Announcing the Tom’s Guide Dell XPS Q&A and Laptop Giveaway!

[Gemini Dude]

Everytime I see a new Laptop model, one thing comes to mind in an era of shorter and shorter life cycles of every new design and the rapid burst of newer technologies that come out almost every month. A Laptop is our computing gateway, and some phones are almost inching closer to full machine configurations. To still have a relevant Laptop hardware, I always imagine if designers are factoring in the ability to incorporate Hyperconverged stacks and minimalistic designs when it comes to chargers with long/think adaptors into the laptop models, where little can do more. Trying to keep my question short. I m curious about learning what are the key factors that go into designing the next generation of a laptop model @Dell besides aesthetics?

 

[Lutfij]

I've grown to appreciate that the XPS range not only caters to the die hard enthusiast in the market but to professional content creators who want something less than a Mac but more than a standard laptop. In fact they are buying more into the experience. My question is, would you guys see any need to foray into the market where XPS becomes a stand alone brand with a gaming division(or a branching therein) and have a lineup of displays that are meant for that crowd alone.

A lot of among us tend to buy Dell's Ultrasharp monitors for those who are both a gamer and content creators, is there anything in the pipeline for a gaming centric monitor from Dell+XPS?

 

[DonnieOliphant]

If and when Ryzen rolls out mobile chips, will we see some shift, or do you guys plan to stick to Intel???
I mean, are you huys open to it, or got some kind of contractual obligation not to foray for say next 3yrs or 5yrs???

We can’t usually discuss future products, but we are always considering all possibilities when it comes to technologies, commodities and features that enable better experiences for our customers. We did announce earlier this week that we will be offering Ryzen processors in select desktops and AIOs later this year.

 

[DonnieOliphant]

Dell offer FHD with 8g RAM and 256SSD in USA. This is the model I want but not offered in UK. If I buy UK FHD with 4g RAM and 125 SSD it is upgradeable at home? I want the FD for longer battery life.

Wise choice!  I personally carry the FHD model myself for the added battery life and I chose a non-touch variant which also saves two tenths of a pound in carry weight.  The 1080 resolution is the perfect resolution for a 13-inch display (in my opinion). 
 
The XPS 13 is a revolutionary product that required extensive integration.  The memory is not upgradeable, but the SSD is.  My team just checked our UK offerings and there is a new XPS 13 i5 / 8GB RAM / 256GB SSD config for £1,149.

 

[DonnieOliphant]

I tend to find the keyboards on your laptops a little on the mushy side, especially on the Latitude lines. What are your thoughts on your laptop keyboards?

It sounds like you are a progressive notebook user!  Over the last couple of decades, we’ve seen laptop keyboard “key stroke” or “key travel” go from full (typewriter-like) 3.5mm down to 0.5mm on some of the more aggressive designs in the industry.  Our Latitude keyboards are award-winning and praised broadly throughout the industry and amongst our user base. We use longer-travel “ISO-compliant” keyboards in most Latitude products (typically 2.5mm travel), but this has a direct correlation to how aggressive we can be on the system’s overall thickness.  XPS has landed at the edge of what we believe to be mainstream, user-friendly travel at 1.3mm. 

We have done extensive usability studies on this topic over the last 25 years and have achieved what we believe is the best optimization of user feel/comfort and typing accuracy at 1.3mm.  We recently tried to move to 1.2mm travel on a product, but the usability testing didn’t meet expectations, so we reverted back to 1.3mm.  How we support and attach the keyboard in the system also contributes to the “mushiness” you refer to.  We strive to over-engineer our products in key customer interface areas (like the keyboard) to ensure a great experience over the life of the product – whether that’s a year or five years, we want the experience to be best-in-class.

 

[DonnieOliphant]

If you could improve ONE THING about your laptops, what would it be??

This is a really tough question.  The great thing about my job is that we are always striving for the next rung on the ladder with every new product.  We fight for fractions of millimeters and grams of weight reductions every day, so there’s never just one thing we want to improve on.  We always want the total experience to be better in every way. 

If you nailed me down and made me pick one thing, I would probably point to what our customer research has pointed to as the number one buying criteria (behind brand and price) for the last two decades – battery life.  Even at 22+ hours of (benchmarked) battery life in our latest XPS 13 with FHD, it always seems like we don’t have an AC outlet in front of us when we run out.

 

[DonnieOliphant]

Would you rather have 5 tiny computers, or one luggage sized computer?

I would rather have one “right-sized” computer… try on an XPS 13 if you’re highly mobile, but need mainstream performance and connectivity; or our XPS 13 2-in-1 if mobility is the most important element of your computing travel companion; and if it’s performance that you crave, try on our amazing XPS 15.  We think your laptop should fit you perfectly… tell us what you’re trying to do and we’ll find one that’s right for you.

