Product Listing

Dell XPS 15 - Big is Beautiful

By Aloysius Low - 4 Feb 2011
Launch SRP: S$1699

Battery Test and Portability Index

Battery Test and Portability Index

The Dell XPS 15 uses this 6-cell 11.1V 56Wh Li-ion battery.

Inside the thick frame of the Dell XPS 15 notebook lies a 11.1V, ~5000 mAh battery, and hopefully, despite requiring a bit more juice to power the subwoofer, we've found that the notebook isn't quite as desk bound as others of its form factor.

As you can see from the graph below, the battery life of the Dell XPS 15 is simply amazing. Sure, it's not as long lasting as the Acer notebook (which is a different hardware class), but it does beat every other quad-core notebook we've put up in this comparison. As for power consumption, despite the inclusion of a subwoofer that should suck up more power (if you recall, we use DVD playback with audio set for 50% volume), we still noted a pretty low power draw at just 18.66 watts. There's only one conclusion you can draw from this and it's that Dell engineers have worked carefully to bring about a very efficient quad-core notebook. Perhaps this efficiency slant somehow affected its graphics performance as noted on the earlier page.

 

Portability Index

We didn't expect the Dell notebook to do well in this comparison despite the sterling battery life as its weight and volume could have offset the advantage gained. However after running through our calculations, the Dell notebook proved otherwise with a decent ratio of 0.299. Just to run you through, this is our very own in-house index that helps us judge how portable a notebook is based on our battery life test, weight and volume. The higher the ratio, the better it is, but it only makes sense if you compare the values of similar class notebooks. In this case, if you were to compare the Dell XPS 15 against the Samsung RF-510 and others that we've constantly compared in this review, you'll note that the Dell machine is well ahead (- discounting the Acer Timeline X 5820T which uses a lower class hardware platform even though its physical form factor is similar to the rest).

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8.5
  • Design 8.5
  • Features 8.5
  • Performance 8.5
  • Value 8.5
  • Mobility 8.5
The Good
Long lasting battery
Good audio playback
The Bad
Thick/chunky form factor
Heavy
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