 17 review: Performance
The Core i7 12700H is a quick chip, with eight efficiency cores running at up to 3.5GHz and six performance cores operating at up to 4.7GHz. When the RTX 3060 is added, the Dell XPS 17 (2022) outperforms the XPS 15, which was already a capable performer, in a variety of applications. The XPS 17 outperformed rival large-screen, high-performance laptops including the Huawei MateBook 16S, Acer Swift Edge, and LG Gram 16 in Geekbench 5 and PC Mark 10. This 17-inch laptop can run even the most demanding video and design programmes without experiencing any issues, and these are the kinds of programmes you’d definitely purchase it for. The Nvidia RTX 3060 likewise expands gaming options, but we should add a few restrictions. First of all, because this GPU is the 60W version—what we used to refer to as the Max-Q version—it is unable to achieve the same 1425–1702 MHz clock speeds as the 80W or 115W models. In place of that, it tops out at 1282MHz. Second, we discovered that while testing 3D graphics and games, the bottom of the test sample became extremely hot, with the GPU temperature approaching roughly 90°C. By this time, there was a lot of fan noise, so we actually raised the laptop a little bit to provide more space around the vents while gaming. Finally, there were some stability difficulties. On a few occasions, Borderlands 3 and Horizon Zero Dawn both refused to run benchmark scenes, and Gotham Knights had to be restarted several times because frame rates had slowed to a standstill. This underlines the fact that the XPS 17 is a device for productivity and some casual gaming rather than a dedicated gaming powerhouse with the cooling systems to match. The latter isn’t the world’s most bug-free piece of code by any means.
Battery life
The XPS 17 9720 has the same 97 watt-hours of battery capacity as the XPS 17 9710. This is sufficient to power a high-resolution 17-inch display and 45-watt CPU. We should be able to determine the new processor’s relative efficiency because the 12th-gen CPU is the only noticeable change from the previous generation in terms of power usage. The XPS 17 9720 lasted 7.5 hours on our web surfing test, which cycles through a number of well-known and complicated websites. This is slightly less than average but more than two hours more than the XPS 17 9710. In our video test, which plays a local Full HD Avengers trailer for 13 hours, the upgraded model also held up better for over three hours longer.
Heat
We measured the surface temperatures of the laptop at several locations while running Cinebench R23 under duress. Temperatures on the XPS 17’s keyboard reached 37.1 degrees Celsius (98.8 degrees Fahrenheit) between the G and H keys, but the touchpad stayed cooler at 31.9 degrees Celsius (89.4 Fahrenheit). Near the rear centre of the laptop, the bottom reached a warmer maximum temperature of 38.8 degrees Celsius (101.9 degrees Fahrenheit). But by performance laptop standards, none of these temps are scorching (or even extremely warm). also you will learn our article on Dell XPS 17 review.
Configuration options
The Dell XPS 17 (2022) starts at $1,749 in the US, $2,099 in the UK, and $3,999 in Australia. The apparent difference in price outside of the US is attributed to a higher spec base CPU. Anyway, since that’s not exactly inexpensive, adding upgrades merely makes the situation worse. For example, the beautiful UHD+ touchscreen adds $300 (or £300), increasing the RAM from 16GB to 32GB costs $150 (or £200), and the 1TB SSD costs an additional $100 (or £100). You’re looking at a total cost of $2,749, £2,599 in the UK, and AU$4,798 in Australia, as configured.
Conclusion
Someone else will have to produce a 17-inch MacBook Pro if Apple doesn’t. When we see one of Dell’s large-screen XPS 17 laptops, we always have that thought. The versatile worker from Dell doesn’t break any records in any one area, but it consistently produces good performance. Future-proof connection, a sizable screen, potent CPU and GPU speed, and a long battery life are all features it offers. And it charges a fair fee for all of this. This makes the Dell XPS 17 a decent choice if you want a single all-in-one computer and don’t mind travelling with a big backpack.
