Dell Precision 5550 vs. Precision 5560: What's the difference?

The jump from the Precision 5540 to the Precision 5550 was significant because the latter would adopt the new XPS 15 9500 design over the older XPS 15 9570. Moving up from the Precision 5550 to the Precision 5560 is relatively more minor from a visual perspective, but the internal updates shouldn't be ignored.

The Precision 5560 utilizes newer Nvidia Ampere Quadro GPUs to succeed last year's Turing GPUs for a raw graphics boost of 40 to 50 percent to be the single biggest update from the Precision 5550. Power envelope is just slightly higher in comparison for overall higher performance-per-watt.

Storage has also been upgraded to support PCIe4 NVMe SSDs instead of only PCIe3. Transfer rates can now reach over 7000 MB/s instead of just 3400 MB/s as shown by our loop test results below.

Power consumption appears to be higher on the Precision 5560 when running lower loads like web browsing. Consequently, battery life is shorter by two to three hours on the newer model when compared to the older one based on our real-world WLAN tests at 150 nit brightness. 

The fan noise ceiling may have been lowered on the Precision 5560 when compared to the 5550 in our experience (50 dB(A) vs. 40 dB(A)). The newer model can therefore be quieter when running extreme loads like Prime95 albeit at the cost of higher core temperatures by up to 15 C from our observations.

Other than the GPU and SSD upgrades, however, everything else remains the same. Very few people will likely benefit from the more marginal boosts to CPU power and Thunderbolt 4 support over Thunderbolt 3. It's too bad that Dell didn't upgrade the substandard 720p webcam to 1080p or integrate a privacy shutter.

See our full review on the Precision 5560 for more comparisons.