Dell XPS 15 9520 15.6" FHD+ Laptop, Intel Core i5-12500H, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Backlit Keyboard, Fingerprint Reader, Windows 11 Home (Silver)

Product Information

The XPS 15 9520 is more than fast enough for the most demanding productivity users while being reasonably speedy in creative tasks. Integrated Eyesafe® display technology helps to reduce harmful blue light while maintaining vivid colour. Doug, on the other hand, is still having issues with them on his brand-new XPS 9720 (hopefully he’ll have a review up for you in the near future).

However the battery is what ruined that laptop for me and actually made me think about getting a macbook which I have sworn to never do.I haven’t noticed it on my unit, but some XPS 15 users have reported a higher-pitch fan sound on theirs, noticeable with daily use loads, and we’ll discuss that in the Emissions sections further down. However, just like all Samsung OLED with touch and a digitizer layer, there’s a slight graininess mesh noticeable on white backgrounds (when browsing or reading/editing text) – it’s not as pronounced as on lower-resolution OLED screens, though, as this digitizer mesh is denser and smaller with the 3. As far as biometrics go, there’s IR integrated into the webcam on this XPS 15 9520 series, as well as a finger-sensor in the power button, with Hello support. I saw some throttling in our most intensive benchmarks, Handbrake, Cinebench, and Pugetbench, primarily when in performance mode.

Accidental Damage-Additional Information: Accidental Damage Service excludes theft, loss, and damage due to fire, flood or other acts of nature, or intentional damage. On to more demanding tasks, we start by testing the CPU’s performance by running the Cinebench R15 benchmark for 15+ times in a loop, with 2-3 seconds delay between each run.If you demand 4K+ resolution, you can choose the high-res IPS option, which on past XPS 15’s has also provided wide and accurate colors, lots of brightness, and plenty of contrast (for an IPS display). They’re definitely louder and higher-quality than what you’ll get with most of the other Windows laptops, at 85+ dB at maximum level and even some bass for this class. For me, a screen that goes back flat to 180 degrees would be a must on an all-purpose laptop nowadays, and the screen on the XPS 15 still only goes back to about 140-150 degrees or so, which is not always sufficient for couch or lap use. However, I noticed some squeaky noises on this unit, coming from the bottom D panel when lifting up the laptop from a corner or side, the kind I don’t remember noticing in the past.

And I hope Dell are able to get their quality-control and reliability in check for this generation, and address some of the inconsistencies of the past models. You’ll also want to upgrade the RAM and storage yourselves if you go this route, so plan a budget for that.I wasn’t expecting much in efficiency based on our other tests of 12th-gen Core H laptops, but this XPS 15 proved to be a pleasant surprise, running more efficiently than everything else we’ve reviewed. We ran all our tests and findings with the default paste, but repasting could impact the temperatures and even the performance to an extent, just be aware that repasting will void your warranty in most markets. This configuration ships with a mid-sized 130W charger, adequately sized for this hardware, which plugs in via USB-C. Our unit shipped with a WD PC SN810 1 TB drive, which is a middling gen4 SSD, but fast enough for daily use and productivity.