If you want to buy one you should extend your analysis beyond the hardware specs because the software and operating systems are not ready yet. I can give the example of the latest XPS 13 2-1 where Office applications like Outlook cannot recognize a monitor with a different resolution and the fonts are blurred. Look for example at https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Office-apps-appear-... high DPI is a whole issue.
I can give many other examples with drivers support. For example, if I unplug the notebook from the dock the audio playback doesn't work again if I don't reboot the computer or remove/reinstall the driver.
It would ve nice to hear about a critical analysis in Linux.
XPS 13 on linux (ubuntu) here, the support is very good. The HiDPI screen need some configuration but most apps will run out of the box, some need to set a parameter for pixel density. Most issues can be solve by looking in the ArchWiki (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI).
USB-C (even a dock with power, usb, sound, hdmi, display port, ethernet will run fine), WiFi, Graphic Card, touchpad, sound, event the touchscreen, all work without troubles. Really happy to finely find a nice linux-friendly laptop.
Very true, the previous XPS 15 had huge problems with the Killer NIC card because the drivers for it took months to stabilise and its only recently been that a driver update has made the Wifi somewhat stable and the machine has stopped crashing every few days.
What other people seem to have done is get Dell to swap the Killer NIC with an Intel one which has much better driver support.
> Office applications like Outlook cannot recognize a monitor with a different resolution and the fonts are blurred
I just spent 30 minutes this morning dealing with this exact issue on my laptop that I've docked into two nice external monitors.
To fix it, open the display settings and set one of the external monitors to the primary display. Then log out, and log back in.
I have no idea why this works, but if it hadn't I'd have chucked the laptop out the window by now. Windows 10 is almost great, but for a dozen little stupid things like this.
high DPI in windows 10 is honestly such a shit show. Bugs, you have to Log Out and Log back in every time you change settings/monitors! Its honestly unacceptable given how seamlessly macOS and Linux (Fedora at least) handle this sort of thing.
Mine has a problem with stuck keys. If I press caps lock+w, the w stays pressed (in software) so I just get long strings of wwwwww. The spacebar also gets double-pressed around 5% of the time, which is extremely annoying.
Another issue is that audio to the headphones will sometimes just stop until I restart pulse. Not even a reboot will fix it, only a pulse restart.
It's a fantastic machine otherwise, but the drivers are pretty buggy.
- failure that politely states that I need to reboot (if I try to use fingerprint reader to login too quickly after opening the laptop)
- unplanned reboots due to updates
- laggy and choppy video on a single external 4k monitor (compared to no apparent lag when the old rMBP drives 2x 4k monitors)
- very slow Bash (ubuntu subsystem) - but at least they're making an effort
- Cortana seems less effective than Siri, and she wasn't great; and Cortana still only uses Bing search and displays results in Edge browser
- louder and more frequently spun up fan compared to old rMBP (which was also an i7 with an Nvidia GPU)
- occasional crashes when opening laptop or logging in
- very slow unzipping of files (on new 1TB PCIe SSD), regardless of whether 7z is used or built-in unzip is used, and regardless of where I unzip/extract to
In summary, it's just a sexy little game machine. In that regard, it does pretty well. You do have to wear headphones to game because the fan is so loud. And you can't play on an external monitor... too laggy and limited to 30Hz refresh.
Too bad Apple no longer caters to my crowd. Thankfully this old rMBP I use is still running well (despite the screen covering deterioration in weird spotty ways).
>> - less precise trackpad than my 3 year old rMBP
>> - palm-sensitive trackpad
This! I sound like a broken record, but what is wrong with the PC manufacturers not getting the trackpad right/close(r) to how (well) Apple MBP trackpads operate?
Yes, they may have been improving, but going back from MBP to PC laptop is simply infuriating as a result of lack of accuracy of their trackpads. And to back up my subjective assessment of the situation, I have been making a point to make a walk through of the Microsoft store about every 6 months to test out (the trackpads) of all the shiniest PC laptops on display. </rant>
I've always found that Dell ships rock solid H/W, but does a piss poor job of systems integration. The best way to get "OSX Level" reliability that I've found is to clean-install Windows, or remove all their shitty Dell applications and tools. Their track-pad 'helper' tool is particularly quite terrible. Windows 10 too is its own beast. I disable all that update shit because like you I don't want any unplanned reboots. Its ridiculous that you have to do all this shit, but you will be rewarded in the end. I regularly get 40-50 days of up-time before manually rebooting for updates. YMMV !
Literally the only reason I continue to buy MBP's. If PC manufacturers could give me a trackpad which was even close to as good as Apple's I would hop the fence tomorrow.
Regarding the fans, highly recommend using an overclocking tool to undervolt the CPU and iGPU -- reduced temp under load for me by nearly 15C, runs stable with cpu at -130mV. Stops the fans from turning on as often or running as aggressively.
