New Dell XPS 15 - Good value?

Domo

Domo

Domo

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11 Feb 2004
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Location
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All this for £1,449
Intel® Core™ i7 Processor 840QM (1.86 Ghz, 8MB, 4C)
6144MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [1x4096 + 1x2048]
15.6 Full HD B+RGLED TL (1920x1080) 1080p
500GB (7,200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive
6-cell 56Whr Lithium Ion battery
8x DVD+/-RW, & Blu-ray Disc™ combo drive (reads Blu-ray Disc™ & writes to CD/DVD
2GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 435M Graphics Card

Was looking to get a Macbook Pro but then stumbled upon this, which is cheaper - and then I read up on the HP Envy! Argh!! Will prob settle for the Dell.

It also has a built-in wireless transmitter which can talk to a device you attach to your TV for streaming movies. (I think Linksys sell them).
 
HP Envy is nice, if you're looking for a Mackbook Pro style laptop. However, they don't offer the Radiance display (900p) in the UK, which is a real let down (unless they changed their policy).

There are also the new Samsung RF and QX series, but graphics performance dont look so good.

As for the price, there is more than just graphics chips. It's not a full blown gaming laptop, and it's not about gaming performance, but the whole package. And I must say, that dell looks very impressive. Metal chassis, Optimus, and 1080p LCD option. Although Optimus is kinda pointless with a quadcore CPU (and I would think it's not actually available for the i7 models).

I would be concerned about temperatures under load and it throttles to keep it under control.
 
HP Envy 17 with voucher code can be had for £1,199.

Spec is:

Core i7 720Q (1.6ghz)
4GB DDR3
HD5850 1GB GDDR5
17.3" 1080p display
500GB HD
Blu Ray

All other normal laptop features.

Additionally the XPX17 appears to be cheaper for the same spec as the XPS 15. That might be worth a look as well.
 
Had a look at the dell site I would definitly knock off the 6gb upgrade and stick with 4gb for now as £160 for 2gbs ram is a joke as pointed out you wouldnt be that to buy a full 8gbs from ocuk. I would also probably take the i7 740QM as they are asking £280 to ug to the 840 not sure if 130mhz is worth that much.

With that your already only looking at £1000 and after watching a video of the laptop which build wise looks really really nice, I think its probably a good buy.
 
Forgot about the Envy 17. Big monster, tends to heat up (quad core i7 + 5830).

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-envy-hdx/484905-official-hp-envy-17-owners-lounge-204.html

Not a big fan if i7's in laptops. If you're not doing anything requiring quad-cores, a i5 is more than capable, plus you get decent battery life and less heat / noise issues.

In laptops, anything with tier one graphics card require good cooling, otherwise they become almost unbearable (could always use a mouse keyboard and let it sit on a cooler).
 
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Just got one of these with i7 720qm, 4gb ram, gt435m for £840 (no blu ray and only the standard res screen, but a nice 9cell battery and 1 years accidental damage cover seemed like a good tradeoff :D) only had time to play a couple of hours on black ops today but with everything on max (except aa which was on 2x) the framerate seemed to hang around 50fps at 1366x768

Will try some more demanding games out when i get a chance :)

The build quality is pretty awesome, really nice finish on the palm rest, nice keyboard layout, responsive touchpad, surprisingly nice speakers (with subwoofer :D) and has about 4 hours battery life as long as you don't do anything demanding on it - overall very very pleased so far
 
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To ask a stupid question, how do you find the 1080p screen version of this? The Dell sales people say they don't do 1080p on the XPS 15!
 
DaveF - the 1080p screen is currently unavailable from Dell. It was when it was first released and its a gorgeous screen too but damn expensive at £170 to upgrade over base pice.

If you want one, I have one for sale in MM at the moment as my car blew up :(
 
ninja2000 said:
DaveF - the 1080p screen is currently unavailable from Dell. It was when it was first released and its a gorgeous screen too but damn expensive at £170 to upgrade over base pice.

If you want one, I have one for sale in MM at the moment as my car blew up :(
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Thanks for the info, and sorry to hear about your car. (I'm getting a replacement for a stolen laptop, so not exactly a good month for me either).

The price you're asking is really a bit higher than I'm looking to spend I'm afraid; the "base" XPS spec (i3) is fine for what I need, so if they were still doing the screen, even at the £170 premium I'd only be looking at around £670.

(I'm surprised to see that Sony do a machine with 1920 screen for as little as £600 - only problem is it's ATI rather than Nvidia and at work we use Nvidia specific shader code).
 
Tell me about it! really bad timing huh :(

well I am negotiable on the price if you want a HDD instead of SSD so pop me an email if you want to chat further.
 
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