 

[DonnieOliphant]

What's your favorite type of monitor to use?

I’ve moved to our new Dell UltraSharp 34 Curved Monitor (U3417W) with its ultrawide curved display and absolutely love it.   It’s like having dual displays without having two separate monitors… I can have a full-size Outlook window open next to a full-size powerpoint or browser window for easy transitions between applications and it looks bad-ass.

 

[DonnieOliphant]

I have 3 questions.
1. Why does the dell xps 13 cost so much? I am talking about the non convertible. I ask this as I have always wondered why high end ultrabooks have cost a lot of money when you can't do that much with them.
2. Why do some of your business line come with only 1 year of warranty and not the standard 2. I forgot the exact models sorry.
3. Do you plan on bringing more models to the dell insperon 1537 I think the laptop is called. I am talking about the one with the gtx 1050.

If I come up with more I will ask here.

1. It’s a great question.  I think the really cool thing about today’s ultra-portable systems are that you can do so much more with them today than we were able to just a handful of years ago.  The advances in performance and efficiency from Intel’s architectures has been incredible and there’s more to come.  One of the best parts of my job is defining products that are as uncompromised as possible.  We always strive to deliver world class product in whatever product category we participate in.  This means the commodities we choose, the materials we employ (and how we implement them) as well as the maniacal pursuit of leadership form-factors and customer experiences command a high cost which translates to the higher prices.  The good news is that XPS is a part of Dell and Dell is always trying to deliver a great value for the customer.  With a $799 entry price point, we are very aggressively priced for the level of quality we provide.  The entry configuration shares the same chassis and commodities of our higher-priced configurations. 

2. Across the Consumer business, we offer a 1 year warranty standard and offer additional years of warranty as well.

3. We offer NVIDIA GTX1050 graphics in our latest version of the XPS 15 (launched in January).  It comes with a 4GB GDDR5 frame buffer.

 

[DonnieOliphant]

Question: If you had to choose a celebrity to represent the top tier Dell XPS 13.....who would it be?

Serious Question: Assuming you've conducted surveys on Dell products, what is the main use for the Dell XPS series? Is it mostly for general use? or are users purchasing the XPS for productivity purposes?

This is a really subjective question, so I think several of us should answer, but off of the top of my head, if you can call him a celebrity, I would say Elon Musk since he’s (and we are) always reaching for the stars…

The great thing about our products are that we specifically tailor each of them for a specific type of user…  in almost all cases, they can be used for general use or productivity (light and heavy depending on which platform you need).  Our smaller, more portable laptops are very capable primary computing devices that can tackle day-to-day usage (mail, office apps, browsing, video, etc) without breaking a sweat, but as you move up to our larger laptop, the user can take on much more daunting activities (content creation, gaming, etc).  We really believe that one size does not fit all, so depending on what you need out of your laptop, we should be able to find a good fit for you across our portfolio.

 

[DonnieOliphant]

I'm a designer and small business guy, in the past I've had XPS computers that catered to that. Looking at the specs of the XPS 13 I'm not sure the Adobe CC suite would run on it very well. Do you have any recommendations for designers and the XPS product line?

The XPS 15​ is designed for Adobe's products. It offers an i7 CPU, 32GB of RAM and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 with 4GB frame buffer. The XPS 13 has its place as well. It doesn't have a dedicated GPU so it’s not your best option for large Premiere projects but it's good to have on a small photography site for initial image importing and corrections.​

 

[DonnieOliphant]

Well, hello and welcome to Tom's Guide, Donnie Oliphant+the XPS team! It's a pleasure to have you among us and I hope we can entertain you during this session.

I've dealt with Dell's XPS range of products in the past and most notably the Dell XPS 17 range of mobile computing devices. It's sleek, functional and ofc very worthy of a mantle showpiece spot for a techy. The only downside to the range is that it isn't as robust as people think it to be. My question is are you guys in the design team interested in introducing a series within the XPS range that is, well, more rugged? I've had some XPS laptop's come in with broken spines and it just came about from multiple opening and closing of the lid. In that regard, would you guys likely see a store pop up on Dell's site whereby it catered to replacement parts for the XPS range? Just because each and everyone of your designs are more noteworthy than the previous generation, I'm sure people would much like to restore it and retire for the sake of holding onto a piece of tech art work

Following up on that, there's the recent boom with having an external dock for dropping in a much beefier GPU to pair it with a mid range laptop, courtesy of a USB 3.1 port, do the folks at XPS see any avenues to launch a dock under Dell's banner and in that respect a whole range of products that go hand in hand with power users on a Dell XPS laptop?