I too was unlucky in receiving a Toshiba as the vendor of my 1TB SSD. There is a reddit thread out there about switching from Intel RST to AHCI with OCZ drivers -- this improved my random write performance significantly.
The most annoying part of the system to me is the "coil whine" coming from the internal DC/DC converters. Lots of different pitch and erratic high frequency noises come from the laptop. My colleagues can confirm that my ears are not particularly sensitive to high frequency noise but this laptop is very audible. Just do not feel like it should have this kind of defect on such a high end machine.
> despite the screen covering deterioration in weird spotty ways
If it's like images at [1] you may be eligible for a free screen replacement. I got Apple to change mine after it started showing the defect (granted, I went to an Apple Store mere weeks before the Apple Care+ coverage ended). Mine is a late 2013 rMBP. The new screen, however, is starting to show the same kind of damage around the edges.
> - less precise trackpad than my 3 year old rMBP
>
> - palm-sensitive trackpad
Sadly this seems to be par for the course for non-Apple laptops. I will say that the Asus ZenBook seems to get pretty close though.
> Thankfully this old rMBP I use is still running well (despite the screen covering deterioration in weird spotty ways).
I'm using a mid-2010 MBP (upgraded the RAM and replaced the drive with an SSD) and it's awesome. Still very usable, runs the latest MacOS, and still gets really good battery life. The Apples of that era seem shockingly well built.
> And you can't play on an external monitor... too laggy and limited to 30Hz refresh.
Did you use an HDMI cable or USB-C to HDMI adapter? Since the spec says the HDMI port is 1.4 only, I'd like to know if using a USB-C to HDMI 2.0 adapter will give you more bandwidth, allowing you to do 4k at 60hz with 4:4:4 chroma support.
What is "your crowd"? Only thing I wish my rMBP had was more than 16GB of RAM for some of the dev I do. Other than that, I can't see switching anytime soon.
It was included: problem with CPU and random freezes, Coil Whine, Swollen Battery, SSD problem and problem with misaligned Jack port with a hole in case.
In total, my device was repaired 3 times (within 10 months) and from the original device I have a case, touch-pad and screen only.
I'm not here to complain, because after the battery fix was done, it works perfectly. The Dell Service is super helpful and reactive, D2D warranty is just awesome.
My question is:
Have somebody seen any indicators of problems listed above in 9560?
/r/dell lists serious issues with the Killer NIC, coil whine, thermal limitations (when playing), speakers are bad ("average android 4.0 device sounds"), Win10 scaling make 4K display still not great (especially with external low-density displays), backlit keyboard disabling itself, some people get absolutely dreadful battery life.
I also had the swollen battery problem but my 9550 - my trackpad eventually got pushed up 1/4 of an inch or so. The bummer was that my laptop was out of warranty and the battery is not a "user serviceable option" on the 9550 so I couldn't just order a replacement battery from Dell -- they wanted me to send it in and wait two weeks which was a non-starter as it is my main development machine. I ended up buying a used battery off of some guy on Amazon along with a screwdriver kit with a T5 bit. It took me all of 10 minutes to replace the battery.
I haven't had any other problems but the fact that they won't allow end-users to replace such a simple part as the battery will make me think hard when I replace this laptop.
Sure, mine had BSOD's space bar double-tap, choppy sound and laggy 3D mouse (I mean 1 sec lag) right out of the box. I wasn't as patient as you, I sent it back. On Linux most was fine except the keyboard, but I was too afraid that HW was crap (also, searching for solutions was throwing me a lot of other people's issues with the HW). It seems like I was right.
This is a great laptop if you are not using the gpu and the cpu at the same time and you don't care about the screen response. So basically you put a game in this PC and after some minutes you see the great faults of the computer. The 4k screen has low response and it is a bit more blurry with movement than usual displays, although you will only notice this if you have another display to compare.
The biggest issue is the power throttling. When the CPU and the GPU get a bit hot, the VRMs area get hot too and they drop the CPU to 0.7GHz. You play for few minutes and you are amazed, you can play last gen games quite good. But suddenly everything is crap. The VRMs area is hot and is dropping the voltage of the CPU to cold down. Really bad air flow design. Where I said games you can say another application that uses GPU and CPU like deep learning, or maybe watch a video and compile the kernel.(Message for Dell: why do you put a great CPU and GPU in a laptop if we cannot use both for more than few minutes?)
The other minor issue with this laptop is the thunderbolt with 2 PCI lanes. If it had 4 PCI lanes it could be you all day computer as you could connect external GPUs without losing too much. But 2 PCI lanes is not enough.
As a side note some people also have problems with the Wi-Fi. I had to buy another Wi-Fi card for my router as it couldn't connect, but with others routers that it connects it works quite good.
