Dell XPS 15 2-in-1

THE SURFACE BOOK 2 HAS A SOME SERIOUS COMPETITION.

LENOVO’S YOGA RANGE has long held top spot in high-end hybrids, but while the top-of-the-line 4K Yoga 920 (page 48) costs $2,999, the entry-level FullHD Dell XPS 15 2-in-1 has an eye watering RRP of $3,399. This largely comes down to its faster-specced Intel Core i7-8705G CPU that integrates a new style of onboard Radeon RX Vega M GPU from AMD that’s capable of gaming.

The 15.6-inch 4K Infinity Edge display on the model we tested covered almost the entire face of the device’s top and is bound to a carbon-fibre-clad base by two premium metallic hinges that offer good support. While the centred trackpad has the perfect balance of glide and precision and the new maglev keyboard’s butterfly switches feel defined, there’s a considerable shallowing of the key travel distance here.

The Dell XPS 15 2-in-1 topped performance in CPU-heavy tasks like PCMark 8’s Home accelerated benchmark and PCMark 10’s Overall result, but it wasn’t by as big a margin as the gaming results. With better graphical performance than a Nvidia GTX 1050, this tablet can run older games on 1080p Ultra settings at 40fps plus and will even get averages above 30fps on titles like Far Cry Primal and Ghost Recon: Wildlands if you curb those graphics settings to High/Very High 1080p.

Dell did have the FHD and the 4K XPS 15 2-in-1 on sale for $2,899 and $3,399, respectively, at the time of writing, which makes this device a pretty sweet competitor to the Surface Book 2 (the only other gaming-capibile 2-in-1), but if you can ditch the touchscreen, you’ll get much better value from a gaming ultrabook laptop.