Dell XPS 13-9343 Touchscreen Ultrabook Review

[Steve Schardein]

To all, a quick update on the Display Power Savings situation for anyone who is concerned about this.

I have done some quick troubleshooting on my end and have discovered that Intel's driver settings at least do not appear to be responsible for this. Either that, or Dell's XPS 13 is using a special version of the driver with the settings hard-coded to work with it.

This registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000\PowerDpstAggressivenessLevel

Is what I have found to be responsible for storing the user's choice for power savings aggressiveness.  I narrowed it down to this by using a Process Monitor trace to capture the registry changes when the option is modified on a PC where it exists in the control panel.

When DPST is at its highest setting, the contents of this Key will read 6. However, on the XPS 13, it is set to 0.

This means the issue must lie someplace else. It may well be a BIOS or firmware-level setting that we are wanting to control. I would suggest the next step for troubleshooting would be to investigate whether this behavior also exists in other operating systems (i.e. Ubuntu, Linux, whatever). If so, it is something external to Windows that would need to be changed. I would check this but I simply do not have time at the moment.

I hope this helps.

[endeavour1934]

"The only slight negative is the incidence of an ever-so-slight flashlighting effect at the bottom-left quadrant of the screen near the bezel."
"brightness distribution of just 77%, thanks to considerably dimmer readings in the lower-left quadrants of the panel"

Maybe those two things are related and you have a unit with a faulty LED backlight?

[Zak'area]

The manufacturer's french site corrects the fire and proposes a new model with an Intel card AC 7265 for wireless communication. I think the overall score will be greatly improved. Too bad the full HD panel is available in US only. It would have been interesting to see what he gives in test.

[Jeffrey Bellin]

Excellent review, as always, NBR!  This new Dell XPS-13 is one of those head-turners that is making a splash everywhere because of its design language combined with apparently very good ultrabook level of performance.  Here's the problem - and it's not unique to this model or to Dell products; especially vulnerable are also Asus and Lenovo Thinkpad in the past 2 years - poor design/quality control resulting in numerous ownership headaches after the product has been purchased, put through its paces when first arriving and then put to daily use, much of it with fairly high heat inside this tiny case with little ability to dissipate it, the notebook will begin to fail.  The same was true of its predecessor, the Dell XPS-15, several celebrated Asus models, most notably the UX31A, and, to the shock of many, stalwart Thinkpad models such as the T440s, T540, X240.  Just read the owner forums of these manufacturers specific to owners of these (and other) models.  Look also in independent forums, such as notebookreview.com and in the owner review sections of Amazon and other vendors who sell large volumes and accumulate hundreds if not thousands of individual reviews for popular models such as this Dell XPS13 is certain to be. 

Pure conjecture on my part, but it is the drive towards increasingly thin cases that probably causes most of the problems.  The throttling and fan designs may keep the products from shutting down due to heat or becoming too hot to touch on the outside, but even temps which fall within Intel's and others' specs cause an oven environment in which all of those components have to live, all the time.  Add to this the extremely spotty customer support offered by these brands, depending upon the country and the warranty plan one purchases.  By and large the quality of Dell's and Lenovo's support has been plummeting in the US while Asus has long been in the cellar.  If you read the Amazon owner reviews seething with hateful frustration with Asus for its horrific quality control of the seductively positioned UX31A second gen Ultrabook and superimpose them over the glowing reviews NBR provided for the same model that people replaced 2 and 3 times before giving up you'll swear we're looking at two entirely different computers.  The same is true famously of the Thinkpad 440s and for all of the XPS models of the past two years.

I don't know exactly how a highly conscientious testing shop like NBR protects itself from providing glowing reviews and what amount to screaming "buy" recommendations without either doing their own owner surveys - a costly endeavor - or perhaps teaming with those who do or, at a minimum, citing and linking to the average owner ratings on Amazon.com.  It's long been said that unhappy buyers are over-represented on such forums, but that doesn't account for the existence of a large number of products that have 4.8/5.0 stars (96%) with hundreds of reviews while some models rated 85 or better by NBR skate by with about 3/5 stars (60%)among hundreds and hundreds of reviewers on Amazon.  (Interestingly, if you look at the distribution of ratings for the low average models, they tend to cluster with 1* ratings and 5* ratings, representing the hit-or-miss quality control and, I can only conjecture because I haven't studied it, likely those who rated their purchase on the first day or two of ownership vs. those who waited until they had weeks or months of usage experience.  One last comment: Back when they had not overcome the terrible design/reliability problems they have now largely surmounted, Jaguar automobiles were consistently given accolades by those who reviewed them, even though most knew they would be headaches and major expenses for their owners.  Somehow I feel that product reviews, especially those that convey implicit "buy" recommendations, must at a minimum provide readers with tools to check the ownership experience of models they praise.

