DELL XPS 15 9550

£1,029 inc VAT • dell.co.uk

The XPS range is where you’ll find Dell’s most desirable laptops. These aren’t all-practical workstations, or budget models. XPS is where the company’s fanciest designs team-up with higher-end components. This is the larger of the two XPS models, the 15. Much more than just a larger version of the XPS 13 this one trades away stamina in order to pack in a high-power CPU and a graphics chipset that’ll let you play recent games without making the visuals look like those of an original Xbox title.

Price

These abilities don’t come cheap, though. We’re looking at the entrylevel XPS 15 model, which costs £1,029 and makes some significant sacrifices to even get down to that price. Namely, it has a 1080p display rather than a 4K one, and a hybrid drive rather than full SSD storage. If you’re drawn to the XPS 15 because you’ve heard about its flashy Infinity Edge 4K screen, you’ll need to pay at least £1,319 for that. To see the XPS 15 at the height of its powers you’ll want to buy the £1,489 model, which has a 512GB SSD rather than a hybrid drive.

Design

No matter which specification you’re after, the XPS 15 gets you the same design and chassis. It looks and feels nice, but is not as flashy as some. There’s only about 5mm of plastic between the end of the display and the end of the laptop. This helps the Dell keep very petite for a 15.6in machine – it’s around the size of most 14in laptops

While there are better options out there if you’re a road warrior, we had no problem carting in the XPS 15 around in a rucksack and using it in a coffee shop for a few hours. It’s 23mm thick, after all, and our review sample weighed slightly less than the stated 2kg at 1,945g. Dell says the SSD version is even lighter at 1.78kg.

The XPS 15’s connectivity isn’t much better than you average, well-equipped 13in laptop, though. You get just two USB 3.0 ports, a Thunderbolt 3 USB-C socket, full-size SD card slot and a full-size HDMI. It’ll do the job for most, but if you want to use this as a main home PC you may need to get a USB hub involved to avoid having to swap over USB cables all the time. There’s no ethernet port, and no included USB adaptor – it’s optional.