Dell XPS 15 9560 VS HP Spectre x360 15-Inch (2017) Comparison

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Dell XPS 15 9560 VS HP Spectre x360 15-Inch (2017) Comparison. Both high-end 15-inch laptops running Windows 10 with core i7s. But not all core sevens are created like. 4k display in the case of both of these machines right here.

The Dell is also available with a 1080p display. I their high-end from the respective companies. How do you choose between them. First off miraculously for both of these and I’ll say why that is miraculous they weigh the same. They’re around four point four pounds or so.

And well you know was that around 2.0 four kilograms or something like that. You metric folks can clue us in in the comment section there. They’re both about the same thickness. Why is that miraculous. For the dell because it’s packin a powerful quad-core CPU and dedicated graphics inside are very thin and light chassis.

For the spectre x360 15-inch it’s because usually convertibles have to be thicker and heavier. That’s for the beefier 360-degree hinges and the the protection that’s afforded in the lid and all that stuff to prevent breakage. So in both cases you have kind of you know the apex of engineering going on right here.

Both beautiful metal chassis is really well made rigid no flex whatsoever. I get beauty is in the eye of the beholder. To me the XPS is sort of like the muscle car version of a macbook pro. It has less refined angles. It’s kind of angular. It’s it’s decent looking it’s it’s not exceptional.

But I really liked the carbon fiber interior look a lot. The HP Spectre I think shows off its angles its colors the curves everywhere on the back. It’s just a more designer-oriented image. Now so you might find a gaudy too. So I leave that up to you to decide which you think is more attractive looking. Both do have backlit keyboards.

Neither of them have number pads and both of them have large trackpad. Zhp has a particularly wide track pen. The dell uses the precision trackpad. The HP has a nice synaptics trackpad. I like the HP a little bit better. But you know I think it’s really more up to your personal preference.

They’re both quite good they just feel a little different. The the dells is a little bit stickier and a little bit slower. The hp’s is a little bit quicker it feels a little bit more Mac like and has more settings available on it. For the keyboards they both have 1.3 millimeters in key travel but it’s quite amazing how different they feel.

HP has been really good at making low channel keyboards that don’t feel like low travel keyboards. You don’t feel like you’re bottoming out and like it’s harsh on your fingers. It’s a very well controlled sense of travel and stiffness on the keys. It’s actually a pleasure to type with.

Once you get used to the fact that’s kind of low travel. The Dell XPS 15 those of you who’ve watched my reviews you know I find it an adequate keyboard. It is not one of my favorite keyboards though. Because it’s just kind of abrupt and it feels a little harsh when you’re typing. That is what it is.

Here we have a fingerprint scanner for Windows hello login and the HP uses the camera for Windows hello login. So you’ve got biometrics two different kinds they both work. HP has their stereo bangin oats and branded speakers facing up and at you. Which is generally speaking a brilliant idea.

And they made a big deal about their audio. And you know it does sound pretty good. It’s obviously a multimedia oriented laptop. You’re not going to get amazing bass out of either of these though. But the HP is the winner there. Dell has its little bottom firing speakers on the slits right here.

And it’s okay audio it’s adequate it’s not fantastic it’s not hideous. The HP wins on that count them. A real important thing though here the big difference for some of you. I mean some of you just want a traditional laptop is and the nicest best one you can get regardless of other features that might be on it.

The XPS 15 is just a laptop. It doesn’t convert it doesn’t do anything. This is as far back as the screen goes there it is. Yes it is a touchscreen if you get the 4k option only. Now with the 1080p but there’s no active pen support. That has to be built into the display so you can’t add it afterwards. The HP is a convertible so it goes flat it goes tablet all this sort of thing.

It has the pen. For those of you who are interested in no taking our artwork it’s wonderful it’s exceptional. They’re very few things that have this bigger display and an active pen that summons me an entering pen here. So it depends on what you want to do it.

If you want to use it as a tablet if you want to use it for reading magazines if you want to use it for artwork this is going to be your choice right here. The del instead is a powerhouse laptop for people who need lots of processing power and some pretty good graphics inside. Unlike your traditional core i7 Ultrabook even a high end here. 45 watt CPU inside our Dell. 15 watt inside our HP.

Both call core i7. 2 cores 4 cores. So why you read a lot of reviews and everybody says the HP is really fast along a lot of other core i7 ultrabooks. That’s true but the Dell is just even faster. Now this depends do you need it. We’re gonna do a five minutes on tech and for to cover the difference between these cpus and what it actually means to you.

So you can understand that a little bit better. For a lot of people the XPS 15 would be overkill. Do you know who you are if you actually need that kind of computing power though. Because the Dell has obviously four cords. It’s gonna be about twice as fast on some benchmarks pure CPU benchmarks.

If you look at something like PC mark 8 that looks at all sorts of things like SSD speed Ram speed and other factors then the divide isn’t as big. And that’s why PC market is sometimes actually useful here. Because not everything you do is that CPU intensive so you won’t notice a difference. When you’re using the XPS versus the specter if you’re streaming 4k Netflix.