P.S. I run Windows 10 Pro and Archlinux in this computer. The fingerprint does not work on linux yet, everything else is fine.
In my (anecdotal) Dell laptops have been crap at heat management. My current laptop (about 4 years old at this point) had the problem you described, except once the CPU throttling turned on, the BIOS was extremely conservative in turning it off, to the point where I would often reboot to get it running at speed again. Eventually they released a BIOS update that fixed the issue, (and started throttling earlier to avoid dropping to .8ghz)
Point being, when buying a laptop, always ask about the thermal.
I have had a XPS 15 9550 as my main machine for almost a year now, and I can say I'm disatisfied.
It needs a very specific combinations of driver update and bio flashing to work, charging using USB-C sometimes just stops, making it work with a dock took me a good month to figure out, the battery last only a few hours, the webcam is weirdly placed. Worst of all, the sound has suddenly started to act wildly and is now full of cracks.
Given the price I paid for it (2500 € to include a 1 To hard drive and 32 Gb of RAM), I found it less than satisfactory.
But what is infuriating is that some very big problems (like BSOD level) where brought to the attention to the Dell staff on their support forum and the post have been dormant without clear answer from their part for months.
My previously positive perception of the dell brand have been seriously ternished. This is not just bad manufacturing, it's really bad marketting.
I've had serious reliability issues with every Dell or Alienware product I've bought. Yes, the specifications look great and they seem to work fine at first, but quality is simply ridiculously bad for such expensive products.
Earlier this year I bought a Developer Edition (Ubuntu) of Dell Precision 5520, which is the business version of XPS 15 9560. Same chassis and hardware, better factory QA and different GPU options.
I very much regret this decision. I spent ~100 hours trying to get it to work properly and to configure Ubuntu (including supposedly simple things like switching Alt and Ctrl keys). At the hourly rate I'm charging, this is more than enough to buy ANY laptop. Next time I'll swallow my pride and just buy a top of the line Macbook Pro.
Out of the box Ubuntu works great, but it is very fragile to updating. For example, updating BIOS to a version that fixes an important CPU bug causes the computer to freeze and shutdown every few minutes at random.
Updating the OS itself caused weird bugs such as being unable to click on app menu items with a USB touchpad. Ditching the default Unity for Gnome3 fixed this particular bug.
The recovery image that Dell provides for Ubuntu simply does not work a few months after release – craps out when it's unable to either fetch or install some package. So I don't even have a way of getting a working version of Ubuntu on this laptop if anything happens to my hard drive.
Oh and the touchpad configs are appallingly bad out of the box. Impossible to use. I fixed 98% of palm interference issues with a few lines of xinput config. I don't know why Dell didn't do that themselves.
And of course, Dell only provides only 7 days of Ubuntu support. After that you're on your own.
Now I'm trying to sell this laptop, but no one on craigslist wants it even at 35% ($900CAD) off the original price. A few months old laptop in perfect condition that is still on warranty.
Speaking of Ubuntu itself, it has been a profound disappointment as well. I will not be trying Dell or linux on desktop for another 7 years at least. My 9 year old Macbook Pro is far superior to this mess.
PS I also tried hackintoshing this laptop, and it worked 95% of the way, but it requires the latest BIOS to work, and that causes random shutdowns regardless of the OS.
I've been using the XPS 9560 full-time since February, and have experienced precisely 0 of the issues you describe whilst running a number of Linux variants, including several Ubuntu variants, Fedora and Solus.
> So I don't even have a way of getting a working version of Ubuntu on this laptop if anything happens to my hard drive.
You could simply download Ubuntu directly, or any other distribution. Dell isn't doing anything special to the version they distribute.
> For example, updating BIOS to a version that fixes an important CPU bug causes the computer to freeze and shutdown every few minutes at random.
Have you tried talking to Dell about this issue? Their support, particularity around BIOS issues on their XPS and Precision range has been fantastic in my experience, and they often supply pre-release BIOS versions if they believe it will help, otherwise they tend to replace the laptop.
Try Fedora on it. I switched from Ubuntu to Fedora a while back and couldn't be happier. Not saying you will have a perfect experience but it is worth a shot if you at least like the hardware?
I've used the XPS 13 Developer Edition (ie, running Linux) as my daily driver since 2012. For me, it's been way more reliable than either the ThinkPad X1 or even the MacBook Pro, both of which I used as my work laptops during that same time (running Linux and OS X respectively).
I've been hoping to upgrade to the 15-inch for a while, because I like larger screens. It's nice to see the review of this point release version.
I have the xps13 2016 dev edition too, and it's a solid laptop.
Let me ask you which dongle do you use to connect to external hdmi monitors? I got this one[1] a while ago, but it doesn't output more than 800x600. I use the wd15 at home without issues, but it's not suitable for traveling.
