Is Dell Infinity Edge Hd Touch Display Wort The Extra Money

This morning at 9 am Central Time, Dell officially unveiled a handful of new laptops, including the long-awaited XPS 17 9700. It has been nigh ten years since Dell terminal offered a 17″ version in their popular XPS line of laptops for creatives and prosumers and I couldn't exist more excited to not only see this annunciation just also to have had the run a risk to spend the final week with the laptop to see how it works for me equally a full-time photographer and videographer.

Now I should notation that the version of the XPS 17 that was sent me was a pre-production version, which ways that I tin can't share benchmarking numbers with all of you lot but yet. Dell is however working on the final software changes (drivers, bios and general software tweaks) and then they asked that I go along that data to myself for now. Once I get my easily on a last product-set version of this laptop, I will update this blog post with a lot more specifics when it comes to video rendering times, SSD Hard disk speeds, FPS for gaming, and much more. Simply don't worry, I all the same have lots of thoughts to share!

Specs

Like all laptops, the XPS 17 volition come in a multifariousness of different options that you tin can farther customize based on your needs and upkeep. While the version I played with represented the higher-end options, I can't list the exact specs considering of minor changes being made before the laptop begins shipping to customers. Regardless, hither is a listing of the different options y'all volition accept when it starts shipping.

CPU Options

• tenth Generation Intel® Core™ i5 10300H (8MB Enshroud, up to 4.5 GHz, 4 cores)
• 10th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 10750H (12MB Cache, up to 5.0 GHz, 6 cores)
• 10th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 10875H (16MB Cache, up to 5.1 GHz, viii cores)
• 10th Generation Intel® Core™ i9 10885H (16MB Cache, up to 5.three GHz, eight cores) (bachelor post-launch)

Retention Options (RAM)

• 8GB DDR4 Dual Channel SDRAM at 2933MHz
• 16GB DDR4 Dual Aqueduct SDRAM at 2933MHz
• 32GB DDR4 Dual Channel SDRAM at 2933MHz
• 64GB DDR4 Dual Channel SDRAM at 2933MHz

Storage Options

• 256GB PCIe 3 x4 SSD
• 512GB PCIe 3 x4 SSD
• 1TB PCIe 3 x4 SSD
• 2TB PCIe three x4 SSD

Graphics Options (GPU)

• Intel UHD Graphics
• NVIDIA ® GeForce ® GTX 1650 Ti 4GB GDDR6
• NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 2060 6GB GDDR6

Display Options

• 17 inch 4K UHD+ (3840×2400) InfinityEdge affect brandish; HDR 400, 500 nit, 100% Adobe RGB minimum + 94% DCI P3 typical, 1600:1 contrast ratio, anti-reflective, anti-smudge
• 17 inch FHD+ (1920 ten 1200) InfinityEdge display; 500 nits, 100% sRGB minimum, 1650:1 dissimilarity ratio, anti-glare

* All panels Dolby Vision™, 178 wide viewing angle +/ 89 °°/ 89 °°/ 89 °°/ 89 °°, Eyesafe ® technology

Ports & Slots

• 4x Thunderbolt™ 3 with power delivery & DisplayPort
• 1 Full-size SD menu reader v6.0
• one 3.5mm headphone/microphone philharmonic jack
• Wedge-shaped lock slot
• ane USBC to USB A v3.0 Adapter
• 1 USBC to HDMI v2.0 adapter

Battery

• 56WHr or 97Whr battery (congenital-in)*
  *Battery is congenital in to the laptop and is not replaceable past the client.

Dimensions & Weight

• Height: nineteen.5mm (0.77") x Width: 374.45mm (14.74") x Depth: 248.05mm (9.76")
• Starting weight: two.11kg (4.65lbs.) for non touch with 56Whr battery
• 2.51kg (v.53lbs.) for 4k Affect Display with 97Whr battery

Build Quality & Design Refresh

If y'all have been following the XPS line for the terminal few years, you know that many of united states of america, myself included, take been eagerly awaiting a proper fresh in the design of these laptops. While a laptop will ever look like a laptop, information technology is import to suspension from the iterative updates every few years to give your devices a fresh face up, so to speak. Luckily for all of u.s.a. tech geeks, 2020 is that year for the XPS 17.

At first glance, the XPS 17 will certainly look familiar with its platinum silver await that is a staple in the XPS line upwards laptops. This year the laptops body was cutting from a single block of aluminum in 2 pieces, which Dell says makes it stronger and more durable then other devices that are pieced together. From there, you lot starting time to see the changes. The sides of the laptops are at present diamond cut which allows for the aluminum to wrap all the way around the laptop unlike last years XPS 15, giving the laptop as a whole a much more streamlined and polished look. The hard edges themselves have been made to exist much smoother and softer to the touch, which is a welcome comeback from the harsher border lines found in previous model. Speaking of the sides, lets talk most the ports. Gone are whatever USB Type-A ports along with the full dedicated HDMI port. Instead, we are giving 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports with power delivery, a full SD card slot, headphone jack and wedge-shaped lock slot. Coming with the laptop, however, will be a pair of dongles for both USB-C to USB Blazon-A equally well as a separate 1 for USB-C to HDMI adapter.

