Dell XPS 15 9520 is 15 to 35 percent faster than XPS 15 9510, lacks Wi-Fi 6E support despite coming with an Intel AX211

Following on the footsteps of last year's XPS 15 9510 is the new XPS 15 9520 complete with 12th gen Intel Core CPUs to replace the older 11th gen Core options. As shown by the comparison charts below, the new Alder Lake Core i7-12700H CPU can outperform the 11th gen options on the XPS 15 9510 by wider margins than between the XPS 15 9500 and XPS 15 9510. Power users will definitely appreciate the notable boost in processor performance.

Beyond the CPU upgrades, however, there's nothing notable in regards to the rest of the model as the core experience remains the same as on the XPS 15 9510. The GeForce RTX 3050 Ti GPU, for example, is not any faster in spite of the faster DDR5 RAM while the three display options (IPS 1200p, OLED 2160p, and OLED 2400p) are identical to what the XPS 15 9510 already offers.

Perhaps more surprising is the lack of Wi-Fi 6E support even though Dell has replaced the Intel Killer 1650s in the XPS 15 9510 with the Intel AX211 in the XPS 15 9520. The AX211 officially supports the 6 GHz band, but Dell has confirmed with us that the XPS 15 9520 cannot exploit this feature of the WLAN module. Our own tests with the Wi-Fi 6E-enabled Asus GT-AXE11000 router can confirm as much. It's extremely odd, then, that Dell has equipped the XPS 15 9520 with a Wi-Fi 6E module without supporting Wi-Fi 6E connectivity.