Quality Dell has spent significant time crafting this machine, which is a near-perfect mix of high-quality materials and sumptuous design-something we loved on the Precision M3800.alienware m15x battery This system is hewn from high-quality materials: the lid and frame are made from machined aluminium-similar to the MacBook-and the base, wrist-rest and edges are constructed from carbon-fibre, with still-visible weave evident throughout.Many of the metallic edges are chamfered for added luxury, and the XPS 15 is all about the clean curves and good-looking minimalism-like the MacBook, acer aspire s3 battery the Dell's subtle style exudes class.The carbon-fibre base showed no weakness, and the wrist-rest was just as strong-we prodded hard, but couldn't make the material flex. Pressing the rear of the screen caused a little desktop distortion, which isn't a problem on the MacBook, thinkpad x240 charger but that's the only issue.Ports include three USB 3 connections, a single USB 2 port, and HDMI and mini-DisplayPort connectors alongside a card reader and a headphone jack. There are also some nice small details, such as a smart LED-based battery indicator on the left-hand edge, and a metal base plate with the XPS logo that lifts up to reveal serial numbers and part codes.It sounds good, but it gets even better when the Dell's measurements are mentioned. The main body is just 17mm thick, lenovo thinkcentre m72e tiny ac power adapter with 4mm of that taken up by the screen, are another two millimetres are added by the banded rubber feet across the base-so it compares well with the 18mm MacBook. The XPS 15 weighs 1.88kg, which is a little less than the MacBook and not far off some Ultrabooks. Despite the huge power on offer, it won't weigh you down when it's slung in a bag.Dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi is a future-proofed addition, and there's Bluetooth 4.0, but no Gigabit Ethernet on-board-you'll need to use the included USB adapter.
QHD display
However, it's Dell's 'QHD' screen that is the real eye-opener. apple a1081 power adapter With a resolution of 3200 x 1800 pixels and 235 pixels per inch, the XPS 15 has a higher resolution than the Retina display of the MacBook Pro, at 2880 x 1800 and 220 ppi.Numbers aside, it looks terrific, as the IPS panel is very bright and colourful, sony vaio pro 13 battery and strong contrast ensures that blacks look very black while the pristine white backgrounds of many web pages help accentuate how dull the colours are for many other laptops.The screen is touch-sensitive too, although we found ourselves rather reluctant to mar the brilliant and shiny screen with our fingerprints. (See all Ultrabooks reviews.) acer iconia a700 tablet charger The bigger problem with that high-res display is that many Windows programs don't work properly. The adjustable scaling technology in Windows works well enough on the main Windows desktop, allowing you to adjust the size of OS text and icons to enhance visibility. But it doesn't always help with interface elements within individual applications, netzteil fur samsung np900x3e which resolutely remain at the screen native resolution.This means that toolbars, icons and buttons in some third-party applications appear so small that they're almost unusable. And, ironically, it's often graphics applications such as the Adobe Photoshop Elements program we tried that suffer the most here, because of their reliance on graphical-based tools.That means youAkku MSI GE60 may find yourself switching to a lower resolution for tasks such as photo- or video-editing; which rather defeats the point of paying for the QHD display in the first place.That's Microsoft's fault rather than Dell's, although it's you as the latter's customer that has to put up with it.
Performance
Like the Precision M3800, hp photosmart 7510 power cord the XPS 15 includes an Intel Core i7-4702HQ processor. It's one of Intel's most potent mobile parts: four Hyper-Threaded cores clocked to 2.2GHz, a Turbo Boost peak speed of 3.2GHz, and the latest Haswell architecture. Asus G75VW battery It's the same chip Dell used in the Precision M3800, and it's a little faster than the 2GHz part inside the cheaper MacBook Pro.It's no surprise that the XPS 15 battered benchmarks. Its PCMark 7 result of 5,764 is a sliver behind the Precision but still one of the best scores we've seen, and the XPS's GeekBench pace of 11,422 is also one of the best around-even if the MacBook's result of 13,517 currently tops our table. asus tx300 charger The Nvidia GT 750M uses the same GK107 core as the Quadro K1100M inside the Precision M3800, but here the GPU runs at 967MHz with 2GB of GDDR5 clocked to 2,000MHz. The Quadro ran its core at 716MHz, with RAM at 1,400MHz. The GT 750M is also used in one of Apple's cheaper MacBook Pro configurations, with an Intel Iris Pro 5200 GPU available in the model we reviewed. The extra clock speed gave the XPS 15 a slightly advantage over its workstation stablemate. The XPS scored 10,791 in 3DMark's Cloud Gate benchmark, better than the Precision's 8,005 score, and the XPS's pace of 2,024 in the trickier Fire Strike test bested the 1,294 from the M3800.Surprisingly, the XPS even beat the MacBook, even though the systems share a GPU. g75vw battery The XPS 15 stormed through Unigine Heaven's basic benchmark to a score of 41.8 when run at 1,366 x 768, beating the 30.3 from the MacBook. We ran Heaven's Extreme test at 1,920 x 1,080, where the XPS scored 14.9, and the MacBook only managed 9.7.There's a sting in the MacBook's tale, though, in the form of the Intel Iris 5200 Pro integrated GPU included in Apple's cheaper model. The new GPU has been clocked with scores of 11,338 in 3DMark' Cloud Gate test, which is a little faster than the GT 750M in this system could manage.It's also worth noting that cheaper laptops pack in better graphics performance, although they lose out elsewhere. The chunky latitude e5540 power supply includes an Nvidia GTX 770M core, which helped it score 3,133 in the Fire Strike benchmark and 53.6 in the Basic, 1,366 x 768 Unigine test, and it costs ?ê1,399.The high-end hardware is underpinned by a monster SSD. toshiba pa5013u 1brs The 512GB capacity of the Samsung unit results in 460GB of usable space, and its sequential read and write speeds of 518MB/sec and 420MB/sec are excellent. There's no hard disk, though, so users with large media collections or work files will soon take up all of this space. The MacBook has 256GB and 512GB SSD options, but both use the PCI-E interface and are faster than the Dell's drive.
Battery Life
Dell has fitted the XPS 15 with the same six-cell unit as the Precision M3800, so we didn't have great expectations about this machine's longevity.The Dell lasted for 4hrs 32mins in our Powermark test, dell venue 8 pro charger which is a mere 24mins longer than the M3800 could manage. It's a reasonable result for a high-end machine but, as before, nothing can touch the MacBook. Thanks to its hefty battery and OS X's fantastic efficiency, Apple's hardware lasted for a mighty ten hours.