Dell XPS 15z Review and price

So let's see how this premium product fares through our tests. The XPS 15z looks very stylish - reminds one of Apple's designs - and comes with a hardware configuration that looks really good on paper - this Dell XPS 15z unit we received is the higher spec'd of the two units available from Dell.  Dell's XPS range of laptops represents the company's top of the line products - the z series comes in a slimmer form factor than it's bulkier cousins.

The screen hinges are positioned in an area that is slightly depressed in relation to its surroundings. The rear of the laptop chassis is all so slightly raised - the screen is not located at the very edge of the laptop, but is placed just in front of the rear edge. The power button is centrally located above the keyboard, towards the top of the chassis, and centrally placed below the hinge - Dell sticks to a minimalist design with no other 'fancy' alternate-functionality keys located on the main chassis body other than the power button and the keyboard keys.

 The overall design of the unit is simple and very stylish - although, I did feel that the barrel-like hinge's appearance seemed to be out of sync with the sleek look of the rest of the laptop. The audio grilles have a diagonally patterned design - this design is also used for the exhaust vents that are located at the rear and at the top base area of the laptop. The XPS 15z has certain unique design choices, which adds to its distinctive look. The silver colour covers the thin backlid and the laptop's sides and base, with the grey finish being seen on the top chassis area - a black bezel borders the screen, providing some contrast to the comparatively light colouring of rest of the unit.  The Dell XPS 15z unit has an anodized aluminium casing and sports a silver-grey matte finish with chrome linings bordering the edges of the chassis as well as the touchpad - the colour choice once again reminds me of Apple's products.


 The laptop features 4 rubber stands at its base that are circular in shape and flat on their top section, and which consequently don’t cause any discomfort when keeping the laptop on your lap - as opposed to the more protruding stands seen on other laptops  The hinge has vertical lines etched on it, and one these lines lights up when the laptop is connected to the adapter - handy feature letting the user know whether the laptop is running on the battery or on the connected power supply. There is a button located at the left side of the laptop that, when pressed, indicates the level of the battery charge by accordingly lighting up five LED lights, that are located towards it's left side - if the battery charge is at 100 % all the lights light up and so on and so forth. The 15z's speakers are located at the top of the laptop chassis, positioned to the left and right of the keyboard.

 There is a 1.3MP webcam located at the top central section of the screen bezel. In terms of build quality, the laptop has a solid construction.  The XPS 15z's edges and corners are well rounded and smooth-edged and the unit weighs in at 2.5 kg.


 The Dell laptop also features Wi-Fi 802.11 n and Bluetooth 3.0 wireless connectivity. The power connector and Gigabit Ethenet port are located at the rear of the laptop - in my opinion a very handy design choice. On the right side of the chassis are located the slot-loading optical drive and headphone and microphone jacks.

 The laptop's left side has a HDMI port, Display port, USB/eSATA combo port, 2 USB 3.0 ports, and a multi-card reader. The 15z might not offer a large number of ports, but it does make up for it by providing for a varied level of functionality within the constraint of the number of ports offered.  The Dell XPS 15z features a dual core Intel 2nd generation Core i7-2640M 2.80-GHz processor, 8GB DDR3 RAM, Intel HD graphics and Nvidia GeForce GT 525M 2GB graphics card, and a 750GB (7200 RPM) hard drive.

 Other than having the rather However, Dell could have done a better job with the accompanying audio. You will have no problems whatsoever watching both 720p and 1080p HD videos. Moreover, do keep in mind that prolonged gaming can heat up the system. Running games shouldn't be that tricky a task for this machine - do keep in mind that playing the most recent titles should be done whilst keeping details and resolution slightly pulled to the lower-to-medium spectrum of settings, so as to enjoy an optimum gaming experience.

 When benchmarking FarCry 2 at 1366x768, DirectX 10 mode, AA 2x, and 'Ultra High' settings, the average frame rate recorded stood at 36.14 FPS. Also keep in mind that while you might feel awed at the 2GB of graphics RAM included in this system, that feature by itself doesn’t result in a performance boost. As such we ran the 3D Mark 06 test when the system was using only integrated and only discrete graphics - when using only Intel graphics, the system notched up a score of 4502, while using only the GT 525M card, the system scored 7376. The laptop uses Nvidia's Optimus technology which allows the system to switch between using the integrated and discrete graphics options as and when required. During synthetic testing, the laptop's hard disk recorded an average read speed of 95.0 MB/s and the laptop recorded a PC Vantage score of 8983.

 Getting through most processor and memory intensive processes, let alone your daily home and office productivity chores, should be a walk in the park for this laptop.  The Dell XPS 15z recorded a score of 137 on the Worldbench 6 benchmark, one of the highest scores we have seen in recent times - the only other unit that came closest to this score was the Dell Vostro 3450.