After breaking out an upgraded XPS 13 laptop and XPS 15 2-in-1 at CES in January, Dell has announced its most powerful laptop yet – the 2018 XPS 15. To be fair, it's a mild refresh on the previous model but does come with Intel's latest 6-core 8th generation processor and can be optioned up to Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti graphics.
The new XPS 15 performance laptop can be had with 8th Gen Core-i5 (up to 4 GHz), Core i7 (up to 4.1 GHz) or Core i9 processing brains, supported by up to 32 GB of 2,666 MHz DDR4 RAM. Storage options include a 128 GB SSD/1 TB HDD hybrid drive or 1 TB SSD. And there's a 15.6-inch UltraSharp 4K Ultra HD InfinityEdge touch display available, with Corning Gorilla Glass 4, support for 100 percent Adobe RGB color gamut, 400 nit brightness and 1,500:1 contrast ratio.
It has machined aluminum construction with carbon fiber palm rest, 14.06 x 9.27 x 0.45-0.66 in (357 x 235 x 11-17 mm) dimensions and tips the scales at 4.5 lb (2 kg), if optioned with a 97 Whr battery, SSD and touch display. Dell also says that the XPS 15 offers over 21 hours of battery life per charge.
Connectivity shapes up as Thunderbolt 3, DisplayPort, USB 3.1 and HDMI ports, an SD media reader, Bluetooth 4.1 and 802.11ac Wi-Fi. Users can login via Windows Hello, and there's an optional fingerprint reader integrated into the power button.
Elsewhere there's a backlit chiclet keyboard and seamless glass touchpad, two 2 W speakers, and a 720p widescreen webcam and dual array digital microphones.
Seen as a viable Windows alternative to the Macbook Pro 15, prices for the Dell XPS 15 start at US$999.99 when it goes on sale in May (it goes up for pre-order on April 16). The packaging isn't usually something of note, but Dell's flagship will ship in packaging that includes recycled plastic trash recovered from waterways.
Source: Dell
