Showing posts with label cushcase. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cushcase. Show all posts

Thursday, November 2, 2017

What's not so good about my new Dell XPS 15 laptop (+ a bunch of good things)

Recenty I got a new laptop, again a Dell. I decided to go for a thin "ultrabook", the XPS 15, 16G RAM, 512G SSD. A good review you can find here. I didn't take the 4K version on purpose, since some reviews say it is struggling a bit with that. Plus some software just can't handle it, like Remote Desktop, so  you have to scale down anyway.



Here is an overview of the pros and cons I found while using it.

Pros

  • Sleek design

  • Thin

  • A lot lighter than the M4700

  • Smaller power-supply

  • Fast; no problem with 3-4 IntelliJ workspaces open, over 50 Chrome tabs, DBeaver, Firefox with about 10 tabs

Cons

  • Some backlight bleeding in the bottom right corner of the screen. Most notable when showing a black screen. Not really noticeable during daylight. Here's an example of a really bad case.

  • Crappy keyboard; the page up-down, home, end keys can only be used by pressing the Fn key. If you are a coder, it's really annoying, since you use those keys a lot. Hope next time they make separate keys again.

  • Corners get scratched easily if you put it in your bag without a protecting sleeve

  • Sometimes a flicker (screen turns completely black) on the externally connected screen. Not sure yet if it's the cable.

  • Screen can't fold back flat fully.

  • For some reason the default resolution is set to 125% right after using it for the first time.

  • The connection for the HDMI cable is on the side! And sometimes sits a bit in the way when using the mouse.

  • The professional version of the XPS 15 named Precision 5520 should give you better quality components. But the warranty period has been reduced from 3 years to 1 year. Does it still make it worth to buy the over 500 euros more expensive Precision 5520? Apparently they don't dare to give a longer warrant anymore for the better quality components...


Just got a sleeve for the XPS-15, a CushCase. Ordered via Amazon. Took about 3 weeks to arrive. Fits in a regular mailbox. Fits the XPS-15 nicely; no need to really push.