Is Dell XPS 15 good?

I'm looking for a laptop that can help in carrying out daily tasks and also support mild gaming and software like photoshop. I'm a blogger so I require photoshop for my work. My choice is the Dell XPS 15 9560. Will it work fine for me? Also can give suggestions if you find a better option.

 

You will LOVE the xps 15 for that kind of work. Its probably the best notebook for your line of work. I am in the same field at the moment and I am just using a inspiron 13 5000 2 in 1 with some upgrades and I do photo/video editing just fine. Do you travel a lot? if so, have a look at a dell 2 in 1 solution. Makes usage on planes much better...

 

When people ask about the xps 15, how do you know which specific model they are referring to such as 9550 or 9560 etc?

 

The 9560 is pretty good. There is a lot of power in a very small package so you will face some thermal challenges.

Read the threads here to get a good few on some of the quirks and issues. You want to do a good check for defects when you receive it; those will give you an idea where to look.

The 9560 perform much better if you do a clean install. Repasting the CPU/GPU & undervolting the CPU will unlock a lot more performance for $10.

The 9560 will throttle at extremes unless you can execute some serious mods (see iUnlock's posts); only a few people have done those full mods successfully.

 

I think I have a similar need like you, I'm looking for a laptop for productivity, CaptureOne Pro, and Adobe Premiere Pro.

I believe Photoshop doesn't benefit so much from multiple cores, like video rendering, 3D animation or CAD computation would.

I have seen a lot of mixed feedback on the Dell XPS 15, mainly quality issues, it seems a bit of a hit and miss, so make sure you buy from a place where you can send it back if it has problems.

Beside the quality issues, the main problems are around thermal management, it cannot keep up with sustained workloads of 30+ minutes for the CPU and GPU running at peak, and throttles back the performance.

If you are willing to do undervolting and/or repasting, you can improve a lot the performance.
Strangely, if you do sustained workloads, probably you will get a better result from the i5 chips due the less thermal throttling.

I think I would rather go for a Lenovo X1 Carbon Extreme, similar specs and screen size/specs, but no annyoing webcam placement, and two ssd slots, much better keyboard.
Another alternative I see for myself is the Lenovo P52.

Here's a critical video:

 

@olee22 I have the XPS15 9570 top config and have had it for a few months now. Mostly ok with regards to throttling etc (for my needs which are mostly "burst mode") but constant problems together with the dockingstatin Dell TB16. Received a Thinkpad P52 a few days ago to compare. Have not really gotten around to any real benches yet, but it is obvious these are really 2 different kind of laptops. Even though the P52 has been slimmed down from the past, its still MUCH bulkier than the XPS15. I think that you should really need that extra performance for it to be your choice (assuming there are not other problems like my XPS15 crashing all the time). There are ofcourse several advantages of the Thinkpad as well, which is why lots of people obsess over them, but if you where one of those, you would never consider the XPS15 to begin with

Of course, with the Thinkpad P1 and the Thinkpad X1E the competition for "thin and light 15" performance laptops" have really heated up (ha ha).