XPS 13 - One of the worst touchpads ever

Input lag is ridiculous
No back/forward gestures

What were they thinking???


Someone please tell me they are releasing better drivers for this thing.

 

Pretty much every review I have read on the internet is saying the complete opposite. Are you using Windows 7?, as I have heard that using Windows 8 seems to make a dramatic difference in the XPS 13 touchpad performance.

Take a look at what forum member Dellienware had to say about the XPS 13 touchpad: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...lay-owners-thread.769261/page-20#post-9911886

 

If you're suing Chrome, have you tried swiping back/forward on the touchscreen?
It works pretty well.

Have you tried gestures in IE, while in Metro mode? Swiping an gestures usually work in that mode.

 

1. Input lag exists as a way to make sure that random clicks are not registered while you type. You can actually mess around with the settings for this one, to make it so that as SOON as you touch it, it will activate and work. But I would not suggest this as you will constantly face random touchpad registering clicks while you are typing. It's a trade off thing.

2. I feel you. Microsoft integration left some more detailed settings out the door. I tried installing Win 7 Synaptics driver, but nothing happens after I install - No way to actually launch Synaptics.


Sometimes when you are trying to physically click, instead of clicking the spot, the cursor may slightly move, etc. There are such little problems that make you wonder this isn't the "perfect" touchpad.

But compared to previous gen, I would say that the improvement is very very delightful. More way to go? Definitely. I think MS and Dell will use some inputs with these new precision touchpads and come up for more settings. Maybe Win 10 will..

Meanwhile, get to use your touchscreen. It is what it is and will actually save you battery life by.. A LOT...

 

I don't have the touchscreen model...just the 1080p matte version

I am using Windows 8.1 which was included on the machine.

It's literally impossible to make precise movements with the touchpad because of the input lag. I need to move my finger like a few millimeters before anything registers, and then when it does, the cursor flies across the screen. I hope I'm explaining it properly, because it drives me crazy. I'm coming from a Samsung Series 9 which didn't have the BEST touchpad, but I didn't have to choose between random clicks while typing and massive input lag.

I tried messing around with the couple of settings microsoft threw in the mouse settings window, but I couldn't see any difference whatsoever.

EDIT - Side note, I went into the BIOS and the touchpad works perfectly. So I know it's capable of being good...they just need to release some proper drivers

EDIT 2 - Also, I notice that the trackpad is receiving input in Windows with my small swipes: after a while of inactivity the keyboard will turn off. My small touches will wake up the keyboard, but the cursor does not move at all.

 

My understanding is the touchpad is controlled directly by 8.1 rather than a driver (which shows as from 2006 in device manager). In this clip the presenter tells developers how to enable the precision touchpad in their apps. I would think a Windows update would address some issues.

 

Yes, it appears the touchpad is completely controlled by the OS now. I spent some time yesterday finding a way to turn that functionality off. I used a registry change to tell windows the touchpad was not a precision pad. I then uninstalled the driver for the touchpad in device manager, and installed the windows 7 synaptics version manually (specifically chose that driver, turned off digital signing, etc)

The synaptics driver installed, the device started, and the touchpad then said: synaptics touchpad in device manager, but the synaptics software would crash every time I tried to run it. Tracking seemed worse than it did with the "precision driver" installed, and there was no configuration. I'm now at a loss for what to try.

Note: I tried this with Dell's windows 7 driver and the generic synaptics driver off their website.

 

The precision touchpad seems to function only with 8.1. It would be interesting to see how the touchpad performs under Windows 10, which might be the easiest way to get updated software, but its too early to try. I'm OK with the touchpad now, but I'm using IE, as Chrome seemed off.

 

It's strange that a lot of the reviewers called this touchpad Macbook-like, and I believed them because most reviewers are Macbook fanboys who still believe the Macbook Pro is a mobile workstation-class machine. I wonder why the touchpad got praised so much by the reviewers only to receive a luke-warm reception on here.

Hopefully someone can post some settings or tweaks that can get the touchpad working closer to what the reviewers say they experienced.

 

The touchpad isn't "bad" as people could say. I haven't used Macbook, so hard for me to truly compared. But compared to every Dell laptop since 2009, which I owned and used majority models, definitely the best touchpad.

Issue is with Microsoft again ignoring power users and not providing enough settings. But this is their first step so we just gotta wait out for more updates..

 

I agree--the touchpad certainly isn't bad--It is easily in the top 5 best touchpads I have used on a Windows machine. The macbook experience is certainly better (while in OS X...not bootcamp)

Like you said though, Microsoft is taking a page out of Apple's book and choosing which functionality we want, making it work well and ignoring the folks that want uber-customization. At this point though, I would prefer the customization rather than the super great tracking.