Moving on to the interior, the showtime thing yous are going to notice is that the trackpad is now MUCH bigger than before. Dell has taken a cue from the popular Macbook Pro line and has opted for a very large trackpad feel, which I am a large fan of! It feels good to the touch and the tactile feel of pressing downwardly on it to enable a left or right mouse push button click is great. From there the next large change comes from the up firing speakers found on either side of the keyboard. Dell tol me that a laser drilled 7,622 holes into these sections to brand the grills for the speakers, although I didn't count to verify that claim 😉 I can, however, verify that these are some of the all-time sounding speakers I have ever heard on a laptop. On the software side of things, Dell is using Waves NX 3D Audio with head-tracking to help simulate a surroundings audio experience with the XPS 17. The results are pretty fantastic every bit this was but possible in the past via high stop and often expensive headphones.

Now, allow's talk about the keyboard itself. The power button and fingerprint reader has been moved onto the keyboard itself, located just in a higher place the backspace key. One time it was set upwards, I found the fingerprint reader to be a fast and secure way to unlock the laptop. The XPS 17 has opted for slightly larger keys which is groovy for people with large hands like myself, although the trade-off is the slight shrinking of distance found between each of the keys. In terms of a typing feel, this laptop feels great. The keys are able to travel a good amount of distance, offer a solid tactile experience when using the keyboard. Every bit laptops continue to try to get thinner, this is often when about manufacturers end upwardly with challenges. A quick look at the terminal few years of Apple's Macbook Pro keyboard woes equally prove that it isn't ever easy to get this right.

The Display

Without a doubt, the display found on the XPS 17 is going to be one of the biggest selling points for this laptop. Yes information technology is a powerful device with great RAM & GPU options, but my oh my…the display is simply gorgeous! For years Dell has been championing their "Infinity Edge" display engineering that has slowly simply surely been removing more than and more of the bezels plant around the displays on their XPS laptops. With the XPS 17, they have pushed this even farther, removing most of the bottom bezel of the display while slightly shrinking the sides and height. The result is a brandish experience like no other I take had on a laptop earlier. The display just takes upwards the entirety of the surface expanse of that part of the laptop, which has kind of ruined me when it comes to using other laptops at present.

In terms of colour accuracy, the XPS 17 is no slouch. With the 4k touch sensitive display choice, you will get 100% of the Adobe 1998 Spectrum, 100% sRGB and 94% of DCI-P3 while the the Full Hard disk+ version (1920 x 1200) will get 100% of sRGB. The colors look fantastic right out of the box, which ever a squeamish feeling when you kickoff open a brand new laptop. I nevertheless do recommend you pick up a colorimeter such as the i1 Display Pro from X-Rite for long term color scale/management, only you won't demand to utilise it on this laptop for a while.

Additionally, I am happy to study that the webcam, which performs similar a standard laptop webcam, is located at the top of the display (unlike a few past XPS models) and has built-in Windows Hello support with depth-sensing applied science. With this feature turned on, the laptop volition scan your face with the IR photographic camera built-in and brand a depth contour to allow you to quickly and securely unlock the laptop. Considering it uses depth, you tin can't simply have a photo of someone to unlock the laptop.

Lastly, let'south talk well-nigh the size of this laptop. Ordinarily, when you think of a 17″ laptop, y'all think it is going to exist a monstrosity…afterward all, so many people are moving to smaller and more portable laptops, right? Well, because of the blueprint changes and the incredible display (which we will talk about side by side), Dell was able to fix a 17″ screen into the body of a laptop that is smaller than most (although not all) 15 laptops. As you tin can see from the epitome beneath when I lay last year's XPS 15 on acme of the XPS 17, there is a departure in size, merely it is pretty minimal, peculiarly when you accept into account the much larger viewing experience.

Performance

At present I know that this section is why many of y'all are reading this article in the starting time place. Performance of a laptop is frequently the near important feature when it comes to which laptops photographers and videographers look to when making a purchase…and for good reason.

At present before I share with you my experiences, just a friendly reminder that I am not immune to share specific benchmarking info with you just yet as the software wasn't finalized on the XPS 17 I had been using for the last calendar week. That being said, I can still talk about how it performed!

