Video: Dell XPS 15 Unboxing and first look

If you are after a powerful productivity notebook but don’t want a big chunky device and want a nice small 15 inch laptop then you should have a look at the Dell XPS 15. The XPS 15 is a 15 inch touchscreen laptop that Dell say is the world’s smallest 15 inch notebook, it has a gorgeous looking screen and plenty of power thanks to the Intel i7 processor.

As this device packs in a lot of technology I want to spend some time with it before doing a full review so in this video I unbox the notebook and give my initial first impressions.

The first thing you notice with XPS 15 is the screen, it has a tiny bezel (5.7mm) so it looks like is it all screen and no bezel at all. The resolution is 3840 x 2160 (4K UHD) which looks incredibly sharp with very vivid colours (100% Adobe GBD display) and it is really bright, it really is a nice looking screen and Windows 10 really looks good on it. I should say it’s a touch screen as well which I find really handy for scrolling web page or Word documents.

The processor is a 6^th Generation Quad Core i7 processor with Nvidia GTX 960 graphics chip so this is going to give you plenty of power I could see me using it for video editing, music production and development on it. The model I am reviewing comes with 16GB of RAM, 512 GB solid state drive and Windows 10 Home, for the price I am surprised it doesn’t come with the Pro version of Windows 10.

For connectivity there is Thunderbolt 3 with a USB-C connector so you could use it for connecting up external 4k monitors, 10GB Ethernet, external storage etc. There is also HDMI and two USB 3 ports, full sized SD card reader, headphone and power port. A standard power adapter is included and you can also charge via the USB Type C port.

The build is extremely solid and you can tell it’s a premium device, for example when you use the touch screen it doesn’t wobble around like some of my other devices. It has a brushed aluminium case and there is a carbon fibre wrist rest with a soft coating on it so it is extremely combatable to use. The trackpad is large and has a really nice soft feel to it. The keyboard is backlit and they keys have a nice short and positive travel on them, one thing I was surprised about is the keys don’t utilise the full width of the notebook so they are a little squashed together, I think Dell probably could have made better use of the available space. The keyboard is one of the things I will cover when I do the full review.

One thing I didn’t notice while doing the unboxing is that the web cam is not situated above the screen like most notebooks but instead it is below the screen, this is because there is no space on the tiny bezel. Using it with Skype didn’t cause any problems except from it is looking up which is probably a less flattering view than a high mounted camera.

This notebook has a premium price at around $2000 and it feels like a premium devices, it is very much an Apple Macbook Pro and Surface Book competitor. The screen is amazing, the i7 processor gives it plenty of grunt and if the battery life matches Dell’s claims then I could use it all day without the charger. So in this video I unbox the XPS 15 and take a first look at it, in a future video I will do a more detailed review when I spent some time with it.

You can find out more about the XPS 15 at this link and many thanks to Dell for sending me the review unit.