 

Responsiveness, accuracy, and smoothness is definitely the best from a Windows laptop I've ever owned. This is what the very MacBook like claims come from I think, and it is true. I've owned several different Macbooks in the past 3 years, currently still have a current gen MacBook Air 13. The only real fault is the somewhat stiff physical click, which is not a big deal for me as I tap instead of click 99% of the time. The other being the lack of forward/backward on the desktop as the OP pointed out. Three finger forward/back does work in the full screen IE. I don't exactly know what's going on, but there's a certain disconnect between the desktop and the "metro" portion of the OS.

I played with couple other laptops at Costco this weekend. The Dell Inspiron 13 and an Acer Aspire Switch 10, oh and the Surface Pro 3 with the type cover. All have precision touchpads, and all worked similarly well as the XPS13, and yes all lack forward/backward on the desktop. I was a bit surprised the Inspiron 13 is equipped with precision touchpad. I still have my Inspiron 11 (not for long), which is almost identical to the Inspiron 13, but it lacks precision touchpad. In fact it has the worst touchpad I've ever used.

 

So what am I exactly doing wrong?

As I said, in the BIOS, it does NOT suffer from the same problems it does in Windows, so I know exactly what is happening. Am I just overly sensitive? Does anyone else have trouble trying to make small movements with the touchpad?

 

I am with you brother. There is nothing we can do but pray that Microsoft puts out something better...

 

The problem with this touchpad is that it "jumps" whenever you lift your finger, so if you move the cursor over a link / photo/ file and lift your finger to right click it will jump to something else and you will accidentally click something else. This really needs to be improved as it is very annoying and it is not precision at all. If you work with Photoshop with this trackpad it is almost impossible as there are so many mistakes. I never had any issues with the old XPS 13 with its Synaptics Drivers which were smooth and you could do precise editing with it.

 

This exactly. I too notice that it moves when I lift the finger. Have to be very gentle and lift directly off the pad. I can barely properly seek through a video without misfiring left and right. Dang near makes me wish I had the touch screen model. I do have faith that it is an easy fix though.

 

I know exactly what you're talking about, and I absolutely hate this, when the mouse cursor moves ever so slight when I lift. Last one I had this issue was on a Lenovo Thinkpad Twist. I absolutely do no have this issue with my XPS13.

 

how is the trackpad working with firefox?

 

how is the trackpad working with firefox?

 

Two finger touch scrolling is buttery smooth when using IE, but is jerky and rough with Firefox. The smooth scrolling option in Firefox doesn't seem to help. Only upping the number of lines scrolled in the Windows mouse options seems to make it slightly better, but it is still nowhere near as smooth as it is when using IE. Don't know why.

 

strange...do you have the signature edition or did you buy it from dell website?

 

Yes, thank you for pointing this out. Two finger scrolling in Chrome is a disaster. Unusable in my opinion.

But in IE, it's pretty perfect. This alone will get me to start using IE again.
Truth is, Chrome is a notorious resource hog. I know the Surface Pro 3 crowd have noticed battery life improvements by switching to IE.
IE is to Windows as Safari is to Mac OS.

Looks like I'm back on the IE train. Now I need to find to get IE to default a Zoom setting.

 

Bought from Dell, though I doubt there would be any difference to ones bought from the Microsoft Store. The XPS13's touchpad uses Windows 8.1's built-in "precision touchpad" drivers from Microsoft.

 

So true on IE's scrolling. It's buttery smooth...but zero extensions and plugins. I don't think I can go without some of my chrome extensions...

Especially true since there are no forward and back gestures in desktop IE. The crxMouse extension is a tolerable work around, but only in chrome AFAIK. Such a huge bummer.

 

Exactly! It's annoying as hell. Sometimes, I'm scrolling in Firefox and it start zooming out and I can not stop it, or it just stops scrolling altogether. With IE, this doesn't happen. Scrolling and zooming are well distinguished. This is a huge bummer! I don't know what to do with this. Guess I'll have to scroll using the touch screen...

 

Hmmm.... I currently have a Macbook Air and have been looking to get a new laptop. I was thinking of getting the XPS 13 but based on this thread, I will have to pass. I refuse to use IE, and it seems like the gestures only seem to work on that.