If you’re using word if you work in on wordpress on the web you can’t tell the difference between these. If you’re doing spreadsheets both of these do spreadsheets great. But those of you who are number cruncher isn’t by that I mean people are finance accounting or scientific analysis where you have tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of rows in Excel and you’re computing on those that’s where you’re going to notice the difference.

Not for the usual everyday work spreadsheet. So I hope that makes a little bit of sense. If you’re gaming the Dell is not a gaming laptop but it’s a much better choice. Than it can do some some gaming pretty decently on low settings with today’s most demanding games.

The HP can’t really even touch that. You can do older games you can do less demanding games like save on it but it’s not meant for gaming. Nvidia 940 MX graphics inside the HP versus the NVIDIA GTX 1050 inside the Dell. That’s a big jump in performance they’re.

More than twice as fast on some graphics benchmarks. And that’s why it makes a difference for gaming. Now if you’re using Photoshop honestly where there’s a law of diminishing returns for your GPU performance the HP is absolutely fine. And I do a lot of serious photo editing and the 940 gives it enough of a month. Likewise it helps with Premiere Pro.

But if you’re video editing you’re gonna notice the del it’s faster. Particularly if you’re going up to some like 4k. Now I know a lot of you do this for fun and for a hobby and I’m not just talking about your smartphone stuff. I’m talking about stuff pulled out of big real standalone cameras.

If you’re doing it professionally semi professionally folks like us we make videos we work on in five days a week you’re gonna want the faster machine. You’re gonna want the XPS 15. If you’re just doing it for your hobby for your fun for your occasional load up on your youtube and your Facebook the HP is more than adequate.

So let’s talk displays both there 15.6 inches. The Dells available the 1080p matte IPS display. Same as the last generation XPS 15 for those who are familiar. Or with what we have here which is the 4k sharp XO glossy touchscreen. The matte ones not touch capable.

HP only offers this with a 4k touchscreen with also support for this N-trig pen included in the box. There is no option without the pen currently. That could change in the future but for now that’s what it is. So this one has good color gamut. But this one has beyond good color gamut.

So there you have it. Uh-huh full srgb coverage here on the HP and 75% of Adobe RGB. Which is typical for a high and laptops these days. And it’s considered very good. If you’re creating content for the web if you’re doing photographs any kind of art media and that sort of thing srgb is the standard there.

That’s what you need that’s where you’re gonna have to run any laptop out or calibrate it to when you’re outputting for the web. But right here we have more than srgb coverage. We have 99% of Adobe RGB coverage which is a wider color gamut. That’s used for prints for those of you who output product for print.

Magazine do you remember those they still do kind of exist. Stuff like that poster is doable all that sort of thing. This one would be the better choice. That’s it if you don’t create any content of any sort other than maybe as a hobby and you’re not really very picky about it. Which one’s prettier to look at.

Well the XPS 15 that you can see has deeper richer colors it’s got a higher color gamut. So the HP among most laptops is pretty darn stellar. But the the 4k option on the Dell is really like eye candy it’s really nice. It’s hard to argue that point right there. If you go out the 1080p display then you’re looking at in terms of color gamut the same thing as the HP.

You’re not going to get that with the 1080p resolution this by alas. And obviously would be a lower resolution tip. And also about $300 cheaper. Now in terms of brightness we measured 323 nits for the HP versus 305 nits for the Dell. Contrast ratio 680 to one on Dell 740 to one on the HP.

Dude it also besides a little bit higher brightness a little bit lower black but level 0.41 for the HP versus 0.45. There’s no discernable light bleed on either of these. They’re both excellent panels in that respect. And certainly a lot better than some gaming laptops out there the attenti really somebody that always have liked me bleed problems.

Let’s talk Thunderbolt 3 they both have it. Thunderbolt 3 is a new big thing that seems to actually you know some ways making people feel more confused in the end. The problem with Thunderbolt 3 is there’s not much to do with it yet. There aren’t many Thunderbolt 3 peripherals.

The most exciting thing most people do is go out and buy a Thunderbolt 3 dock. So you can connect their existing monitors hard drives and all that sort of stuff. The only interesting thing that’s new with Thunderbolt 3 is external gpus.

Where you buy desktop graphics card you put in a box like the Razer core and woohoo then you can do some more serious gaming than the laptop might otherwise be capable of doing. Ok both that Thunderbolt 3 both of these have two rather than four PCI Express Lanes.

So not not that full speed Thunderbolt that you might get on the most expensive 15-inch macbook Pro or some gaming laptops there. Where does that matter. You see that’s the thing as of today not so much at all. Because there aren’t many fast Thunderbolt 3 hard drives out there.

The ones that are jelly raid arrays they’re expensive kind of products and that everyday people aren’t using. Even what the graphics court it’s really hard to tell how much of a difference two versus four lanes is making and all that sort of thing.

All I can tell you is if you’re gaming it really makes a difference tough a 45 watt quad-core CPU. Again if you’re into today’s current demanding games you want the XPS 15. Even with the HP if you if you attach a graphics amplifier to it and external graphics card you’re still bottleneck usually by the dual-core CPU.