Photograph Editing

To the surprise of no ane, or at least not me or my video editor, this laptop handled everything I threw at it when it came to processing images. I sent a number of high-resolution images (62pm) from my Sony a7R Iv through Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, Capture One, and On1 Photograph RAW and didn't come across a single hiccup or stutter. If you are thinking of using this laptop but for photo editing to have advantage of the incredible 4k brandish, you won't have any issues using your photo editing application of choice with this beast!

One thing that is hard to describe either via a weblog post similar this or the YouTube video I put together to a higher place is just how impressed I am with this display, especially when it comes to editing photos. Because the display itself takes up nearly all of the surface of the of the display area, you take such a massive screen to work with. Moving to a 16:ten ratio actually helps allow the panels and tools in applications Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop to have more animate room, so your user experienced isn't so bars every bit you typically see on smaller laptops. With the colors on the display looking amazing right out of the box, the Dell XPS 17 is set to help you kickoff to process your images as shortly equally you get it charged.

Video Editing

When it came to processing videos, both myself and my video editor spent some time putting together a mini video projection on the XPS 17 using both Davinci Resolve and Adobe Premier to see how information technology handled things. So how did it do? While I tin can't share bodily rendering times, neither of u.s. had any effect taking multiple cuts from various 4k clips and piecing them together or rendering out the project when we wrapped upwards. If yous get for the higher-end configuration with the 6 to 8 core i7 or i9, this laptop should work great for your video editing needs.

In terms of rendering performance, I can say that the improvements constitute in the higher cease GPU (RTX 2060) mixed with the performance of the newer 10th Generation CPUS and more than RAM options (up to 64GB), this car did solidly outperform last years XPS 15 when cutting and rendering like footage.

Gaming

Now that you have the option to option upwards an XSP laptop with an RTX discrete 2060 GPU, the XPS 17 is actually a fairly viable gaming laptop now. While I don't come across serious gamers opting for this laptop over something similar the Alienware m15 r2 with its far superior refresh rates and response times, information technology volition be more than than enough for casual to mid-level gamers that enjoying playing games along with capturing images and shooting video projects.

Without sharing specific FPS benchmarks, I tin can allow you lot know that I was able to not merely play games like Fortnite but also more graphically demanding games like Command from Remedy Entertainment and Jedi- Fallen Order from EA Games with very solid FPS one time I dropped down the resolution on the 4k brandish. While this isn't a "Gaming Laptop", I am happy to have the option to play a few GPU intensive games on this massive display while on the road or when moving around my business firm as most of united states of america stay at home this summer.

Overall Initial Impressions

All in all, I came abroad with a very positive experience having used the XPS 17 9700 over the last week. It is difficult to accurately describe just how impressive the massive brandish is on this laptop. The colors are accurate however vivid, the brightness is spot on (500nit max) and the high resolution and bear upon screen back up make it the best laptop brandish I take used to date, including the years I spent using Apple tree products.

With the 10th generation Comet Lake CPUs, Dell is able to offering great performance for all your creative needs. While you won't see a massive jump in processing power from Intel's ninth generation CPUs, at that place is certainly an improvement in the comparisons I saw between the 2 generations. If you are thinking about this machine, think hard about picking up a summit-end i7 or i9 if you really want to have some ability!

Lastly, let's talk about the redesigned trunk and serious GPU upgrade options. The new look and feel of the XPS 17 is both familiar yet new enough to be striking. The laptop not just looks sleeker and more polished, but it feels that way besides, especially when information technology comes to the edges. The new trackpad is massive, the speakers are incredible and the keyboard works groovy, especially for a laptop this size. The fact that it is the size of near 15″ laptops is a huge bonus likewise! In terms of GPU, the NVIDIA GTX 2060 is a welcome addition to the XPS line and i that I have been hoping for for years. With it, yous finally have a capable gaming laptop for the coincidental to mid-level gamer who as well happens to be artistic, either by heart…or profession.

With the XPS 17, Dell has truly pulled off creating one of the all-time (if not the best) powerhouse laptops on the market! The only issue is that after using this laptop for a calendar week, all other laptop screens merely pale in comparison to the XPS 17. I feel it has ruined me for smaller laptops moving forward 😉

Total Review to Come...

As I mentioned higher up, the fact that I was using a nigh-terminal production version of the XPS 17 meant that I couldn't share specifics when it came to benchmarking results in the performance department of this blog mail service. Every bit before long as I become my hands on a final production copy of the laptop, I volition revisit this article and update the diverse sections with the proper benchmarks and screenshots with my findings.

Full Disclosure

Dell provided me with a loaner of the pre-production version of the XPS 17 which immune me to write upwards this initial impressions video as well as create the video version of this that currently lives on Youtube and IGTV. It has since been returned to Dell. All of these thoughts are mine and mine alone.

Source: https://www.colbybrownphotography.com/dell-xps-17-hands-on-review/

Posted by: mclaughlinwhight.blogspot.com

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