 

No...my beloved Alienware M17x R2 which I am typing this on right now has THE WORST TRACKPAD EVER! How could your XPS 13 be worse? : )

 

I'll chime in since I've been using Windows 10. The trackpad isn't the worst ever but it's not Macbook-like, like others have said. In terms of tracking and smoothness of the physical trackpad, it's great. If you are used to scrolling with two fingers for everything you do, it's only so-so. In IE and Windows, it's fine, but in Chrome and Firefox, it's awful. I'm constantly having to wait for the entire webpage to load in Chrome before even attempting to scroll. Needless to say, it's frustrating and I refuse to use IE permanently. With other laptops(and I've had many), I've always been critical of the trackpad. But I've always had some fallback drivers to use, in case the manufacturer screwed things up. In short, if the laptop I got had an Elan trackpad, I could always install a certain driver that I used in the past that I know works well. In the case with the XPS 13, we have no choice.

In Windows 8, there is no way to customize two finger swipes, let alone three and four. I'm personally used to swipe gestures that are similar to a Mac. Two up/down/left/right for scrolling, three left/right for navigating in browser, four up for task switching and four down for minimizing to desktop. MS has no such customization in Win 8, and there's no backup driver - so we're stuck with nothing. Because of this, I honestly can say I like the trackpad on my GS60 over this, and I rate that one as mediocre. At least I can put the driver I want on it and use the gestures I'm used to(albeit not the smoothest trackpad surface to deal with)

Windows 10 preview claims to have more gestures. It does...sorta. In touchpad settings, I get one option: three finger drags either "switch apps" or "nothing". So three left/right is a quick switcher, three down minimizes to desktop and three up restores. Three up again goes into a graphical task switcher where you can add additional desktops and can switch between all open apps. This is very similar to what Asus already does and what Mac has been doing for years. I expect they will add more, but it's frusterating now because I'm at the mercy of MS and not Dell, Elan or Synaptics. MS will probably never bring this to Win 7, 8, 8.1 and who knows how slow they will be to update Win 10. Third party tweaks will be the way to go if the software is open, but I don't think we can count on that.

TLDR? XPS 13 trackpad is not Macbook-like. It's missing half a dozen gestures that make Mac trackpads so desirable. It's smooth and not jumpy, I'll give it that.

 

Darn .. After read all of these ... I changed my mind to buy XPS13 now ...
and wait for wds 10 then let see if it works better .. "out of the box" ..

Thanks for the input Bros .

 

On windows, it depends on what application you are running. It's not that good on Google Chrome, but I found that the touchpad is fxcking PERFECT on Internet Explorer.

Yes I was THE original guy complaining about the touchpad, but the more I use, the more I am impressed with what Win 8 is trying to do. Yes it is app specific, but they are getting there.

Overall, this is single handedly the best touchpad I used for PC. And I used A LOT of PCs..

 

Kind of tired of these comments talking about the web browser or scrolling. The problem I am experiencing has absolutely nothing to do with what browser you are using or scrolling. The problem exists everywhere inside of Windows. The problem does not exist in the Bios. As I said before, you need to move your finger along the surface an inordinate amount before it detects the touch and the cursor moves. This makes small, precise panning with the touchpad impossible, despite the fact that it's a Microsoft "precision" touchpad. The problem is ****ty drivers. I willing to repeat this as many times as I have to.

 

Yeah, sorry I didn't touch on that. I'm also having the same issue as you. It wasn't as severe to me until earlier today when I was trying to do something with a CAD drawing. Normally I use a mouse for CAD but the trackpad can be used in a pinch. Sometimes I need to do small precise movements, which is usually easy to do. With the XPS 13, I'm unfortunately getting a short delay before it actually moves though. And yes, my delay was switched to off in touchpad settings, but I'm convinced that setting has absolutely nothing to do with what the issue is.

The problem is there's no sensitivity setting for the touchpad. So light touches don't register right away and there's a split second delay. So there's another thing MS needs to fix in their drivers. For comparison, I have 4 laptops in my house right now: XPS 13, Acer S7-191, Asus Q501LA and an MSI GS60. For each, I have the best known drivers that I have come across for each brand(Synaptics and Elan). The XPS 13 is the only one that isn't registering my light movements right away. The other pointers respond immediately. I was able to go into the UEFI for the XPS 13 and it moved just as it should. So I think we can be 100% certain the MS drivers are crap.

For comparison-sake, I can rank all my trackpads in my house by category. This is only useful if you've actually used these laptops, but it can give you an idea of where I think the XPS 13 trackpad stands against the competition. I'm also going to say, without a doubt, that the Macbook trackpad would rank number one in all of these categories. It truly is the gold standard.

