The weekly tail start of this March finale has been enriched, with DELL also anticipating the first details on what will be the renewed (with Intel Alder Lake) range of extra luxury professional laptops of the fascinating XPS range.
In the past few hours, with the exception of Samsung’s Chromebook, the Taiwanese MSI and Gigabyte have dedicated themselves to updating their price lists following the wake of Intel’s announcements in share 12th generation Alder Lake processors. The American DELL has now joined these brands, which has just upgraded its ultra-luxury professional laptops (also in materials, given the use of carbon fiber and CNC machined aluminum) of the XPS range.
Not changed in design, the same as their predecessors, the new DELL XPS 17.3 (Platinum Silver only) and 15.6 inches (Platinum Silver / Frost Artic) have made their way onto the American price list of the brand, where they stand out with lots of landing pages with prices at starting – respectively – at $ 1,849 and $ 1,449. The arrival on the Italian price list could be imminent given that, having remained on display the old 13-inch XPS still to be updated, the 15 and 17 “models have disappeared, perhaps as a symptom of a back-end update ready to be loaded in the next hours.
In the meantime, consulting the overseas specifications, it is noted that in the display options also (in addition to 16: 9) in 16:10 format, in addition to the IPS 4K + option, you figure again, with the attached benefit of the DCI -P3 100% covered for creators, the choice of the Infinity Edge OLED resolved in 3.5K at 3,456 x 2,160 pixels.
Specifically, the XPS 17 model struggles between two visual variants, with the first, a 3840 × 1200 pixel IPS touchscreen with 100% AdobeRGB and 94% DCI-P3, a brightness of 500 nits, and a contrast equal to 1600: 1 contrasting the latter, a 1920 × 1200 pixel IPS panel with full color gamut coverage of 100% sRGB gamut and 1650: 1 contrast. In the XPS 15, on the other hand, in addition to the 3840 × 1200 pixel IPS touchscreen with DCI-P3 at 94% and AdobeRGB at 100% with 1600: 1 contrast, there is a second IPS option, but from 1920 × 1200 pixels with 100% sRGB and 1650: 1 contrast and the aforementioned 3456 × 2160 OLED touch version with 400 nits, 100% DCI-P3, and 100,000: 1 contrast.
In support of these panels, at least in the 17 and 15 ‘XPS models, it is possible to have dedicated Nvidia GPUs. In particular, for the smaller of the two, we are talking about the 40-watt GeForce RTX 3050 or the 45-watt 3050 Ti, always with 4 GB of dedicated GDDR6 memory, unless you focus on efficiency and low energy consumption, with consequent folding on integrated Intel iGPUs (from UHD to the best Iris Xe). It should be noted, however, that things change, from a certain point of view for the better, in the XPS 17, which has registered (from April) the option for an Nvidia RTX 3060 whose maximum energy absorption, here the sore point, however, it can reach 60 watts.
Still in the multimedia field, it should be remembered that, both for the XPS 15 and for the larger XPS 17, the audio section is the same, i.e. consisting of two microphones and four stereo speakers (a pair of 2.5 W woofers and as many tweeters 1.5 W), with headphones listening benefiting from Waves Nx 3D audio support.
On the energetic-dimensional level (since the dimensions impact on the battery capacity), in the XPS 15 (344.72 x 230.14 x 18 mm), with a 56 Wh battery and without touchscreen, you get to 1.81 kg, which rises to 2.01 kg with 4K touchscreen and max 86 Wh battery. In the XPS 17 (374.45 x 248.05 x 19.5 mm) the maximum energy capacity of 97 Wh is reached, with a weight of 2.21 kg for the model without touch screen, or a weight of 2.42 kg with the touchscreen.
In the port array, one can almost speak of perfect mirroring. XPS 17 and 15 share SD reader, adapter (HDMI 2.0 and Type-C to Type-A), 2nd gen USB 3.2 Type-C, and 3.5mm combo jack. The 15.6-inch model, however, only has two Thunderbolt 4s (with power supply and Display Port), compared to four in the 17.3-inch model.
The processing section of the updated DELL XPS 17 and 15, capable of also supporting advanced connectivity such as Bluetooth 5.1 and Wi-Fi 6, will include 12th generation Intel processors, to be chosen between the 12 core i5-12500H and the models with 14 cores, namely the i7-12700H and the i9-12900H: as known, on its website, DELL offers a set-up configurator. Well, in the RAM area (DDR5 at 4,800 MHz), you can go (from 8) up to a maximum of 64 GB, with the SSD storage (PCIe 4.0) which, in dual configuration, will reach the top with a maximum of 8 TB.