If you use Linux like arch please make sure to set kernel mode parameters to get your video to work. I also had a lot better luck swapping in an intel 8265 but the one it comes with works fine when you have a good signal.
All in all the 9560 has replaced my Mac as a daily driver.
Edit:
Incase, to save time for someone, put this in kernel mode parameters in the file /boot/grub/grub.cfg and rerun grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
As a developer I can't imagine buying anything other than a Macbook Pro, and I mainly use Windows.
The build quality is top of the line, the drivers are solid, and everything just works. The trackpad is industry leading, and the keyboard is great too. Performance is exceptional, especially in the 15" which comes with a HQ processor (not ultrabook-grade) and a discrete graphics card. It has a PCI-e SSD. The price is reasonable compared to the competition.
But despite being IMO the best laptop available, the main reason I choose them is because every so often I need to boot into OSX for testing, or to do something Mac-only. And nothing else can do that.
This laptop looks like mixed bag of opinions. I'm looking something to switch from rMPB 2013 (need more RAM, storage). That laptop i still on my list but on last position.
I had rMBP2016 for 3 months and I could't write on that keyboard. After 1-2 hr's I felt pain in my fingers because constant contact of my nails with that keyboard. And I don't have some bear nails :) Sold it and now my short list is
1. Lenovo X1 carbon WQHD - best keyboard I ever written.
2. XPS 13 (coil whine, spongy keyboard)
3. XPS 15 - problems described in many places ..
Still can't make decision :/
I really wanted to love this machine but couldn't find one that wasn't a lemon.
Went through 3 of them. A well-specced model with 4k screen, 16GB memory, and 512GB SSD.
First had a bad screen, second had sticky keys, and third had faulty video card.
Third time I took it back, I was still willing to get it repaired but the support staff wouldn't do it. They told me they've had so many XPS 15s returned for service that they just recommended getting a totally different machine...
I had lots of annoyance with a previous Optimus based notebook. How has the situation of bumblebee and primusrun and dualbooting improved in the past two years?
I have upgraded an Ubuntu laptop over a few years and every upgrade it broke, requiring some new incantation to fix it the next time. I don't think it's considered the future?
> I had lots of annoyance with a previous Optimus based notebook. How has the situation of bumblebee and primusrun and dualbooting improved in the past two years?
Very slightly, but you're better off getting a notebook that actually has FOSS graphics drivers, for a much more stable and reliable experience.
It's unfortunate that you can't upgrade the XPS15 to the 4K display or a quad-core processor without getting the nVidia graphics along with it. IIRC, some previous models included 4K configurations without that.
> They’ve opted to go with the same Killer Wireless-AC 1535 as they use in the smaller XPS 13.
FWIW this NIC is a huge liability, wifi instability is common and it will bring some machines down hard (bluescreens/kernel panics, just check /r/dell).
Dell US apparently has instructions to replace this POS by a compatible Intel NIC (7200 or 8000 series) if you have issues and complaint, that seems not to be the case for Dell EU.
An Intel NIC costs $20~30, some folks just order a 8260/8265 at the same time as the laptop and install it before even booting.
Any driver issues or other advice about running Windows 7 on this?
(I don't want to use Windows 8 or 10 because of telemetry, nor do I want to spend countless hours trying to figure out how to disable all telemetry, and worry about future updates that introduce more telemetry. I'm happy staying at Window 7.)
I wish business laptops still existed. I bought a 5 year old laptop because you can't get anything today with serviceable parts or design that makes sense. The thinkpad retro can't get here soon enough (assuming it actually has function keys and isn't slimmed down just to be slim).
I have this laptop and run archlinux on it. It's a great machine, and almost everything works straight out of the box (even the external docking station).
Same here. Precision 5520 (the business edition of the XPS). Only thing I wish I took was the better GPU. 4K screen + external screen can be a lot to ask from the onboard graphics.
Other than that, it is so much more performant than my old MBP. Couldn't be happier to have 32GB of ram and the infinity display.
I've had the XPS 9560 since February. I mostly run Fedora (26), but have also run Solus and various versions of Ubuntu. I have a Windows 10 install which I use for Photoshop, Lightroom, and some mobile gaming.
Specifically, the version I have comes with a i7 7700HQ, 32GB RAM, 1TB SDD and 4K screen.
Hardware wise, the laptop is lovely, and the build quality of mine is good, although it hasn't been perfect as I'll get to later. The screen is honestly the best I've ever used, although I do sometimes notice ghosting due to slow response times, I understand in that regard it's comparable to the retina displays used in MBPs.
Performance wise, the hardware speaks for itself. It's a very powerful machine. I haven't experienced any of the lag or video issues that others are reporting. It'll happily play games and crunch whatever data you throw at it, without any thermal issues.