I'm sure you folks know that a lot among the SFF community have paired an HD Plex or a Pico internal PSU with your power bricks. My question to that is would you guys be interested in releasing a power brick much akin to the old DA-2/DA-3 units but in the more sleek and minimalist form factor of the new Dell XPS 13 power brick?
Like this

Seeing how aesthetics, over time, have flown from the exterior to the interior of a system(and vice versa), I was wondering if the power brick would eventually fall to that stroke as well.

On a more casual note, is it possible to outline how the design team makes progress with a design for any and/or all of the products in the XPS range? For example, how long it takes for a drawing to manifest as a physical prototype and how long before the product's launch do you have from start to finish? I apologize if the scope of answering this is immense, I'm an architect and have always fancied the designs that churn out of Dell's HQ and now that I'm getting to ask the Director of the XPS Product Group, I didn't/couldn't hesitate.
^ Oh and what sort of qualifications would you be looking at if you were hiring an individual for assimilation within the design team?

I hope I haven't bombarded you kind fella's with too many questions, it's just we don't get you very often

Have a good one here and looking forward to the day!!!

On rugged: We have an entire portfolio of fully ruggedized products that is absolutely amazing.  Within the XPS portfolio of laptops, we would never claim them as ruggedized, but I can assure you that they can take a pretty good licking and keep on ticking.  The integration of the commodities and the structural integrity we achieve with the materials and implementation of those materials is quite impressive.  We test all of our laptops against the same robust specifications that we govern our commercial laptop lineup to (Latitude, Precision, etc). 

On docks: We already have two!  With the introduction of USB “type C”, we can support a single point of connectivity docking solution that passes data out and power in.  Our entry level dock is USB compatible and our ultimate docking solution employs a Thunderbolt 3 interface (also through USB-C).  The docks are compatible with all Latitude 7000 series as well.

On design process: A typical “ground-up” development effort for a new design language and new “mechanicals / chassis” is roughly 18-24 months.  The actual timeline for the development of the product (once the concept is fully designed) is roughly a year.  What we term “mid-life kickers” - where we are simply updating the architecture and other minor things like battery density - usually take about 9 months, depending on the level of changes. 

 

[DonnieOliphant]

Hello! Great to see you here

I have a few questions regarding your Developer / Linux Editions:

- How much do you have to work with suppliers to get parts that plays nicely with Linux?
- I guess you can't comment on sales volume, but is the DE sales actually significant enough to make a dent?
- Will you continue to focus on making great Linux laptops, and perhaps expand to the XPS 15 line as well as XPS 13?

With developers, it’s less about the volume of sales, but the advancement of computing experiences and supporting the community that is working on delivering the experiences of tomorrow.  We are committed to this space and we value the input we get from that community on how to improve our products and their capabilities generation over generation. 

We are committed to the development community and while I can’t comment on future products, I do think an XPS 15 running Linux would be a lovely product for developers who need the ultimate in portable performance.

 

[DonnieOliphant]

One more question:

I see from different sites on the net, that is seems Quality Control isn't always perfect with your XPS laptops. Is this something you are working actively to improve?

I myself ordered a XPS 13 DE. On the one I got, the two top rows of the keyboard didn't work. I've seen others having the same problem, and I imagine that could have gotten caught with some pretty basic quality assurance before the product was sent?

Quality is paramount and is always a focus for XPS and all of Dell.  We have made pronounced advancements each year on the level of quality we deliver to our customers. The fact of life (and manufacturing) is that perfection is not possible.  The thing we have to focus on is that when things don’t go as planned, we have a robust service and support experience that satisfies our customers.  Things will inevitably go wrong… when they do, how we solve those problems and interact and support our customers is critical.

 

[DonnieOliphant]

We collected the following question from our online raffle:

Would this be powerful enough for music production?

Depending on exactly what level of music production you’re referring to, any of our products can be used to drive varying levels of production, but assuming you’re a Hollywood type of guy or gal (or aspiring), I implore you to investigate our newly-introduced XPS 27 AIO.  It was developed in conjunction with our Precision Workstation team and we enlisted 11-time Grammy award winning producer, Jack Joseph Puig on the audio solution.  It is A M A Z I N G.   

 

[DonnieOliphant]

We collected the following question from our online raffle:

I realized that other XPS 13 products come in two shades of color: gray and rose gold, how about adding a featured color, with patterned design that is only available for limited time? I think that would sell grand.

Great feedback… stay tuned…

 

[DonnieOliphant]

We collected the following question from our online raffle:

Do these laptops have dedicated graphics?

