Dell Precision 5550 Workstation Review: The XPS 15 For Professionals

[Redaktion]

While traditional workstation laptops like the Precision 7550 will never be replaced, there is growing demand for stylish ultra-thin workstations as well. The Precision 5550 swaps out the GeForce GPUs in the XPS 15 9500 for TUring Quadro GPUs to appeal to professional audiences.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-Precision-5550-Workstation-Review-The-XPS-15-For-Professionals.483877.0.html

[pb79]

Generallu speaking I do not recommend it. TB docks are terrible and Precision line is disappointment and not worth its price. 5530 model is much more silent but it has camera on the bottom bezel and terrible keyboard and touchpad. In newer models 5540 and 5550 Dell fixed a camera and keyboard and also touchpad but it is hot and noisy. Definitely not for a business or office use. Even without a medium load fan can spinning like a jet. Compared to Dell Latitude 5500 which is about 1000$ cheaper it is much much better a businness laptop with excellent touchpad with separate soft and silent buttons. Anyway I still recommend HP or Lenovo if you want to avoid heat and they have  bettter thermal management.

[intlajs]

You have no idea what are you talking about. Dell XPS / Precision is the pinnacle of Windows laptops.

[andrzejj9]

And "workstation" without any ports at all.. Is this some kind of bad joke..?

[blank]

I agree with the previous commenter.

Absolutely hate this thing from day 1. I can't use it without a dock station with 2 monitors simply because there are not enough USB ports.

[Berty J]

Michael Dell collected the chassis from Tim Cook's Toilet. "Copy Cat-Michael" >:D"
Keep Your Individuality...& Dignity of a Business Person... Don't sell it....

[Carl]

As far as I could see, this review totally misses the mark in that this machine (or at least its XPS brother) has "remarkable audio quality". In a multimedia world, I suggest that a thorough examination of sound quality is mandatory. Hope you take the suggestion seriously.

[Dany Dany]

Hi, you have mistake in dimensions of Presicion 5550. Maximum Height is 11,65mm.

[Brandon Chapman]

Thank you for performing and providing a thorough power consumption test for this model. I am curious as someone who doesn't have a ton of knowledge on the subject... My work has ordered me a precision 5550 with the quadro 1000 and larger battery so the supplied charger is the 130W charger. However, my docking station provides 100W of power to the laptop. Is this going to provide any issues? My main concern is that it will constantly be using my battery to supplement power this ruining my battery life. It is important to note that I will not be doing anything demanding with this laptop as I am a web developer. No photo editing or anything like that.

[slowan]

I use this machine (FHD, i7-10850H, 64GB RAM, Quadro T1000) for performance demanding development (IDEA, large project, huge VM).

I am not sure if everybody hating this laptop really tried it. Probably not.

Generally I like it. Combined advantages of P1 and Precision 5550 would mean the best working laptop ever.

• The machine is really unobtrusive and quiet. It is much more silent than Thinkpad P1 (gen 1) if comparing similar load. Even when fans are running the sound is not annoying (nice white noise) which I can't say about Thinkpad P1's one.
• Drivers and dock are working nicely without any glitches. No problem with graphic card switching. No sound stuttering. No latency. It was (and probably still is) a nightmare at P1 even two year after release.
• Display (FHD) seems ok, quite bright. At lowest brightness the screen edges are a bit darker, but it's not that horrible. I like tiny bezels. On the other hand the display has quite low position. It won't be ergonomic to work on it for longer periods (P1 is much better here). I hate the display can't be opened more than ~130 degrees. Shame on you Dell!
• Consumption is unbelievably great! It ate 10% after 1,5 hour while writing this or writing a code in a huge IntelliJ IDEA project. P1 was really much worse (drivers, broken graphic switching).
• Speakers are the best I have heard from laptop! Unfortunately (probably defect of this unit) during Windows sound or during zoom meetings it has this "buzz" sound from right speaker. During music nothing. MaxxAudio pro is ok, but I would welcome fully equipped standard app, not the win 10 something. Mic style switch breaks the enhancements, have to reinstall drivers. I expect it will be solved.
• Keyboard is not that great. P1 has better. But it's ok after a while (where is my mech keyboard with clicky switches :-) ). Keys backlight is nice. I was worried about arrows, but it's not that bad during writing. I hate that home and end keys are overlapping F11, F12! This was the stupidest idea they could have. Home/End is essential during writing whatever. F11/F12 is essential for programming. I am using AutoHotkey to mitigate the problem (when not using external keyboard (, unfortunately you cannot easily remap keys for specific keyboard without using dirty hack and commercially expensive paid library).
• It's heavier than P1. I would expect a bit less.
• Connectors... In the end I don't need them that much anymore (bluetooth keyboard, mouse, headphones), but at least one USB-A and HDMI would be nice. For conference rooms or for vacation (connecting to hotel's TVs).
• The machine seems to have high quality assembly, seems as much better than P1 (every P1 unit had different color of display, different feeling and backlight of keyboard, a bit different level of noise/heat, electronic noise, for that expensive laptop it is unacceptable).
• Relatively sharp edges are not that smart. But it's not that annoying either.
• The laptop was bad smelling (plastic) at start (still a bit after two weeks). The box is probably the cause (our IT guys told me it is common). There is some recycled plastic from ocean in the box. It smells almost like the machine was running when in the box. If they used paper there would be no problem.