[Steve Schardein]

Jeffrey,

Thank you kindly for your insightful and deliberate feedback.  My personal thoughts on this particular conundrum:

Reliability is certainly a difficult nut to crack, and truly, it is nearly impossible to predict the likelihood of serious problems occurring with a particular design months or even years down the road, and even harder to approximate the incidence of quality control failures leading to variances in product quality and performance.  Although we possess no meaningful statistics on the number of people who encounter such problems post-purchase, I can only speak from my own experiences running a fairly successful small business repairing computers in saying that I -- for whatever reason -- hardly ever see any of these higher-end notebook models come into my lab for repairs.

This is surely due in part to a low adoption rate versus that of lower-cost "mainstream" notebooks, but I do believe that the reasoning behind the mixed customer feedback found in other forums and across product reviews is directly influenced by two other less-discussed factors.

Firstly, product support, which you did mention.  I believe that the frustrations that many users experience in having their problems satisfactorily acknowledged and corrected is one major reason for negative online feedback, as the users feel they must take their complaints elsewhere to have them addressed and possibly solved by third parties -- or, at the very least, they are searching for some sort of outlet in which they can vent their frustrations.  Within brands who handle such complaints more directly and satisfactorily, this public negative feedback process is often short-circuited and the problems are resolved before the customer bothers to go to such lengths.

Secondly, target market and demographics.  The type of consumer to which the XPS brand appeals most heavily is likely dominated by that of the enthusiast, as A) these products are truly not heavily marketed, as compared to, say, an Apple MacBook, and B) their pricing and feature set most heavily target such high-end users.  To be sure, there exists a sizable share of consumers who simply stumble across the model (hopefully by way of sites such as NBC) and decide to commit to a purchase on the basis of their evaluations, but by and large I feel that even such in-depth reviews most heavily appeal to the enthusiast and the technically-inclined.  It's because of this that we find that such consumers are far more vocal about the problems they experience with their purchase, as they are also far more attuned to such problems.  They're likely -- at risk of generalizing for sake of making a point -- pickier, more demanding, and less willing to wait for a solution to even smaller issues.  They're also very likely just the type of consumer who would be most likely to bother signing up for (if they aren't already a member) and participating in discussions on message boards or posting a review on sites such as Amazon.

Anyway, so I do think there are other forces in play here.  The sheer fact that none of these problems seems to have cropped up in the reviews we've seen of such products should be evidence that their incidence is not that prevalent (or perhaps not very noticeable, depending on the reviewer), and the same could be said of even polls taken on message boards filled with enthusiasts about purchase recommendations and the like.  Most owners, even those who spend time online discussing their purchases, seem overwhelmingly happy with their purchase, but perhaps they don't wish to take the time to bother posting about it since it will benefit them very little.

Thanks again for taking the time to post your thoughts.  Your readership means a lot to us.

Steve

[Annoyed]

Why have ultrabooks started to remove the HDMI ports!?!

The point is to be portable and taken around with you. Every screen has HDMI and everyone has HDMI cables.

I would must prefer a Display Port addon so I could connected it up when I am at home than to have Display Port build in and have to carry a special HDMI box to get anywhere.

Don't these guys every actually use their own laptops?

[Kristinn]

I'm happy to see this addressed, as I've always thought the reason Ultrabooks are often judged so harshly is that their owners are often very demanding of their products. Not necessarily because their concerns are just nit-picks, but more the fact that they are often more knowledgeable than the average consumer, and notice imperfections that other might not notice, or are bothered by problems that other would just live with.

The obvious comparison of course is with Apple computers. My girlfriend for example has a 2012 Macbook Air, and it has had countless problems, some of which my girlfriend not notices or doesn't care about. It constantly runs hot, sometimes gets stuck on the operating system loading screen and the SSD already failed once. But she doesn't complain on any tech forum, or leaves negative ownership reviews.