My model was a very early version, and came with which I can only describe as a mushy keyboard which often did not register key-presses. I contacted Dell support, who after a short over the phone test, agreed it was not satisfactory and arranged for an engineer to be at my house the next day to replace the keyboard. This fixed the issue, and the keyboard has been fine ever since. Compared to the new MBP keyboards, I much prefer the 9560 due to the extra travel.
I've also had the GPU fan replaced due to it developing a grinding noise. Again, after a short phone call, Dell agreed to send an engineer to replace the fan the next day. The issue has since re-appeared, and although it's not a critical issue, I'll be getting Dell to replace the fan again. This does seem like a somewhat common issue, although I can't find any recent reports which would hopefully suggest it has been fixed on the manufacturing side. On the topic of noise, my particular machine has no coil-whine.
The webcam position is frankly bad. It's not an issue for me personally, but I do tend to place the laptop somewhere higher if I'm doing a video call - I can't be trimming my noise hair for every call I do.
I did try macOS on the 9560, as a bit of fun more than anything else, and it seemed to be usable after some effort. However I generally dislike macOS, so I'm back to using Fedora 26 which runs perfectly. Some older apps have slight scaling issues with the 4k screen, however nothing has proven to be unusable (yet). I haven't had any issues running a clean version of Windows either.
This is my current laptop and I love it. I finally replaced my desktop PC with a laptop. I use it with a 4K 32" monitor via the docking station (I have the exact same setup at work and at home, I just bring the laptop with me each day.) Having a single machine saves me so much time regarding the complex development setup.
I have a dual boot setup with Ubuntu and Windows with no issues.
I bought it for $1699 CAD for the 7700HQ + Full HD Screen (not 4K) + GTX 1050 + 256GB HD + 16GB RAM and immediately upgraded the disk to 1TB and the ram to 32GB.
Can anyone help me understand the pricing on this one. An Inspiron with core i5 / 8GB RAM / 256GB SSD costs about $500, whereas a similar spec'd XPS 15 retails for more than twice.
Is the "premium" really worth the extra $500-$800 or Dell is overcharging because there's hardly any good Windows machine in this space (except maybe Thinkpads) ?
[+] [-] wslh|8 years ago|reply
I can give many other examples with drivers support. For example, if I unplug the notebook from the dock the audio playback doesn't work again if I don't reboot the computer or remove/reinstall the driver.
It would ve nice to hear about a critical analysis in Linux.
[+] [-] luxcem|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oulu2006|8 years ago|reply
What other people seem to have done is get Dell to swap the Killer NIC with an Intel one which has much better driver support.
[+] [-] mabbo|8 years ago|reply
I just spent 30 minutes this morning dealing with this exact issue on my laptop that I've docked into two nice external monitors.
To fix it, open the display settings and set one of the external monitors to the primary display. Then log out, and log back in.
I have no idea why this works, but if it hadn't I'd have chucked the laptop out the window by now. Windows 10 is almost great, but for a dozen little stupid things like this.
[+] [-] gtm1260|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StavrosK|8 years ago|reply
Another issue is that audio to the headphones will sometimes just stop until I restart pulse. Not even a reboot will fix it, only a pulse restart.
It's a fantastic machine otherwise, but the drivers are pretty buggy.
[+] [-] blunte|8 years ago|reply
- less precise trackpad than my 3 year old rMBP
- palm-sensitive trackpad
- failure that politely states that I need to reboot (if I try to use fingerprint reader to login too quickly after opening the laptop)
- unplanned reboots due to updates
- laggy and choppy video on a single external 4k monitor (compared to no apparent lag when the old rMBP drives 2x 4k monitors)
- very slow Bash (ubuntu subsystem) - but at least they're making an effort
- Cortana seems less effective than Siri, and she wasn't great; and Cortana still only uses Bing search and displays results in Edge browser
- louder and more frequently spun up fan compared to old rMBP (which was also an i7 with an Nvidia GPU)
- occasional crashes when opening laptop or logging in
- very slow unzipping of files (on new 1TB PCIe SSD), regardless of whether 7z is used or built-in unzip is used, and regardless of where I unzip/extract to
In summary, it's just a sexy little game machine. In that regard, it does pretty well. You do have to wear headphones to game because the fan is so loud. And you can't play on an external monitor... too laggy and limited to 30Hz refresh.
Too bad Apple no longer caters to my crowd. Thankfully this old rMBP I use is still running well (despite the screen covering deterioration in weird spotty ways).
[+] [-] rixrax|8 years ago|reply
This! I sound like a broken record, but what is wrong with the PC manufacturers not getting the trackpad right/close(r) to how (well) Apple MBP trackpads operate?