Our XPS 13 and XPS 13 2-in-1 have integrated graphics while our XPS 15 offers an option for NVIDIA’s latest GTX1050 graphics with a 4GB GDDR5 frame buffer.

 

[DonnieOliphant]

We collected the following question from our online raffle:

I know it is difficult to have a laptop 100% American made. What percent of the Dell XPS Laptop product is made or assembled in the USA? Where do you source your parts from?

We source our parts from all over the globe and being an American-based company, we are always looking at ways to contribute to and improve our local economy.  We also want to improve and contribute to the economies where our products are designed, built, sold, supported and serviced. With more than 145K global employees, Dell Technologies direct reach into 180 countries (more than 90% of the world), and our supply chain operates in more than 40 countries worldwide.  While the majority of our components and manufacturing resides outside of the US, we do manufacture a large portion of our portfolio in North America (Mexico) and are proud to base our worldwide headquarters out of Round Rock, Texas.

 

[DonnieOliphant]

We collected the following question from our online raffle:

What, in your opinion, makes the Dell XPS 13 unique when compared to competitor's products?

The XPS 13 is unique on many fronts.  The cool thing is that almost all of those areas are things that our customers care about or value.  Everything starts with the InfinityEdge Display.  With 5mm borders surrounding the top, left and right of the display, the XPS 13 is the smallest laptop on the planet.  This compact footprint allows this product to go where laptops of yesteryear couldn’t… places like a coach class tray table or a women’s handbag.  Other key areas of differentiation are the materials we choose and how we implement them.  We use machined aluminum, carbon fiber and Corning’s gorilla glass to provide a strong and beautiful structure which delivers amazing craftsmanship. We employ battery technology that when combined with our display technology and architecture implementation delivers class-leading battery life (up to 22 hours of benchmarked run time on the latest model).  We do all of this and still deliver an entry price point of $799. 

 

[DonnieOliphant]

We collected the following question from our online raffle:

Is this a good laptop for a college student?

Yes. XPS laptops are thin and beautifully crafted and provide the most uncompromised experiences for work and play. XPS laptops have all of the performance you need, packed into smaller, thinner and more innovative designs. With more than 22 hours of battery life on FHD (up to 13 hours on QHD+), and the smallest 13 inch notebook on the planet, it’s the ideal notebook for college students on the go. The XPS 13 is a perfect companion for the college student that is writing term papers, surfing the web or streaming movies.

 

[DonnieOliphant]

We collected the following question from our online raffle:

What makes Dell products the best in the market?

XPS products are designed to be the best on the planet. We bring together the most elegant designs and premium experiences to enhance your work and personal success. This combination ultimately results in beautifully crafted products without compromise. Every material is selected to enhance performance and every design decision made is made with purpose. XPS laptops are precision-crafted from premium materials like machined aluminum, carbon fiber and hardened Corning® Gorilla® Glass NBT™ for incredible durability and a superior experience. While XPS laptops are thin and beautifully crafted, they also provide the most uncompromised experiences for work and play. XPS laptops have all of the performance you need, packed into smaller, thinner and more innovative designs.

 

[DonnieOliphant]

We collected the following question from our online raffle:

How does the Dell XPS product compare with other Laptops on the market right now? Thank You.

Our XPS 13 has won 300+ awards, more awards than any device in the company’s history. They are considered the best Windows devices on the market. The latest XPS devices boast a number of ‘firsts’ and ‘bests’ in their respective product groups – spanning form factor breakthroughs, display prowess, battery life and more – keeping with the XPS tradition of design to deliver the best computing experience on the planet. XPS laptops offer better performance than Macs with touch, newer processors, a better displays, more available RAM, and a longer battery life in a smaller and lighter package

 

[DonnieOliphant]

We collected the following question from our online raffle:

Are you going to have models that use the new AMD Ryzen CPU's?

Dell will be offering Ryzen high-performance desktop processors in select desktops and AIOs later this year but I can’t comment on specific product details.

 

[DonnieOliphant]

We collected the following question from our online raffle:

Who designed the Dell XPS Laptop and what's next for the future of Dell Laptops?

We did… All of our XPS laptops are designed by an amazing group of engineers we call “System Architects” and our in-house Industrial Designers.  We then collaborate with our strategic ODM partners to develop and manufacture them.  What’s next for the future of Dell Laptops is to continue to focus on our customer’s needs and desired experiences and to continue to deliver the best solutions we can.

 

[DonnieOliphant]

We collected the following question from our online raffle:

Is the Dell XPS 13 proficient at 4K video editing?

XPS 13 isn’t designed for 4K video editing. We recommend the XPS 15.