From best to worst
Sensitivity/response: GS60, Q501LA, S7-191, XPS 13
Accuracy/tracking: XPS 13(by far), GS60, S7-191, Q501LA(very jumpy)
Gesture support and customization: Q501LA(Asus gesture support), GS60(Samsung Elan), S7-191(Samsung Elan), XPS 13(Microsooft)
Trackpad texture/physical smoothness: XPS 13(so smooth), S7-191, Q501LA, GS60(plasticky feel), Goldenboy's M17x(scaly alien skin)

 

Those who have issues with touchpad sensitivity. Follow my instructions to improve your trackpad. From the Control Panel > Mouse Properties > Pointer Options > Select Mouse Speed option: slow -------------fast I selected the fastest option than the default.

Enabling Touch Events in chrome. Go to chrome://flags/ and Enable Touch Events.

On another note, the signature edition that the MS Store sells comes with no bloatware.

 

All that does is increase pointer speed - it has nothing to do with sensitivity. Even with it all the way up, there's still a split second delay from when I lightly move my finger and from when the pointer actually moves. Best way to see the difference is to do what stilljammin suggested - In Windows, barely touch the touchpad with your finger tip and perform the lightest swipe possible and check the response. Then go into the UEFI and do the same thing. It's night and day. All it does is prove the touchpad is perfectly capable of being awesome but is plagued by a bad driver that MS controls.

 

Really? I had never heard that. Do you need to turn the touchpad off, or just not use it? Can you give a brief explanation as why this is so? If you were doing a session of just writing, no wifi, bluetooth or other battery eating apps, same screen brightness, about what % battery life savings/extension might one achieve? Thanks.

You might want to try a FF extension called "Yet Another Smooth Scrolling" [sic]. I don't own the XPS-13 (lurking because I'm interested) but it has made a big difference for me on past laptops. A little complicated to adjust settings and not much documentation about it - trial and error :/

 

It's the windows thing. Using touchpad bumps up the cpu usage momentarily. Put up task manager and see for yourself. Win 8.1 is better than Win 7, but still, that using of touchpad spikes up cpu usage..

 

The input lag experienced with small light movements is making me hate this laptop.

It's a 13" 1920x1080 screen. Everything is small and only millimeters in width/height. I can't target anything precisely if my cursor is beside the object already. Not much a precision touchpad if you ask me.

I'd love to see a fix (or workaround) for this or at least options to turn the delay off.

The cursor jump when lifting your finger is super annoying too, but that I can live with. The input delay makes this touchpad frustrating as hell.

 

If there was no delay what would happen every time your palm brushed the trackpad while typing?

 

There's no delay on my other laptops and they are able to detect when I'm typing just fine. Touch sensitivity and palm sensitivity are two different settings you can adjust, usually. In these settings, we get neither.

 

My girlfriend has the Asus x205 (a $200 netbook with a large touchpad) which uses Asus Smart Gesture and it works perfectly. No lag AND it knows when my palm is touching the touchpad, scrolling is smoother too. My Alienware m13x worked the same way too. I honestly don't know how the Microsoft Precision Touchpad is getting so much praise, I noticed this lag the minute I unboxed this laptop and have been desperately looking for a solution since.

 

Do you guys have MS Signature or Dell variants? Just curious.

 

I have ms

 

I have the MS Signature. Do they use different hardware or drivers?

Do people with the Dell variant have the touchpad lag issue as well?

 

I bought mine from Dell.com. I got the $900 i5 version with 128gb and 4 gb

 

I got it from Dell. Called them up for the Win 8.1 installationo USB. Got it the next day and reinstalled the next day.

All in all, really does not matter. Just uninstall a few programs that come with Dell's version. No biggie people.

 

What is driving me crazy about the touchpad is that when I raise mi finger the pointer moves away from the place where it was with the finger down. This is definitivelly the most annoying thing.

 

My heart goes out to you - all! I dont know how you can put up with that. Would be a total deal breaker for me. What is it with Dell and their masterpieces with fatal flaws? And what is it with reviewers who miss them??

 

This will give me 1 more reason to wait for the next "Masterpiece" with Wds 10 .

 

For personal reasons, I would prefer if you would rephrase: "I bought mine from MS," etc. Hard to imagine an electronics company named "colon cancer," but Microsoft does have an unfortunate acronym. Hope you don't find me annoyingly PC; hits close to home - when I first glanced at your post my heart skipped a beat - got same email from my best friend 15 yrs ago; 14.7 yrs ago we lost her. Way outside the norm for quickness, but it's never kind.

Ok, let's get back to dumping on Dell! What a load of crap this bloody thing is when you can't get the cursor to stay where you left it before you lifted your finger from the freakin trackpad!

 

Having only used laptops very really in the past I actually don't mind this trackpad. The delay only seems to occur if you want to gently move the cursor. What I do find odd and not sure if this is the trackpad, laptop or my eyes but sometimes I completely lose track of where the cursor actually is and the white makes it very hard to find on web pages and documents.