Our Review: Dell XPS 15 7590
The Dell XPS 15 7590 makes significant gains on the shortcomings of its predecessors and then steals a march on its competition with some truly spectacular features.
It comes with a choice of mouthwatering display configurations, with the standout being the 4K OLED display, a proposition that is as irresistible as its bursts of color and subtlety of visual details. This review model is powered by a 6-core 8th Gen Core i7 processor and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card. Acclaimed as the world’s smallest 15.6-inch performance laptop, this laptop recesses from 17mm at the rear to 11mm at the front.
Don’t be deceived by its size, this bad boy can execute some of the most demanding and intensive tasks with aplomb, and with minimal strain to your battery.
Design and Appearance
The framework of this laptop is largely crafted from layers of Aluminum, anodized with an overlay of silver, and brushed to a material smoothness. While the Keyboard sports a dark-grey carbon fiber finish, adding to the laptops’ overall subdued and under-the-radar look.
The hinges are sturdy and firmly hold the screen in place throughout its allowable 135 degrees of rotation.
This XPS model has shed a healthy amount of weight since the previous rollout, but at 5.51lbs it is still relatively heavy when compared pound-for-pound with its contemporaries.
Ports and Connections
To the right of the laptop, the Thunderbolt 3 port is sited, doubling as a means of charging and for connection to external display devices.
An SD card reader, a Noble lock slot, and a battery status indicator complete the lineup of right-sided ports.
The left side features another Type-A port in addition to the Thunderbolt 3 port, an HDMI 2.0 port, a headset jack, and a port for an AC adapter conspicuously named the Killer Wireless. The latter delivers a Wi-Fi connection that is robust and snappy, with impressive transfer speeds.
Keyboard and Input Devices
The island-style keyboard features keys with adequate spacing, flat surfaces, decent travel distance, and nice tactile feedback. The keyboards’ two-stage backlight is key to enhanced visibility and ease of typing in dimly lit places.
On the other hand, the Microsoft Precision touchpad is equally impressive, bereft of dedicated mouse keys, it responds keenly to all the swipes, taps, and long presses that make up the windows gesture catalog.
This precision feature curbs the excesses of erratic cursor movements, while another, known as the Accident Activation prevention forestalls unintended clicks that result from accidental contact of your palm with the touchpad.
Audio
The performance of the bottom-placed stereo speakers is unfortunately in tune with our low expectations, it is the XPS, and the previous versions have not exactly raised the audio quality bar. For this version of the XPS 15, the audio quality is given a lift from the Waves MaxxAudio, there is significantly increased volume and deeper bass to boot. Apparently, not deep enough to be enjoyed without the use of headphones.
Display
Prospective users of this laptop will be sold on the mouthwatering choices of display configurations available. There is the FHD matte non-touch and 4K/UHD Sharp IGZO IPS panel both rated at 500 nits of brightness, or the 4K/UHD OLED (non-touch) at 400 nits.
The matte display slightly edges the 4K/UHD display for visibility in outdoor or sunlit places, despite the best efforts of the anti-reflective coating on the UHD screen. However, the Full HD display is yards behind in terms of picture clarity and color accuracy. All of these choices will guarantee you excellent viewing angles, picture acuity, and bright displays, albeit to varying degrees.
While other PC makers are still pounding the pavement in search of better bezel trimming measures, the XPS steals a march on them with its infinityEdge bezel display, featuring a minuscule 5.7mm sized bezel.
At the top of the display, a webcam is also found, a huge sigh of relief from this end,
the previous XPS had us cringing with its bottom display webcam. Lastly, the 4K/UHD display delivers 100% coverage of the Adobe RGB color range, this is music to the ears of creatives and artistic professionals alike.
Graphics
The Nvidia GeForce 1650 is a powerful GPU, capable of handling a pile of graphically demanding tasks without throwing up the occasional fits of blurring and stuttering in your face. This GPU power puts the pedal to the metal for greater performance and quicker speed in video editing, graphic design, 3D rendering, and High-Resolution gaming.
To crown it all, this GPU will not leave a trail of hotspots in its wake or leave your battery for dead even after delivering a high-powered performance.
Gaming
The Dell XPS 15 is not a designated gaming laptop, but it still pulls all the stops to reach decent frame rates for a ton of low-to-medium end games. With the NVIDIA GeForce 1650 Ti, this laptop is well equipped to take on some of the most recent titles, although the screen brightness will have to be reduced. The visual experience of gaming is taken to new heights with the 4K OLED display, the colors are vibrant and every pixel is enhanced. On the flip side, without a very powerful GPU to boot, the downside to this 4K/OLED display is the resultant reduction of framerates and the ensuing lagtimes.
Battery
Although the battery problem still mildly lingers from the previous generations of the XPS 15, the XPS 15, 7590 still outlasts its predecessors and some of its contemporaries. It takes an underwhelming 2 and a half hours for this 97Wh battery to reach full charge, but when it does, the runtime is not exactly short-lived. 10 hours of Full HD operation, about 4.5 hours on an OLED display with brightness levels at half-mast, and an incredible duration of standby time is still impressive.
Cooling
The XPS 15 features the Dell Laptops Command Power Manager which allows the user to opt for any of the 4 fan profiles which supposedly correspond to 4 levels of comfort. The levels include Optimized (balanced), Cool (higher fan speeds and CPU throttling), Quiet (reduced fan speeds and CPU throttling), or Ultra Performance (most liberal with fan speed, least CPU throttling). The fan responds as most do to varying degrees of workload. It switches off when the laptop is inactive or engaged in light work and goes full blast under ensuing heavy lifting.
You might have to resort to headphones to drown the noise coming from the fans, it is quite the spectacle.
Performance
The 9th Generation Intel Core i7-9750h
Is on CPU duty in the XPS 15, and you can count on it to deliver with promptness and efficiency.
With its 6 cores,12 threads, and a maximum speed of 4.5GHz, this CPU is capable of delivering more single and multi-threaded performance than other 7th Generation processors. This translates to a laptop that quickly expedites requests and executes commands from various applications and running programs in record time. It will not buckle under the pressure of demanding applications and sustained workload.
Final Verdict
The XPS 15, model 7590 is a very powerful XPS laptop with processors that include the reliable 9th gen Intel Core i7-9750H and the Nvidia GeForce 1650.
It is delivered in an array of configuration options, all capable of turning heads, none more than the 4K OLED display.
The views are impressive from any angle, with a display so vivid that the colors seem to pop out of your screen, although the glossiness still dots the landscape a bit.
It is not all rosy though, the audio disappoints, again, and the battery is still vulnerable. Overall, this laptop has surpassed our expectations and has fairly addressed the failings of its predecessors.
Device Specifications
Processor
9th Generation Intel Core i7-9750h
Operating System
Windows 10 Pro
Display
15.6 inches
RAM
16 GB DDR4
Graphics
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 4GB GDDR5
Storage
256GB M. 2 PCIe NVMe SSD
Battery Life
10 hours
Weight
5.51 lbs