Dell XPS 15 9560 Review • Hacker News Board

Re: Dell XPS 15 9560 Review

#171

Post by seabrookmx » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 5:49 PM UTC

noir_lord wrote: post #169

I would have plopped the money down on one of these on saturday but I tried the one on display and the keyboard was horrible. 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.

I've been pretty happy with my Precision 5510 (which uses the same chassis as the XPS 15) but I agree, the keyboard is a low point that the reviews seem to miss. I prefer the keyboard on my old HP Folio 1040, which admittedly is very Macbook-like.

That and the webcam are my only complaints though. I love the speakers, screen, trackpad.. and the single-cable thunderbolt dock is great.

Re: Dell XPS 15 9560 Review

#172

Post by noir_lord » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 5:55 PM UTC

seabrookmx wrote: post #171

noir_lord wrote: post #169

I would have plopped the money down on one of these on saturday but I tried the one on display and the keyboard was horrible. 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.

I've been pretty happy with my Precision 5510 (which uses the same chassis as the XPS 15) but I agree, the keyboard is a low point that the reviews seem to miss. I prefer the keyboard on my old HP Folio 1040, which admittedly is very Macbook-like. That and the webcam are my only complaints though. I love the speakers, screen, trackpad.. and the single-cable thunderbolt dock is great.

For me it was that the keys actually rattled if you ran your fingers over them, that would drive me crazy, with the backlight on the spacings where all over the place because they moved around so much and the typing experience was sub-optimal, if the XPS15 had had the keyboard on the 7560 I'd have bought it there and then.

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.

Re: Dell XPS 15 9560 Review

#173

Post by JamesMcMinn » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 5:59 PM UTC

I've had the XPS 9560 since February. I mostly run Fedora (26), but have also run Solus and various versions of Ubuntu. I have a Windows 10 install which I use for Photoshop, Lightroom, and some mobile gaming.

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.

Re: Dell XPS 15 9560 Review

#174

Post by nonamechicken » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 6:07 PM UTC

JamesMcMinn wrote: post #160

nonamechicken wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the older xps 15 9530. If you try to run any decent game (spec wise easy for the laptop to handle), it will throttle down to 10 fps or less within 5 minutes. When I contacted customer care, they said since this is an ultrabook, this is expected and that they couldn't do anything. So, my advice would be to research thoroughly if you are buying an XPS for gaming.

The XPS 9560 shares the same thermal design as the 9550, both of which are considerably better than the 9530. I'm able to game for hours on my XPS 9560 with no thermal issues.

I guess different people have different experiences. Googling "xps 9560 throttling" shows up quiet a few results which sounds very similar to what I face. For example, this is from the 4th link in my search result:

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.

Re: Dell XPS 15 9560 Review

#175

Post by zero_k » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 6:10 PM UTC

trzeci wrote: post #22

Hi, I've had lots of problems with the previous version of XPS15 - 9550 (More info @ https://trzeci.eu/dell-xps-15-9550-was-the-most-problematic-... ) 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 a…

Sure, mine had BSOD's space bar double-tap, choppy sound and laggy 3D mouse (I mean 1 sec lag) right out of the box. I wasn't as patient as you, I sent it back. On Linux most was fine except the keyboard, but I was too afraid that HW was crap (also, searching for solutions was throwing me a lot of other people's issues with the HW). It seems like I was right.

Re: Dell XPS 15 9560 Review

#176

Post by EpicEng » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 6:15 PM UTC

blunte wrote: post #49

My experience with my 1-month-old maxed out 9560: - 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…

> - less precise trackpad than my 3 year old rMBP

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.

Re: Dell XPS 15 9560 Review

#177

Post by praulv » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 6:20 PM UTC

Had a Dell 7537 (non XPS) and it is honestly the worst machine I have ever used, from physical reliability (broken hinges and parts) through to flat out non-functional components including numerous issues with Wifi. After falling for the looks, I've vowed never to get a Dell again.

Re: Dell XPS 15 9560 Review

#178

Post by PascLeRasc » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 6:30 PM UTC

zero_k wrote: post #162

Mine came with: * 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…

I can't believe that a machine as high-end as this has all those bugs. I've had an Asus $400 boondoggle from Best Buy for 4 years now and the worst thing it does is occasionally unmount the optical drive. It seems like Dell just has very poor quality control.

Re: Dell XPS 15 9560 Review

#179

Post by PascLeRasc » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 6:31 PM UTC

inertial wrote: post #148

Can anyone help me understand the pricing on this one. An Inspiron with core i5 / 8GB RAM / 256GB SSD costs about $500, whereas a similar spec'd XPS 15 retails for more than twice. 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) ?

They're upcharging for a really nice screen. It'll make all the BSODs super sharp.

Re: Dell XPS 15 9560 Review

#180

Post by aarmenaa » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 6:36 PM UTC

r1ch wrote: post #138

oulu2006 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true, the previous XPS 15 had huge problems with the Killer NIC card because the drivers for it took months to stabilise and its only recently been that a driver update has made the Wifi somewhat stable and the machine has stopped crashing every few days. 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 hate how prevalent Killer NIC chips have become. They seem to be racing to the bottom with cheap wireless and ethernet PHYs with crappy drivers, yet their reputation hasn't quite caught up. Their marketing brands them as premium and a lot of manufacturers still buy into it to target the "gaming" segment (which also hates them). I refuse to buy any board which has these chips and will pay a small premium for an Inte…

I don't recall anybody ever having a kind word to say about them. As I recall the product used to be the cheapest Atheros chips the vendor could find plus a proprietary driver that was snake oil and bugs. Not better than a Realtek and worse in a lot of cases. I suspect that they're actually cheaper than a Realtek, which is why they keep showing on consumer hardware.