Dell refreshes the XPS 17 with Intel Tiger Lake-H CPUs, RTX 3000 GPUs and improved touchscreens

The 2021 refresh for the Dell XPS 17 creator-oriented laptop comes with quite a few enhancements, including Intel’s freshly released Tiger Lake-H processors, improved thermal solution for a slim and light design, plus better screens and Nvidia RTX 3000 GPUs.

Depending on the configuration, the system featuring CNC machined aluminum chassis with carbon fiber palm rest weighs between 4.65 lbs (2.11 kg) and 5.53 lbs (2.51 kg), while the profile measures 0.77 inches (19.5 mm). Excellent specs, considering that the new XPS 17 9710 models can be equipped with up to an i9-11980HK octa-core CPU coupled with up to 64 GB DDR4-3200 RAM and up to 4 TB PCIe 4 x4 NVMe SSD storage. The graphics side, however, is only limited to the RTX 3050 (60 W) and RTX 3060 (70 W) GPUs.

There are two IPS display options featuring 16:10 4-sided Infinity Edge aspect ratio with 93.7% screen-to-body ratio and Dolby Vision compatibility. The more affordable option includes a 1200p panel with 500-nit peak brightness, 1,650:1 contrast ratio and 100%sRGB color gamut. For users needing a touch display, Dell also offers the 4K panel with HDR 400 certification, 500-nit peak brightness, 100% ARGB and 99% DCI-P3 color gamuts, plus 1,600:1 contrast ratio.

Port selection offers 4x Thunderbolt 4 connectors, headphone/mic audio combo jack, and Dell adds a proprietary USB-C to USB-A 3.0 and HDMI 2.0 adapter to the package. Other features include Killer Wi-Fi 6 + Bluetooth 5.1 card, quad-speaker design with two woofers and 2 tweeters provided by Waves MaxxAudio, and either a 57 Wh battery for the non-touch variant or a 97 Wh battery for the touch one. Even though the spec sheet does not mention this, the pictures appear to show a full-size SD card reader on the right side.

Dell does not specify the exact availability dates except for a vague “this summer” time frame. Prices start at $1,399.99 for the i5-11400H model with FHD panel, 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB SSD and RTX 3050 GPU.

Buy the Dell XPS 17 9700 17 inch UHD Plus Laptop with Intel i9-10885H CPU on Amazon