Dell XPS 12 9250
4K IZGO IPS display with 100% RGB
8Gb RAM
256Gb SSD
Intel HD 515 iGPU
Thunderbolt 3
Stereo speakers
Hello fellow enthusiasts!
I'll start off by saying that I'm a little biased; I first got wind of this lovely piece of work last fall, just over a year ago. It was love at first tech spec! I had a laptop; a mid-range HP DV7 from about 2011 that was starting to show it's age and I also had a nice Android tablet; Sony Xperia Tab Z and I had heard rumors that Sony was supposed to be releasing a 4K tablet but they never did. So looking at the specs for the Dell XPS 12 with it's purported 4K screen was perfect timing and a God send, I couldn't wait. As is very unusual for hardware rumors, all of the preliminary specs actually panned out and this made it even more desirable for me to have it in my sweaty palms. Time passed and I kept up to speed on all the release dates and related news at all the related tech events through winter, previews were very positive, I was giddy! An opportunity presented itself as I got a pass to go to CES 2016 and I thought, "I'm sure Dell should have a booth, maybe I'll get to see and TOUCH the Dell XPS 12 in person." Made it to CES but the Dell booth was at one of the big off campus hotels away from the convention center and I never made it to see the Dell in person. Slowly but surely, a very small number of online reviews started popping up, hardware was mostly positive but the big elephant in the room: BATTERY LIFE! I thought no way! All the while I'm saving my pennies to make an actual purchase, but the pricing held at MSRP for ages and ages and ages....sigh.
Microsoft finally got in the game and my local Microsoft Store actually got a demo unit in around March, talk about excited! I went and played with the unit for hours for about three days in a row, I was back in love, but head over heels this time! Microsoft actually had the Dell XPS 12 listed for about $200 under MSRP which was good, but they didn't offer any financing. Shucks!
In the interim, I'm still reading every review and watching all the YouTube videos from those that have them...still excited although the main thing I keep hearing is the battery life, which truthfully really didn't concern me that much, so I came across one of the best reviews yet on notebookcheck.net, very detailed, extensive review of a European version of the Dell XPS 12, with European hardware (that we can't get here in the states like the Core M7 processor). My main focus on the review was the 4K display section which they went over with a fine toothed comb! This is the kind of stuff that I wanted to hear! Extremely accurate colors that cover a wide gamut, good contrast, and decent black levels but what caught my eye at the end of the review was a link to Amazon for a price that was totally unbelievable, almost 50% off of MSRP!! WHAT?! SOLD! BOUGHT!
So here we are to the actual review! If you made it this far, thanks for listening.
Easy purchase from an eternal vendor through Amazon, the only caveat is they didn't offer any expedited shipping, bummer, so I had to wait almost a solid week before it came! Talk about anxiety!
Hardware: Very high quality! Build quality is superb as should be expected from the XPS line and the Dell XPS 12 is on par with the rest of the XPS line in that aspect. Great materials, the actual tablet/PC is made from a magnesium allow covered in soft touch paint and toughened Gorilla Glass NBT that just works! I never feel like I'm going to break or that I have to be gentle with this. The keyboard is also very high quality, it feels metal but I'm not sure of its composition. The keyboard is great to type on and I'm an experienced touch typist usually pumping out around 80wpm (and I have big hands) and I feel very at home pounding away with this keyboard with no problem. The back lighting is awesome, I've never had a backlit keyboard before and I love it. All the additional controls are there for volume, screen brightness and one of my favorites is toggling airplane mode on and off, I use that a lot. Overall I'm very pleased with the hardware.
Performance: I'm a multimedia consumer. The main reason I purchased this unit is to indulge myself with 4K and 1080p video; what I shoot and anything else that looks good. The Dell XPS 12 handles everything that I've thrown at it so far including: low and high bitrate 4K in MP4 and HEVC formats. MKVs, VOBs, 1080p60 MP4 files, you name it! Played back flawlessly in every format I've used, I've even played back some 4K HEVC HDR demos, they look absolutely stunning on this display! The Core M5 combined with the Intel HD 515 graphics make everything churn along nicely, I've not experienced any lag or slowdowns for any of the applications that I use. I have Adobe Create Suite installed and I routinely edit 4K and 1080p video with no problem. I'm not making any Hollywood features films mind you (not yet), but for the work I do, the combination CPU/GPU is great and they serve their purpose with no issue. Drive performance is good, they have a mid-range Samsung SSD installed and for what I do and need it's speedy enough. I also have a 256Gb SDXC card installed for additional media consumption as I have a bunch of movies stored on there. One of the real things that a lot of reviewers overlook is the Thunderbolt 3 this unit has! If you don't really know enough about it, Google it and read up what the capabilities are but in a nutshell, there's literally nothing you can't connect to this machine and at crazy high speeds when the need calls for it, 40Gbs!! Most of the external drives I have are USB 3.0 or 3.1 and I've gotten really good throughput on transfer speeds; a huge increase for me coming from my old USB 2.0 laptop. Win. I purchased a sexier dock than the Dell dongle, a Kensington SD1500, that offers USB 3.1 and HDMI @ 4K. I don't think the Dell dongle supported 4K out from the HDMI port. I also have just a short USB-C to USB 3.1 dongle that works great, I kept hearing a lot of reviewers talk about the lack of additional USB ports on the Dell XPS 12, but you don't need them! USB-C is future proof and Thunderbolt 3 makes it the king of future proofed devices! Plenty of USB-C options out there for any need you may have. One of the things that I'm really excited to try is an external GPU kit (eGPU), this allows you to connect a full-size, external GPU from the likes of Nvidia or AMD, imagine the possibilities! I'd use if mostly for editing (CUDA!), but I could definitely see me getting into some gaming. I've never been a PC gamer but with this possibility I may give it a try. Right now the only game in town for an eGPU is Razer, and their unit costs $500 just for the case alone, you still have to buy a graphics card. So for now, I'll wait for additional options to come to light as other manufacturers have announced eGPU units also or wait until the Razer comes down in price (or shows up on Ebay).