Yes, they may have been improving, but going back from MBP to PC laptop is simply infuriating as a result of lack of accuracy of their trackpads. And to back up my subjective assessment of the situation, I have been making a point to make a walk through of the Microsoft store about every 6 months to test out (the trackpads) of all the shiniest PC laptops on display. </rant>
[+] [-] ksk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] virtuabhi|8 years ago|reply
Does it look similar to this - http://www.staingate.org/ https://www.macrumors.com/2015/10/17/apple-mbp-ar-coating-qu... . My rMBP had the same problem and I got the screen replaced for free (outside warranty).
[+] [-] EpicEng|8 years ago|reply
Literally the only reason I continue to buy MBP's. If PC manufacturers could give me a trackpad which was even close to as good as Apple's I would hop the fence tomorrow.
[+] [-] mattthebaker|8 years ago|reply
Regarding the fans, highly recommend using an overclocking tool to undervolt the CPU and iGPU -- reduced temp under load for me by nearly 15C, runs stable with cpu at -130mV. Stops the fans from turning on as often or running as aggressively.
I too was unlucky in receiving a Toshiba as the vendor of my 1TB SSD. There is a reddit thread out there about switching from Intel RST to AHCI with OCZ drivers -- this improved my random write performance significantly.
The most annoying part of the system to me is the "coil whine" coming from the internal DC/DC converters. Lots of different pitch and erratic high frequency noises come from the laptop. My colleagues can confirm that my ears are not particularly sensitive to high frequency noise but this laptop is very audible. Just do not feel like it should have this kind of defect on such a high end machine.
[+] [-] lvillani|8 years ago|reply
If it's like images at [1] you may be eligible for a free screen replacement. I got Apple to change mine after it started showing the defect (granted, I went to an Apple Store mere weeks before the Apple Care+ coverage ended). Mine is a late 2013 rMBP. The new screen, however, is starting to show the same kind of damage around the edges.
[1] http://www.staingate.org/#gallery
[+] [-] laurencei|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mister_Snuggles|8 years ago|reply
Sadly this seems to be par for the course for non-Apple laptops. I will say that the Asus ZenBook seems to get pretty close though.
> Thankfully this old rMBP I use is still running well (despite the screen covering deterioration in weird spotty ways).
I'm using a mid-2010 MBP (upgraded the RAM and replaced the drive with an SSD) and it's awesome. Still very usable, runs the latest MacOS, and still gets really good battery life. The Apples of that era seem shockingly well built.
[+] [-] BlackjackCF|8 years ago|reply
I bought the laptop because I didn't want a new Macbook. I ended up regretting it a little bit since I don't love the trackpad.
[+] [-] gkfasdfasdf|8 years ago|reply
Did you use an HDMI cable or USB-C to HDMI adapter? Since the spec says the HDMI port is 1.4 only, I'd like to know if using a USB-C to HDMI 2.0 adapter will give you more bandwidth, allowing you to do 4k at 60hz with 4:4:4 chroma support.
[+] [-] stuff4ben|8 years ago|reply
What is "your crowd"? Only thing I wish my rMBP had was more than 16GB of RAM for some of the dev I do. Other than that, I can't see switching anytime soon.
[+] [-] trzeci|8 years ago|reply
It was included: problem with CPU and random freezes, Coil Whine, Swollen Battery, SSD problem and problem with misaligned Jack port with a hole in case.
In total, my device was repaired 3 times (within 10 months) and from the original device I have a case, touch-pad and screen only.
I'm not here to complain, because after the battery fix was done, it works perfectly. The Dell Service is super helpful and reactive, D2D warranty is just awesome.
My question is: Have somebody seen any indicators of problems listed above in 9560?
[+] [-] masklinn|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dugmartin|8 years ago|reply
I haven't had any other problems but the fact that they won't allow end-users to replace such a simple part as the battery will make me think hard when I replace this laptop.
[+] [-] zero_k|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrimbault|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jorgemf|8 years ago|reply
The biggest issue is the power throttling. When the CPU and the GPU get a bit hot, the VRMs area get hot too and they drop the CPU to 0.7GHz. You play for few minutes and you are amazed, you can play last gen games quite good. But suddenly everything is crap. The VRMs area is hot and is dropping the voltage of the CPU to cold down. Really bad air flow design. Where I said games you can say another application that uses GPU and CPU like deep learning, or maybe watch a video and compile the kernel.(Message for Dell: why do you put a great CPU and GPU in a laptop if we cannot use both for more than few minutes?)
The other minor issue with this laptop is the thunderbolt with 2 PCI lanes. If it had 4 PCI lanes it could be you all day computer as you could connect external GPUs without losing too much. But 2 PCI lanes is not enough.
As a side note some people also have problems with the Wi-Fi. I had to buy another Wi-Fi card for my router as it couldn't connect, but with others routers that it connects it works quite good.