Even first person shooters these days they hit the CPU pretty hard so there you go. Once again gaming XPS. Thunderball 3 they both have it. In addition the HP also has a USB C 3.1 genuine gen1 3.1 port on it Plus at Thunderbolt 3 ports. You get two of those ports.

Both of these have HDMI. The XPS still crystal means it has HDMI 1.4. Finally HP we have HDMI 2.0. When does that matter. That matters if you’re hooking up a 4k display anyone to refresh at 60 Hertz. Which most of us do so it doesn’t look like the cursor is kind of dragging along on the screen.

But in either case if you’re using the USB C port on either of these you can also get 4k at 60 Hertz. Thunderbolt 3 is gonna work at 4k 60 Hertz weather has two lanes or four lanes so don’t worry about that. Both of these have 16 gigs of ram from the factory.

Now you can get both of them with eight gigs of RAM as well if you want. HP doesn’t ship it with 32 gigs. I’m sure that Dell is even offering that high in configuration yet. Both of them do have two RAM slots. So so 32 gigs of DDR for RAM is a theoretical max. They’re the same on them.

They both have m2 pcie nvme ssds. Unless you go with the cheapest dell. The 999 dell has a hard drive only no SSD at all. So there’s that. What does that mean. If you’re doing the SSD rather well they’re both very fast. The HP surprised they actually benchmarked a bit faster than the Dell did on our crystal disk mark tests.

We have the light on brand SSD Dells using at least three different brands of ssds with. Both of them are 512 gigs and our models. Now our HP is 1499 s the most commonly available version. Our dell cost 2000 twenty-four dollars if to buy it at full retail. It’s a rural owner that we have to return there’s that.

That speaks to the price of options. The del does start at $9.99 so configuration nobody really wants if they’re going for a powerhouse which is what the XPS is though. And you’re looking at nice configuration that is about equal to the HP in terms of the amount of RAM the SSD the resolution.

The 1499 HP is equal to about the 1818 to $2000 Dell. So the Dell is going to cost you more money. Again you’re paying for the CPU and the GPU performance so make sure you need it if you’re paying for it. Battery life.

This one’s gonna be very very variable because the Dells available with two different batteries 56 watt hour are 97 watt hour. Depends on whether you get a hard drive installed as a hard drive takes up space takes away from the battery.

Also the Dell being that it is a higher consumption CPU 45 watt plus the higher-end dedicated graphics needs more powered. They always have bigger batteries in machines with quad-core cpus and dedicated graphics at this level.

The HP has a 79 watt hour battery which is huge for a 15 watt ultrabook. Even with the 940 MX graphics. So who has better battery life. Aha and again with the Dell it’s going to vary if you get the 1080p display you’re gonna get better battery life versus the 4 K. Like several hours different.

So there’s no exact correspondence. I can tell you between our two models right here that we have 4k display big battery inside 97 watt hour on the Dell. And our HP Spectre x-360 here. The HP does last longer on a charge. It’s not surprising it requires less.

I mean if you’re doing something like word streaming Netflix you know that simple kind of stuffs hitting the web 8 to 10 hours on the Dell with the 4k display and about at least 10 hours and plus on the HP. And if you’re doing say a little bit more moderately demanding like Photoshop and honestly I’d love to digitally draw and paint so I can spend hours on this doing Photoshop.

It doesn’t really hit the battery much more. I can do 9 to 10 hours with Photoshop. Whereas with the Dell you’re gonna drop down to around 8 7 to 8 hours if you’re doing Photoshop because that’s a more demanding task. So battery life yes he wins. General quietness and coolness the HP wins because as the lower-powered CPU.

The only time the HP gets hot is if you’re doing some really demanding like when I was playing Sims 6. And then the bottom would get really darn hard otherwise you don’t really hear the fan. Stays cool to the touch not above human body temperature. The Dell is always warm.

The fan usually won’t come on if you’re just doing everyday productivity work but if you’re cranking up photoshop and stuff like that you’ll hear the fan not loud. So I mean that’s the price you pay for something that has a lot more processing power. So there you have it smackdowns they’re.

Obviously, these are very different machines you had very very similar machines it’s that kind of canoodle isn’t it. So you’ve got two 15-inch machines that are considered quite powerful high and beautiful thin and light metal designs. But one is a convertible one works with a pen.

Different kind of versatility different kind of appeal there obviously. The other one is a traditional laptop all day all night it doesn’t do any tricks. You can’t use a pen with it beyond and capacitive stylus like that for the iPhone. So not the one for a pen obviously. Not all of you need a pen.

How much horsepower do you need. You know I mean the Dell XPS 50 is for the folks who really have seriously high-end computing these. And also for those who want to do some light gaming because you get that gtx 1050 inside. The HP is not really much of a game right.

You can play Sivan and you know and bioshock Infinite is going to play about it’s not for overwatch and things like that really. It’s for your everyday getting work done ultrabook kind of person. It’s awesome for art obviously there you have it.

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