I have XPS 9570 and using Linux. I can say this is the most rubbish piece of hardware I had. I only bought XPS because I couldn't really find anything better that is non Apple.
I see that Dell has not learned anything by the looks of XPS 13 Plus. Given that this laptop is aimed at professionals, why does it have such an atrocious keyboard? Just by looking at it, I know it would make me want to drop this laptop in the bin. Small cursor keys, no dedicated PgUp / PgDown etc.
And it's not fanless. With my XPS you can't have a Teams meeting without someone pointing out "what's that noise?" and then you have to say "oh sorry that's my laptop".
I am in the market for a new laptop, and on the issue of fans alone I am going to go with M2 Air.
If I could run a linux on a VM at reasonable speed, I'll be happy.
Yeah, I had 2019 9570 XPS biggest piece of shit laptop I ever owned. It ran so sluggishly, I tried everything fresh windows install, dell diagnostic, bios update you name it. It made so much noise and would hang up all the time. The wifi card was terrible too.
Later I found out that batch of XPS were prone to failure. They do this “power-saving” thing where they never shut down completely. So for that reason you weren’t supposed to transport them - wtf?? I would carry it in a bag sometimes to university and you would feel it randomly turn on with the fans whirringe. From reading lots of dell support threads, it seemed like dell qc was really hit or miss. So much variation between batches.
Anyways that experience gave me ptsd for high end windows laptops and I got a M1 Air few months ago. It’s been a way better experience so far. It does laptop things really well imo. Nice display(huge!), lightweight, good battery life, great performance for everything except gaming(don’t bother). I press the on button and it instantly picks up from where I left off. That’s huge coming from xps, I would turn that shit on and wait anywhere from 1-10mins, with no guarantees that id be reconnected to the wifi. I even got a high end windows 11 laptop from work that’s more expensive then my M1 and it feels sluggish.
I would carry it in a bag sometimes to university and you would feel it randomly turn on with the fans whirringe.
I had this problem with XPS 13. It would turn on in my backpack and by the time I was at work, it would be hot like lava and almost dead battery.
My XPS 9570 is the opposite - sometimes it decides to just not turn on anymore. So I can press power on and nothing happens. Sometimes it will power on for a second and dies. I found that if I open it up, disconnect the battery, then try to power it on with charger connected it will sort of half power on, then I can turn it off, reconnect the battery and then power it on without charger and then connect the charger after it boots up. I have replaced the battery to a brand new Dell one, updated BIOS etc. still the same problem. Then it sometimes charge the battery sometimes it won't. I have replaced the charging port as well, didn't help. Bought new original Dell charger twice - worked for a couple of weeks and then laptop won't recognise it. It was the same thing with XPS 13 that it won't recognise the charger after a while. I had a box full of Dell chargers.
I read plenty of people have issues with XPS not powering on.
Imagine going to a meeting and then spending half an hour trying to turn laptop on.
It's definitely my last Dell product.
Thinkpads and Elitebooks with Ryzen 6000 are starting to be available. They have best in class keyboards, CPU horsepower and efficiency in the same ballpark as M2 and user-serviceable parts. Most of them support linux without too much tweaking.
Looking at ThinkPad Z13. I don't understand why would they mess up the keyboard as well. They have plenty of space for full size cursors and a block of Home/PgUp/PgDown/End keys and likely they could get F keys larger. Such a missed opportunity. Oh and the focus on Z letter - they had plenty of time to use different one. Given the current events, pulling out a laptop with Z on it would be a massive faux pas.
Elitebook is even worse. Looks like a cheap generic laptop from AliExpress and a crap keyboard at massive premium.
This probably isn't meant to compete with Macbooks. This is probably meant to steal market share from other PC laptop manufacturers (like Lenovo). If that's the case, then there's absolutely no reason to spend a lot of R&D money making a keyboard that can compete with Apple's offerings.
Comments
I have XPS 9570 and using Linux. I can say this is the most rubbish piece of hardware I had. I only bought XPS because I couldn't really find anything better that is non Apple.
I see that Dell has not learned anything by the looks of XPS 13 Plus. Given that this laptop is aimed at professionals, why does it have such an atrocious keyboard? Just by looking at it, I know it would make me want to drop this laptop in the bin. Small cursor keys, no dedicated PgUp / PgDown etc.
And it's not fanless. With my XPS you can't have a Teams meeting without someone pointing out "what's that noise?" and then you have to say "oh sorry that's my laptop".
I am in the market for a new laptop, and on the issue of fans alone I am going to go with M2 Air. If I could run a linux on a VM at reasonable speed, I'll be happy.
Yeah, I had 2019 9570 XPS biggest piece of shit laptop I ever owned. It ran so sluggishly, I tried everything fresh windows install, dell diagnostic, bios update you name it. It made so much noise and would hang up all the time. The wifi card was terrible too.
Later I found out that batch of XPS were prone to failure. They do this “power-saving” thing where they never shut down completely. So for that reason you weren’t supposed to transport them - wtf?? I would carry it in a bag sometimes to university and you would feel it randomly turn on with the fans whirringe. From reading lots of dell support threads, it seemed like dell qc was really hit or miss. So much variation between batches.
Anyways that experience gave me ptsd for high end windows laptops and I got a M1 Air few months ago. It’s been a way better experience so far. It does laptop things really well imo. Nice display(huge!), lightweight, good battery life, great performance for everything except gaming(don’t bother). I press the on button and it instantly picks up from where I left off. That’s huge coming from xps, I would turn that shit on and wait anywhere from 1-10mins, with no guarantees that id be reconnected to the wifi. I even got a high end windows 11 laptop from work that’s more expensive then my M1 and it feels sluggish.
I had this problem with XPS 13. It would turn on in my backpack and by the time I was at work, it would be hot like lava and almost dead battery.
My XPS 9570 is the opposite - sometimes it decides to just not turn on anymore. So I can press power on and nothing happens. Sometimes it will power on for a second and dies. I found that if I open it up, disconnect the battery, then try to power it on with charger connected it will sort of half power on, then I can turn it off, reconnect the battery and then power it on without charger and then connect the charger after it boots up. I have replaced the battery to a brand new Dell one, updated BIOS etc. still the same problem. Then it sometimes charge the battery sometimes it won't. I have replaced the charging port as well, didn't help. Bought new original Dell charger twice - worked for a couple of weeks and then laptop won't recognise it. It was the same thing with XPS 13 that it won't recognise the charger after a while. I had a box full of Dell chargers. I read plenty of people have issues with XPS not powering on. Imagine going to a meeting and then spending half an hour trying to turn laptop on. It's definitely my last Dell product.
Thinkpads and Elitebooks with Ryzen 6000 are starting to be available. They have best in class keyboards, CPU horsepower and efficiency in the same ballpark as M2 and user-serviceable parts. Most of them support linux without too much tweaking.
Looking at ThinkPad Z13. I don't understand why would they mess up the keyboard as well. They have plenty of space for full size cursors and a block of Home/PgUp/PgDown/End keys and likely they could get F keys larger. Such a missed opportunity. Oh and the focus on Z letter - they had plenty of time to use different one. Given the current events, pulling out a laptop with Z on it would be a massive faux pas.
Elitebook is even worse. Looks like a cheap generic laptop from AliExpress and a crap keyboard at massive premium.
I think it's off by 2-3x compared to M2 in terms of efficency.
This probably isn't meant to compete with Macbooks. This is probably meant to steal market share from other PC laptop manufacturers (like Lenovo). If that's the case, then there's absolutely no reason to spend a lot of R&D money making a keyboard that can compete with Apple's offerings.