I myself own a Dell XPS 12, and even though I notice very well the ghosting issue, the fact is that it doesn't affect me, and from what I've heard, Dell replaces the screen of people affected if requested. So in summary, I don't think there is any reason to demonize Dell or some of these other brands mentioned.

[na]

I just got my XPS 13, and as much as I love the screen and form-factor.... the keyboard and touchpad are driving my insane.  They're abysmal.  The keys are sooo shallow it's painful, when typing fast I can't tell if I hit the key or not, and the keys are all smaller than even my 5yo 11.6" Acer.

The touchpad is worse though.  Any time I click, the cursor jumps away.  Apparently I can't handle the lack of dedicated buttons.  Unfortunately going to return this product, maybe get the 12.5" Latitude instead (bad screen but better input devices).

[Steve Schardein]

That's odd; while I'm certainly no fan of most clickpads in contrast to physical buttons, I found that the XPS 13's was among the best I'd used in terms of interpreting clicks accurately without collateral pointer movement.  I believe there are settings you can check that may assist with this also if you haven't looked into them... hardly as robust as Synaptics or Alps driver settings, but it is something:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/touchpad

As for the keyboard key travel, yes, it is indeed an adjustment.  I find that acclimation to shorter-travel keyboards is heavily contingent upon the keyboard you were using just prior.  If it features a lot of travel and feedback, it can be difficult to make the switch... but it will happen over time.  Generally it takes no more than a couple weeks in my experience to adjust, but each person is unique.  I'm sorry you didn't like the keyboard; I found it to be very good (as described)!

[Kobri]

Scrolling on my old XPS 15 using https://code.google.com/p/two-finger-scroll/
was much much better than this microsoft s***. Any idea how to get this stuff working on the XPS 13?

Also the lack of two finger middle click is absurd.

Audio playback seems very unstable with regular interruptions and volume changes even though I disabled dell services and maxaudio crap, is there a fix or something?

[rejetto]

how many hours do you gain by lowering the resolution of the touch model to 1080p ?

[Jeffrey Bellin]

Jeffrey,

Thank you kindly for your insightful and deliberate feedback.  My personal thoughts on this particular conundrum:

Steve,

Thanks for your very thoughtful and in-depth response to my post.  I appreciate your points of view and agree with several that mitigate my own claims.  Still, I must object a bit to a summary statement you made that I feel contradicted even your own observations:

"The sheer fact that none of these problems seems to have cropped up in the reviews we've seen of such products should be evidence that their incidence is not that prevalent (or perhaps not very noticeable, depending on the reviewer), and the same could be said of even polls taken on message boards filled with enthusiasts about purchase recommendations and the like.  Most owners, even those who spend time online discussing their purchases, seem overwhelmingly happy with their purchase, but perhaps they don't wish to take the time to bother posting about it since it will benefit them very little."

The fact is that these and many other problems do crop up in very, very large numbers and proportions on owner forums of major brands and in large databases of owner reviews such as found in Amazon.com, among other high volume sellers.  To restate a point I made, it's one thing to say that buyers of high end gear tend to be more "picky" it's yet another to explain why one high end product - eg, a MacBook Pro 13 Retina - engenders an average 4.5/5 (90%) rating by over 1,000 owners while a Dell XPS 13 Haswell scores 3.8/5.  (76%).  My contention is that most problems are either not yet present or are less noticed until a product has been in use for several weeks or more.  Product reviews such as your own don't involve daily use of a product for weeks on end, yet owner forums do.  I can't propose a solution to this, but I will say that some review publications will at least mention that owners of predecessors of certain products reported dissatisfaction with [feature, general quality, etc] and prospective purchasers are advised to read the owner forums of that particular brand/model.

[NickS]

I just purchased this for my daughter - heading off to college.  I have to say the hardware is great but am very disappointed with user experience.  It is running Windows 8.1 and the 3200x1800 resolution is not fully supported yet.  There are font scaling problems for many programs and the touch pad scrolling for IE and Chrome is terrible.  Videos don't scale well and appear choppy.  Love the hardware but this is a bust and a return to the store.  :(

[Steve Schardein]

Hey Nick,

You were but three weeks out from Windows 10's launch when you posted that.  It's unfortunate, because it resolves most of those problems, and the XPS 13 is still arguably the best 13" machine on the market!

Steve

[DatabaseMX]

Lack of an built in Ethernet port is a total non-starter. Some of us are hard wired :-)
It should not even be legal to ship a laptop w/o an Ethernet port !