Audio: Not a lot of other reviewers cover the audio portion but I'm here to tell you that the combination of front firing stereo speakers combined with the Waves by Maxx Audio technology is a delight to listen to! They play surprisingly loud for how small the overall unit is and the speaker size. I can hear the volume on a typical YouTube video in the middle of a popular crowded mall on a Saturday! That's damn good; most laptop speakers that I've owned or heard can't do that. The sound is full and not tinny and of course you can't expect a lot of low end but these speakers sound very 'full'. I'm a singer and home theater enthusiast with an expensive full range surround sound setup so I can definitely compare. Plugging in headphones just extends the experience. Usually I have to use an external audio amp for my tablet or other laptops, but this blows my ears out at full volume! But not in a bad, distorted audio kind of way, it's just loud but very clear and overall I'm very pleased with the sound output from the Dell XPS 12. One caveat: turning off the Waves by Maxx Audio features turn the speakers and audio out back into wimps! Kudos to Maxx Audio for that extra boost on the sound side.
Display: The pièce de résistance! OMG! This thing is absolutely amazing!!!!! Sharp, detailed, accurate, bright, vivid, beautiful! I can't get enough of looking at content on this screen, I've been shooting 4K video for years and I've always wanted a portable solution for being able to view and/or edit my 4K content on the go. This thing shines in spades! Although the contrast ratio isn't OLED quality, it still shines for a portable display (1000:1), images and video content on this really pop! I find passersby and random people looking over my shoulder a lot when I'm flying or out in public with a juicy 4K video or 1080p MKV playing! It really is eye catching. Text is crystal clear at all resolutions and thank goodness that Windows finally has the scaling down pat so that applications and programs play nice in 4K. I can't gloat enough about how amazing this display is, the sole reason I bought and I'm 1000% content with it.
Battery life: So so, not as bad as some are saying but everyone's expectations are different. It's about knowing the limits of what you having and using it accordingly. From everything I heard I knew it wouldn't be the best but it's from from the worst as most are complaining about. I set the powersaving modes differently depending on what I'm doing and I do fine. Most of the time it's just a matter of turning down the brightness on the display. When I'm in multimedia consumption mode, I just put it in airplane mode and powersaving mode I usually get upwards of about 5 hours @ either 25% or 50% brightness. If I'm surfing the web, looking at YouTube or Netflix, I keep powersaving off and the brightness is at 50% and I can squeeze about 3 1/2 hours in. My old laptop got about 2 hours max so for me it's an improvement. I'm never too far away from an outlet and a lot of people don't know this either but: THE DELL XPS 12 SUPPORTS RAPID CHARGE! Dell doesn't document it at all on the consumer side, but it used to be a highlight on the business side and I caught wind of it. You have to turn it on in the BIOS settings and it charges the whole latptop up in about 2 hours plus change. I'll also be getting an external power pack to compliment my usage when I have to travel really far (over 4 hours). But for me I can live with the battery life.
Additional points: Fully user serviceable! About four screws and you're in to update the SSD, battery or add a wireless card, which I will be doing shortly. Extensive settings options in the BIOS menu. I've been using computers for decades and I've never seen such an extensive and well laid out manufacturer BIOS! Tons of options! I don't know how well the Surface Pro is on user serviceability but I know competing products from other manufacturers (looking at you HP and Acer), you can't open the unit up without a trip to the service center. Dell's Service manual is right online. Kudos.
Wrap up: For me; photographer, videographer, editor, multimedia consumer, this was the perfect purchase. I've been shooting 4K and consuming 4K for years and I've finally got a portable solution that lets me get the most of not only 4K content but from 1080p and below as well, 480 content even shines on this machine. I couldn't be happier, hence the reason for the five stars. Hope this helps and enjoy.
| Standing screen display size | 12.5 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1366 x 768 pixels |
| Max Screen Resolution | 3840 x 2160 Pixels |
| Processor | 1.1 GHz core_m_6y54 |
| RAM | 8 GB DDR3 |
| Hard Drive | 256 GB SSD |
| Graphics Coprocessor | Intel HD Graphics 515 |
| Chipset Brand | Intel |
| Card Description | Integrated |
| Wireless Type | 802.11ac |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 1 |
| Average Battery Life (in hours) | 4.5 Hours |