P.S. I run Windows 10 Pro and Archlinux in this computer. The fingerprint does not work on linux yet, everything else is fine.
[+] [-] gizmo686|8 years ago|reply
Point being, when buying a laptop, always ask about the thermal.
[+] [-] sametmax|8 years ago|reply
It needs a very specific combinations of driver update and bio flashing to work, charging using USB-C sometimes just stops, making it work with a dock took me a good month to figure out, the battery last only a few hours, the webcam is weirdly placed. Worst of all, the sound has suddenly started to act wildly and is now full of cracks.
Given the price I paid for it (2500 € to include a 1 To hard drive and 32 Gb of RAM), I found it less than satisfactory.
But what is infuriating is that some very big problems (like BSOD level) where brought to the attention to the Dell staff on their support forum and the post have been dormant without clear answer from their part for months.
My previously positive perception of the dell brand have been seriously ternished. This is not just bad manufacturing, it's really bad marketting.
[+] [-] cnahr|8 years ago|reply
Case reports: http://news.kynosarges.org/2017/04/23/dell-alienware-reliabi...
[+] [-] sraquo|8 years ago|reply
I very much regret this decision. I spent ~100 hours trying to get it to work properly and to configure Ubuntu (including supposedly simple things like switching Alt and Ctrl keys). At the hourly rate I'm charging, this is more than enough to buy ANY laptop. Next time I'll swallow my pride and just buy a top of the line Macbook Pro.
Out of the box Ubuntu works great, but it is very fragile to updating. For example, updating BIOS to a version that fixes an important CPU bug causes the computer to freeze and shutdown every few minutes at random.
Updating the OS itself caused weird bugs such as being unable to click on app menu items with a USB touchpad. Ditching the default Unity for Gnome3 fixed this particular bug.
The recovery image that Dell provides for Ubuntu simply does not work a few months after release – craps out when it's unable to either fetch or install some package. So I don't even have a way of getting a working version of Ubuntu on this laptop if anything happens to my hard drive.
Oh and the touchpad configs are appallingly bad out of the box. Impossible to use. I fixed 98% of palm interference issues with a few lines of xinput config. I don't know why Dell didn't do that themselves.
And of course, Dell only provides only 7 days of Ubuntu support. After that you're on your own.
Now I'm trying to sell this laptop, but no one on craigslist wants it even at 35% ($900CAD) off the original price. A few months old laptop in perfect condition that is still on warranty.
Speaking of Ubuntu itself, it has been a profound disappointment as well. I will not be trying Dell or linux on desktop for another 7 years at least. My 9 year old Macbook Pro is far superior to this mess.
PS I also tried hackintoshing this laptop, and it worked 95% of the way, but it requires the latest BIOS to work, and that causes random shutdowns regardless of the OS.
[+] [-] JamesMcMinn|8 years ago|reply
> So I don't even have a way of getting a working version of Ubuntu on this laptop if anything happens to my hard drive.
You could simply download Ubuntu directly, or any other distribution. Dell isn't doing anything special to the version they distribute.
> For example, updating BIOS to a version that fixes an important CPU bug causes the computer to freeze and shutdown every few minutes at random.
Have you tried talking to Dell about this issue? Their support, particularity around BIOS issues on their XPS and Precision range has been fantastic in my experience, and they often supply pre-release BIOS versions if they believe it will help, otherwise they tend to replace the laptop.
[+] [-] satysin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtl_usr|8 years ago|reply
I'd return it at this point.
It's defective by design.
[+] [-] chimeracoder|8 years ago|reply
I've been hoping to upgrade to the 15-inch for a while, because I like larger screens. It's nice to see the review of this point release version.
[+] [-] clvx|8 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Adapter-Type-Ethernet-470-ABQN/d...
[+] [-] rasengan|8 years ago|reply
All in all the 9560 has replaced my Mac as a daily driver.
Edit: Incase, to save time for someone, put this in kernel mode parameters in the file /boot/grub/grub.cfg and rerun grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
nouveau.modeset=0 acpi_rev_override=1 enable_psr=1 disable_power_well=0
[+] [-] highace|8 years ago|reply
The build quality is top of the line, the drivers are solid, and everything just works. The trackpad is industry leading, and the keyboard is great too. Performance is exceptional, especially in the 15" which comes with a HQ processor (not ultrabook-grade) and a discrete graphics card. It has a PCI-e SSD. The price is reasonable compared to the competition.
But despite being IMO the best laptop available, the main reason I choose them is because every so often I need to boot into OSX for testing, or to do something Mac-only. And nothing else can do that.
[+] [-] sp0ck|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m52go|8 years ago|reply
Went through 3 of them. A well-specced model with 4k screen, 16GB memory, and 512GB SSD.
First had a bad screen, second had sticky keys, and third had faulty video card.
