As someone rocking an XPS 13 as my daily driver, I've always kept a somewhat jealous eye on Dell's XPS 15. It boasts the same InfinityEdge display, great keyboard and slim design, but packs in full-size USB ports and discrete Nvidia graphics. Today it became even more difficult not to pull the trigger on the XPS 15. That's because Dell is gracing new models with two crucial hardware upgrades, and fixing what is perhaps the laptop's only weakness.
Let's cut right to the chase: goodbye nose cam! Dell made the bold decision to relocate the webcam to the bottom of the display in order to reduce the overall bezel size of its XPS laptops, but apparently the company has had a change of heart. As The Verge reports, Dell is moving the XPS 15 webcam back to the top of the display, as it did last year with the revised XPS 13.
I rarely do any video conferencing, but this is a welcome change and shows Dell clearly listening to its community.
Now, on to what power users and performance junkies care about: hardware upgrades. Dell will introduce two significant upgrades with the forthcoming XPS 15, most notably the optional of Intel's 9th generation Core i9 processors. Moving from a 7th-gen quad core CPU to the latest 6-core powerhouse from Intel represents a dramatic performance boost, and that will be visible in both benchmarks and the overall perceived speed of the system.
It gets better, especially for the gamers in the house. The next XPS 15 will transition from Nvidia's GTX 1050 to an optional GTX 1650, delivering what Nvidia claims is roughly 70% more gaming performance at 1080p versus the last-gen GPU. It should also represent an improvement in power efficiency over the GTX 1050.
Dell also tells The Verge that despite these significant upgrades, the new XPS 15 chassis will "be much the same" as its current model.
The new XPS 15 ships in June and, according to the report, should carry roughly the same baseline price tag.
