Dell XPS 15 9530 RTX 4070 laptop review: Both impressive and underwhelming

[Redaktion]

Whereas the 2022 XPS 15 topped out at GeForce RTX 3050 Ti graphics, this year's model has upped the ante to a GeForce RTX 4070. As impressive as that may sound on paper, there are significant compromises that users ought to be aware of before pulling the trigger on the latest 2023 model.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-XPS-15-9530-RTX-4070-laptop-review-Both-impressive-and-underwhelming.709129.0.html

[RobertJasiek]

4070@50W is interesting!

[Pooh Sheisty]

"If you intend to play a lot of games, then the XPS 15 becomes a poor value proposition" is a very harsh statement seeing as it can run modern titles at high settings with no issue. Yes, its not as powerful as the 100W version of the 4070, but its a stretch to call this a poor gaming machine.

[Anonymous1251]

Can you please review these models with the full HD display? Battery life is one of the most important things in a laptop but it seems you continuously opt for the UHD display, then get angry about the battery life. It just doesn't seem to make much sense to me, nor does it help me figure out how capable this laptop's battery life is.

"We expect the lower resolution IPS SKU to provide longer runtimes than what we've recorded here."

Notebookcheck is good because it objectively provides measurements. I came here for your great measurements, not general one-sentence estimates. Please review the FHD models of the Dell XPS in the future.

[AwfulLaptops]

The XPS 15 is one of the first laptops sporting both a Core H-series CPU and GeForce RTX 4070 GPU to be powered solely by USB-C.
It's powered by a 130W USB-C charger.
Honestly, what's Dell trying to accomplish? A Macbook-like Windows laptop using parts nowhere nearly as efficient? And much like Apple craptops it has to be "slient" as well. It suspiciously generates far, far less noise compared to competitors and last-gen models (up to 20%).
The Legion 5 laptop with a RTX 3060 smashes this thing with 50% more performance.
Dell really needs to go back to the drawing board, or just be more sensible in their design and parts choices (getting a vapor chamber cooling system is a good start).

[LL]

That 4070 is only 1 sec faster than my 3060 in Blender Optix classroom rendering...

So how is this 4070 "optimised for content creation" !?

Please be serious with reporting. Content creation being GPU render, RT rendering in Unreal Engine, Da Vinci Resolve video effects, encoding and many other applications needs the most powerful system available.

[S.Yu]

Something is fishy here!!! Anybody following NBC should be able to notice that this model according to this review is persistently 30-40% slower than the 13" Flow with 4070 and 13900, yet they have the same maximum power draw which means the same cooling(the power bricks suggest the same)! That comparison with the 3050ti is suspicious as hell too because one cannot just look at the minor performance gain while disregarding the larger increase in price! These results are so bad they're likely decoupled from the reality of this device.

[S.Yu]

The XPS 15 is one of the first laptops sporting both a Core H-series CPU and GeForce RTX 4070 GPU to be powered solely by USB-C.
It's powered by a 130W USB-C charger.
Honestly, what's Dell trying to accomplish? A Macbook-like Windows laptop using parts nowhere nearly as efficient? And much like Apple craptops it has to be "slient" as well. It suspiciously generates far, far less noise compared to competitors and last-gen models (up to 20%).
The Legion 5 laptop with a RTX 3060 smashes this thing with 50% more performance.
Dell really needs to go back to the drawing board, or just be more sensible in their design and parts choices (getting a vapor chamber cooling system is a good start).

They're not wrong with the power supply. Asus can manage over 50% more performance in the same power envelope, see the Flow X13 review of the 13900-4070 tier. The C port is most likely sufficient, and will reduce clutter on your desktop. Going proprietary can only mean that the C port doesn't deliver enough power and will complicate things. That's not to say everything is fine, either something's wrong with the review(Ngo is one of the less reliable reviewers around), or something other than the power supply is wrong with this model. If cooling's the culprit then I suspect both hardware and software issues.

[kenarp]

The XPS 15 is one of the first laptops sporting both a Core H-series CPU and GeForce RTX 4070 GPU to be powered solely by USB-C.
It's powered by a 130W USB-C charger.
Honestly, what's Dell trying to accomplish? A Macbook-like Windows laptop using parts nowhere nearly as efficient? And much like Apple craptops it has to be "slient" as well. It suspiciously generates far, far less noise compared to competitors and last-gen models (up to 20%).
The Legion 5 laptop with a RTX 3060 smashes this thing with 50% more performance.
Dell really needs to go back to the drawing board, or just be more sensible in their design and parts choices (getting a vapor chamber cooling system is a good start).