@blank: In the package you got small reduction from USB-C to HDMI and USB-A. If you use it, you have at least one USB port. Then I think modern LCDs with USB-C ports should also behave as USB hub so I don't think it's a problem. Also a dock works nicely.

@pb79: I have to strongly disagree. The dock works flawlessly. The machine is relatively quiet. In the same load it is much more silent than Thinkpad P1 (gen 1) (not that bad either). As mentioned in the review fans has no annoying pitch sound.
During writing code fan is mostly turned off. There is also Intel CPU power scheme update that should solve annoying turn on (1s)/turn off (5s) fan when connected to power source while on mid/lower load.

[slowan]

Until now everything looked great. But I have found my laptop second time turned off in the morning. I was worrying why? I put it to sleep...
The answer is... It uses only Standby (S0 Low Power Idle) connected mode. No standard S3 sleep mode!

Standby S0 mode is like smartphone standby mode, it allows to run programs in background like music player or timer, staying connected. It's probably ok for tablet/phone/whatever (actually not that much in case of W10) but for laptop with CPU with up to 80W peak TDP using 2 ventilators? It is more than horrible idea!

There is little to none control over if PC sleeps or do something or if it wakes up. You don't want to find your laptop overheated to 100°C in you backpack during flight. There is a battery...

It disqualifies the sleep option from use which also horrifies. You are left with hibernation mode. Every time you use it will not just take tens of seconds, but writes your RAM to SSD (in my case up to 64GB RAM). It means up to 46TB per year when used twice a day just for hibernation. Standard 512GB SSD has like 300TBW lifespan.

There was an option to switch back, but what I read Dell removed the force option from Bios and Microsoft removed the option in registry since Windows 10 2004H (registry CsEnabled=0). I tried to enable it and the laptop got stucked when put to sleep (keyboard still backlighted).

This is like nightmare. It is 2021, and you can't use standard sleep mode for this horsepower.

Dell... you just disqualified yourself from brands I am willing to buy or recommend since today! This is over line. I use computers for programming. Proffesionally. Laptop without standard sleep mode is like a toy. It's nice, but useless for serious usage. Hibernation is not the solution!

I don't understand why this information is not part of the review and there are no minus points for this. For me it's like -50.

[k]

Inaccurate LCD colours, hot and loud, unreliable shutdown and startup when working with the dock. Slow to boot, missing sleep mode. PC Laptops are pushed to their limits because they can't compete with apple in thinness, battery life and CPU performance. They make machines that look like Mac and on par on spec sheet, but simply don't work.

My third brand new Dell laptop in workplace in 1.5 years and all had some hardware issues. Really poor quality in electronics. They seem not know how to build a proper laptop in terms of hardware/reliability.

I'm a pro DTP worker, with 20+ years of experience with all sort of workstations. My MacBook Pro Early 2011 at home works better on so many levels. (Especially Colour accuracy and reliability).

If you unfortunately have to buy PC I recommend studying ThinkPads.

[Tam M]

We have just purchased these laptops and finding that the mic is bad quality making it difficult to hear people in meetings and the webcam is of poor quality.
Anyone else noticed this ?