Spec Me: The thinnest, smallest, lightest and cheapest gaming laptop you can

[d_brennen]

Sounds like an IT dept failure tbh

 

[xGBHxPegasus]

Sounds like an IT dept failure tbh

This really.

My company had the old XPS13's and we had constant issues with the wifi freezing the laptops for our partners (not good!) and general slowness.

Got the new XPS13 and 15's (2015 editions) and their working perfectly, no issues whatsoever and after they all moaned that they didn't want them again they are all now asking for them, well that or surface pro's

Had my xps13 for 6 odd months now and love it Although we did leave the dell image on it and removed the bloat too, the old xps's are now being upgraded to win10 and used as spares. They do seem a lot better on win10!

 

[Skeeter]

Sounds like an IT dept failure tbh

Indeed.

But to be fair, selling a laptop as a Business laptop that then breaks if you format and reinstall Windows on it is a bit of a screw up by Dell. I expect its standard practice for most businesses to buy laptops with either no license or the cheapest (Home) license, and then format and install Enterprise or another Volume License edition.

I think it shows that the XPS range is really a Consumer focused ranged of laptops that Dell have then decided to also offer through the Business channels.

Back to the performance of mine, and so far all is good. However, the screen is pretty poor for gaming. It has some pretty serious ghosting going on. Mine is the non touch FHD screen, but looking around it seems that this is the same for the higher resolution touch panels too. Basically the screens in these (the 15 at least, can't speak for the new 13) have quite slow response times across the board. Its not going to be a problem for most people, but it is noticeable (although not unplayable) in games, or when moving light objects around on a dark background. Seems theres no way around it, the whole range has slow response time screens.

 

[Skeeter]

So I bought 3 USB-C adapters, one for DisplayPort, one for VGA and one for DVI. The DP one refuses to work (unrecognized device), the DVI one randomly turns the screen off for a few seconds every now and again, and the VGA one sporadically goes flickery and fuzzy.

It could be because all 3 are cheap Amazon adapters, or it could be that the USB-C on the laptop has issues. I've not got anything else USB-C to use to test is.

Also, I've found that if I plug the Nano receiver for my mouse into the USB port on the left its right next to the power socket, and if I connect the power supply my mouse really doesn't like it!

Other than that, all seems fine. Played some GTA on it the other night .

 

[hellarda]

Reckon upgrading from home to pro will have a similar effect? Won't be formating - just upgrading

 

[Skeeter]

From within the OS? I'd expect so.

I think (entirely unsubstantiated) that the blue screen issue I had was SSD drivers that exist in the Dell image that aren't available when Windows is left to download them itself. If you upgrade in the OS it should retain those.

I've had another person with a USB-C laptop test some of the adapters and they were flakey for her too, so seems the problem there isn't the laptop.

A random 'feature' I discovered is that on battery all games will be capped at 30fps. To go above that you need to plug it in.

 

[richthomuk]

A random 'feature' I discovered is that on battery all games will be capped at 30fps. To go above that you need to plug it in.

In GeForce Experience you can go to preferences, battery boost and change what the in game FPS is capped at.

 

[Skeeter]

Thanks for that!