They're not wrong with the power supply. Asus can manage over 50% more performance in the same power envelope, see the Flow X13 review of the 13900-4070 tier. The C port is most likely sufficient, and will reduce clutter on your desktop. Going proprietary can only mean that the C port doesn't deliver enough power and will complicate things. That's not to say everything is fine, either something's wrong with the review(Ngo is one of the less reliable reviewers around), or something other than the power supply is wrong with this model. If cooling's the culprit then I suspect both hardware and software issues.

I have no idea what you are talking about. First, there's no ROG Flow x13 equipped with Intel Core i9 13900h, it's powdered by a Ryzen 9 7940hs. So I guess you are talking about the ROG Flow x16 which comes with a 240w adapter and a 120w tgp 4070 GPU under performance mode, according to UltrabookReview. If so,on USB-C power they tested (a 100w adapter), the Flow X16 consumes 115W in combined CPU+GPU loads (15-25W CPU + 90-100 W GPU), which said the system draws power from both the charger and the battery, leading the battery discharges quickly with roughly 1.5 hours of life at full load on Performance mode with PD power. There's nothing comparable to this 50W tgp, extremely underpowered 4070 graphics card.

[S.Yu]

The XPS 15 is one of the first laptops sporting both a Core H-series CPU and GeForce RTX 4070 GPU to be powered solely by USB-C.
It's powered by a 130W USB-C charger.
Honestly, what's Dell trying to accomplish? A Macbook-like Windows laptop using parts nowhere nearly as efficient? And much like Apple craptops it has to be "slient" as well. It suspiciously generates far, far less noise compared to competitors and last-gen models (up to 20%).
The Legion 5 laptop with a RTX 3060 smashes this thing with 50% more performance.
Dell really needs to go back to the drawing board, or just be more sensible in their design and parts choices (getting a vapor chamber cooling system is a good start).

They're not wrong with the power supply. Asus can manage over 50% more performance in the same power envelope, see the Flow X13 review of the 13900-4070 tier. The C port is most likely sufficient, and will reduce clutter on your desktop. Going proprietary can only mean that the C port doesn't deliver enough power and will complicate things. That's not to say everything is fine, either something's wrong with the review(Ngo is one of the less reliable reviewers around), or something other than the power supply is wrong with this model. If cooling's the culprit then I suspect both hardware and software issues.

I have no idea what you are talking about. First, there's no ROG Flow x13 equipped with Intel Core i9 13900h, it's powdered by a Ryzen 9 7940hs. So I guess you are talking about the ROG Flow x16 which comes with a 240w adapter and a 120w tgp 4070 GPU under performance mode, according to UltrabookReview. If so,on USB-C power they tested (a 100w adapter), the Flow X16 consumes 115W in combined CPU+GPU loads (15-25W CPU + 90-100 W GPU), which said the system draws power from both the charger and the battery, leading the battery discharges quickly with roughly 1.5 hours of life at full load on Performance mode with PD power. There's nothing comparable to this 50W tgp, extremely underpowered 4070 graphics card.

Ok, I made a mistake, but you guessed in the wrong direction too, it's the Z13. If you would just type "flow" into the comparison tool and hit enter, there would be such a model in the list, reviewed by NBC nonetheless. The 4070 is claimed to be 65W, but the maximum power draw of the whole system is about the same as this model, and both use 130W power supply.

[Javier]

Hi, does anyone know what windows scale option is he using? 100%, 125%?, I want to know this because I want to see if the 1080 option has enough screen state for me. The OLED i dont care about but I will use several pages at the same time, for me what he has in the pictures is awesome, but dont know the scale he uses. Maybe is 200 and very close to the 1080p option at 100.

Thanks in advanced 😊😊

[Michael Fuchs]

I have this notebook and webcam + micro are even worse than described.
The camera is in low or medium light conditions almost a desaster. It is tough to excuse myself for this quality on a business call.
The micro is under no condition suitable for a business call.
The cooling system relatively quickly at its limit which leads to a lot of noise as sooin as the GPU starts and my colleagues hear my laptop really well then ...