2023 Dell XPS laptops might be a bad deal according to our extensive reviews

A 2023 Dell XPS that is not totally great #1 - The XPS 17 9730

We tested this 17-inch 2023 Dell XPS in May. Our test configuration featured a 2400p IPS display, the Core i7-13700H and the GeForce RTX 4070 (Laptop), while tipping the scales at 2.47 kg.

As we remarked at the time, the XPS definitely was (and still is) good enough for most home and office users. The system was able to deliver good battery life of about 10 hours in the Wi-Fi Web surfing test, and it was fairly fast, too. At the very least, it had little difficulty outgunning the smaller XPS 15 9530 that we'll get to in a few seconds.

But was it fast enough to justify its price of around US$3,500? No, it was not. Dell traded away lots of performance to make sure the case remained sexy-looking and slim. We found the 60 Hz IPS panel mediocre, too, considering the price; in 2023, high refresh rate displays are a must for any laptop costing north of US$1,500. The XPS also offered no Wi-Fi 6E support, let alone Wi-Fi 7 support, and its built-in SSD made use of four PCIe 4 lanes despite the platform's compatibility with PCIe 5.

There were several other shortcomings for us to note including the comparatively slow charging speeds and the poor 1 MP webcam with no privacy shutter. While we gave the XPS an overall rating of 90%, it is clear that Dell still has lots of work to do here.

A 2023 Dell XPS that is not totally great #2 -
The XPS 15 9530

The Dell XPS 15 9530 that we tested in April featured a 15.6-inch 16:10 ratio OLED display, the Core i7-13700H CPU and the GeForce RTX 4070 (Laptop) graphics card. Just like its elder brother, the 9730, the 15-inch model represented an attempt to pack components typically reserved for travel-unfriendly gaming laptops into a relatively small, portable, nice-looking case wheighing 1.94 kg.

While Dell engineers did a lot of things right, such as not going the "let's solder it all down" route (yes, the 15-inch system features two M.2 slots and two SO-DIMM slots), the XPS ended up delivering a seriously poor performance-per-dollar ratio, even more so than it was with the 9730. Because of the small chassis volume and the power constraints, both the CPU and the GPU were forced to run at much lower clock speeds than they normally would, resulting in underwhelming performance levels; despite that, they would get really hot in mere seconds every time we launched a resource-heavy app or a game. We have tested about 20 laptops featuring the RTX 4070 (Laptop), and, guess what, the XPS 15 9530 is the slowest one of them all, graphics performance-wise.

The 15-inch XPS suffered from about the same range of issues as the 17-inch XPS 9730, such as the terrible 720p webcam, DPC latency issues, frame drops when playing YouTube videos, and lower-than-average charging speeds. As the icing on the cake, the owner of this US$2,800 system would have no choice but to endure the display flickering that is unfortunately common for all laptop OLED panels on the market.

A 2023 Dell XPS that is not totally great #3 -
The XPS 13 Plus 9320

The 2023 XPS 13 Plus 9320 that Dell loaned to us so that we could review it had a 13.4-inch OLED panel, the Core i7-1360P CPU and the integrated Iris Xe G7 (96 EUs) graphics adapter. Sporting the same sleek case with no virtually gaps between keyboard keys as the 2022 model, it was an eye-catcher. At 1.27 kg, it also was very light and thus comfortable to use no matter the circumstances.

... the 2023 refresh is unfortunately forgettable considering that it barely offers any advantages in terms of processor performance or performance-per-watt over the previous year

The system suffered from heavy SSD throttling as well as from CPU/GPU throttling, meaning the 13th generation Intel Core processor was robbed of any real chance to prove its worth against its immediate predecessors. In fact, the 9320's long-term CPU performance trailed behind certain upper mid-range laptops built around AMD Ryzen chips. DPC latency issues, dropped frames when playng 2160p60 YouTube videos, the poor 720p webcam and PWM screen flickering were all present in the test configuration. Battery life was nothing to write home about, either, making the US$1,500 price tag that bit harder to swallow.