2022 Dell XPS 15 9520 3.5K OLED laptop review: Skip or buy?

[surplusEfect]

Does Mini-LED always have PWM?

Till today, all MINILEDs from Apple has PWM, bad screen from the health point of view.

[y.v.]

I would love to see the test with 1920X1200 screen. Much more reasonable option for 15 inches and 3050. Hope It is same as in previous version(matte IPS with 100%sRGB). The screen ratio is excellent for photo editing, sad there are so few manufaturers using screens alike...

[Polyphonie]

Does Mini-LED always have PWM?

Till today, all MINILEDs from Apple has PWM, bad screen from the health point of view.

Except the MiniLED on the MacBook Pro and iPad Pro has a much higher PWM rate of 15-20kHz compared to the 0.6kHz on the OLED used by Dell. 0.6kHz (60Hz) is very much detectable by anyone but at over 15,000 Hz, it's hardly detectable unless you're a fly.

[RobertJasiek]

Nevertheless, some become immediately ill from 350kHz PWM.

[Serf Peters]

I was given a 9520 FHD+
I have TWO Dell XPS 9570 3.5K touch laptops.
ARE the screens compatible or switchable ???
any comments?

[Ján Halaša]

I had a Dell 9520 i5 (no dedicated graphics), so maybe someone will find my review useful. I was very much impressed with it. Its fans were quiet even under load. I benchmarked it with Cinebench R23. The singlecore score was 1700 and the best multicore was 11800, which is very close to the i7 version. But I think the most optimal setting was the quiet mode - the score dropped only to 10500, but I could hardly ever hear the fans. The interesting thing was, that in Windows "Balanced power mode" with the during the single core tests, the thread scheduler preferred efficiency cores and the score was just 1500. I had to switch it to "Best performance".

I also tried running Linux (Ubuntu 22.10). It worked well, just the subwoofer didn't work (it's hard to write a driver for it) and the touchpad scrolling was too fast (general problem with Linux). There was just S2 sleep and hibernation supported - no suspend to RAM (S3 sleep) even with the latest 1.10 BIOS. When in S2 sleep, the laptop draind around 10% of battery in 10 hours, but there were no problems with it (waking up, fans running, being too hot ...).

The last thing I was worried about was the screen brightness, since I have sensitive eyes and usually run my monitor with low brightness. The FullHD screen is very bright at 100% - you can light a room with it when in dark. But at 20% it's just fine during the day and at 10% during the night. The screen doesn't turn off when set to 0%.

The build quality was really nice and the sound quality in Windows was the best I have ever heard from a notebook.

So I think this lowest configuration is a great choice for people who need CPU power but not a dedicated GPU. Especially if you need a lot of RAM or storage space, since you can put your own sticks inside (both RAM modules and 2 M.2 SSDs).

[Earl Robb]

 Bought this model direct from Dell.

The XPS 9520 is Absolutely the worse computer I have ever owned and I have been using computers since the early 90's

After 3 months of use the screen started blinking like it was going to sleep. It start doing it once a day then went to every 5 min over time. I spent over 100 hours trying to resolve this issue with their help desk. Essentially 50% of the time I have had the computer I have not been able to work.

I have had 2 docking stations. 3 motherboards, onsite tech, OS reinstall, shipped to resolution center. Issue not resolved. Since it was over a month old they would not replace. So they shipped me a refurbished laptop. That lasted a week.

New(refurbished) XPS 9520 new problem. Desktop appearance will change every 5 to 10  reboots. Icon's too far apart on desktop  in if  there is a popup task for  settings. Its like there should be another icon between them. Also the solid background color I choose will go to black. So I have started the process over. First up they want to reinstall the OS. I don't have an infinite amount of time to work on this. ALL I WANT IS A WORKING COMPUTER. Its hard to get a job as a web developer without a computer.

If you have purchased this computer you should extend your warranty immediately. I dont understand why dell cannot fix or provide me with a computer that works more than three months. Well the latest attempt only worked a week.

I have used multiple platforms in my 25 year career as a web developer and this is ABSOLUTELY hands down the worse product I have ever seen or heard of.