Third time I took it back, I was still willing to get it repaired but the support staff wouldn't do it. They told me they've had so many XPS 15s returned for service that they just recommended getting a totally different machine...
But it was a brilliant machine when it worked.
[+] [-] remotebug|8 years ago|reply
I had lots of annoyance with a previous Optimus based notebook. How has the situation of bumblebee and primusrun and dualbooting improved in the past two years?
[+] [-] pricechild|8 years ago|reply
I have upgraded an Ubuntu laptop over a few years and every upgrade it broke, requiring some new incantation to fix it the next time. I don't think it's considered the future?
I believe the future is called "Prime Synchronisation", announced a few years ago. Good luck getting it to work though: https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/957814/prime-and-pr... I gave up after a while.
We're probably nearing the time when I'll give all the methods another go, but currently I'm back into the "change setting and log out + in" camp.
As an aside, bumblebee also seems to break my i3 environment... I get hangs & magic sysreq won't recover. I've had to go back to the default DE.
[+] [-] JoshTriplett|8 years ago|reply
Very slightly, but you're better off getting a notebook that actually has FOSS graphics drivers, for a much more stable and reliable experience.
It's unfortunate that you can't upgrade the XPS15 to the 4K display or a quad-core processor without getting the nVidia graphics along with it. IIRC, some previous models included 4K configurations without that.
[+] [-] masklinn|8 years ago|reply
FWIW this NIC is a huge liability, wifi instability is common and it will bring some machines down hard (bluescreens/kernel panics, just check /r/dell).
Dell US apparently has instructions to replace this POS by a compatible Intel NIC (7200 or 8000 series) if you have issues and complaint, that seems not to be the case for Dell EU.
An Intel NIC costs $20~30, some folks just order a 8260/8265 at the same time as the laptop and install it before even booting.
[+] [-] mysterypie|8 years ago|reply
(I don't want to use Windows 8 or 10 because of telemetry, nor do I want to spend countless hours trying to figure out how to disable all telemetry, and worry about future updates that introduce more telemetry. I'm happy staying at Window 7.)
[+] [-] post_break|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jvehent|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] charlespwd|8 years ago|reply
Other than that, it is so much more performant than my old MBP. Couldn't be happier to have 32GB of ram and the infinity display.
[+] [-] JamesMcMinn|8 years ago|reply
Specifically, the version I have comes with a i7 7700HQ, 32GB RAM, 1TB SDD and 4K screen.
Hardware wise, the laptop is lovely, and the build quality of mine is good, although it hasn't been perfect as I'll get to later. The screen is honestly the best I've ever used, although I do sometimes notice ghosting due to slow response times, I understand in that regard it's comparable to the retina displays used in MBPs.
Performance wise, the hardware speaks for itself. It's a very powerful machine. I haven't experienced any of the lag or video issues that others are reporting. It'll happily play games and crunch whatever data you throw at it, without any thermal issues.
My model was a very early version, and came with which I can only describe as a mushy keyboard which often did not register key-presses. I contacted Dell support, who after a short over the phone test, agreed it was not satisfactory and arranged for an engineer to be at my house the next day to replace the keyboard. This fixed the issue, and the keyboard has been fine ever since. Compared to the new MBP keyboards, I much prefer the 9560 due to the extra travel.
I've also had the GPU fan replaced due to it developing a grinding noise. Again, after a short phone call, Dell agreed to send an engineer to replace the fan the next day. The issue has since re-appeared, and although it's not a critical issue, I'll be getting Dell to replace the fan again. This does seem like a somewhat common issue, although I can't find any recent reports which would hopefully suggest it has been fixed on the manufacturing side. On the topic of noise, my particular machine has no coil-whine.
The webcam position is frankly bad. It's not an issue for me personally, but I do tend to place the laptop somewhere higher if I'm doing a video call - I can't be trimming my noise hair for every call I do.
I did try macOS on the 9560, as a bit of fun more than anything else, and it seemed to be usable after some effort. However I generally dislike macOS, so I'm back to using Fedora 26 which runs perfectly. Some older apps have slight scaling issues with the 4k screen, however nothing has proven to be unusable (yet). I haven't had any issues running a clean version of Windows either.
Overall, I'm very happy with the 9560.
[+] [-] bhouston|8 years ago|reply
I have a dual boot setup with Ubuntu and Windows with no issues.
I bought it for $1699 CAD for the 7700HQ + Full HD Screen (not 4K) + GTX 1050 + 256GB HD + 16GB RAM and immediately upgraded the disk to 1TB and the ram to 32GB.
[+] [-] markeissler|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inertial|8 years ago|reply
Is the "premium" really worth the extra $500-$800 or Dell is overcharging because there's hardly any good Windows machine in this space (except maybe Thinkpads) ?
[+] [-] artursapek|8 years ago|reply