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Full user review
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25 out of 26 people found this review helpful
5.0 stars
"In one word: PERFECT"
Pros: Looks, performance, weight, battery life and thermal effeciency
Cons: Price and thats really about it.
Summary: The XPS Gen 2 is a stellar machine and one I've opted to order. Simply put, it offers the best gaming laptop in the industry. It features light weight, 2+ hr battery life, low heat production and top notch gaming performance. Others may come here and try to defend their respective brands (e.g. Alienware/Sager/Hypersonic) but those DTRs all lack in gaming performance when put up against XPS 2. Not only that, they are hot as an oven, barely have 40 mins of battery life on a throttled cpu and weigh 12 lb+. So in essence, they aren't really laptops, but rather SFF PC's with an lcd attached.
If you want a gaming laptop that you can carry with you that looks great, light weight, won't burn you and has top-of-the-line gaming performance, the XPS 2 is the only choice.Updated
Dell right now has an ongoing problem with their LCD units. The 9200's suffered from a "sparkle" effect that created disortions when viewing a white or green colored background. This problem has now unfortunately appeared in the 9300 WUXGA 17" Truelife screens as well. It seems Dell uses two brands of LCDs, Samsung and Philips-LG. The latter are the ones that are causing most of the problems so it comes down to luck of the draw for the user which shouldn't be the case.
There is a chance Dell may be shipping perfect XPS 2 test units to reviewers to garner better ratings, but since nobody besides a handful of reviewers have seen the machine, its possible Dell may use a better display for their top of the line machine. Then again they may just stick LG displays on it and all of them will sparkle. For now I gave it a 10 rating based on specs alone but I will be sure to come back here and update my opinion if my unit has the infamous LG screen with sparkles. If that turns out to be the case, I'll definitely advise everyone to AVOID dell at all costs.Updated
I received the XPS 2 on 3/31 and have had sometime to play with it now. I'll quickly list some pros/cons and then final thoughts and overall rating:
Pros:
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-It's fast, VERY fast. Best 3DMark05 score I got so far was 5394 and another person at notebookforums.com has managed to score 6000 (albeit with an OC'd card).
-Sound: Fantastic, I'm not audiophile but this is definitely the best sounding laptop I've had the pleasure of using. Everything is crisp and the subwoofer is a nice touch.
-Keyboard: Nice and sturdy with no flex.
-Fans: Are rarely active and when they are, they are very quiet even under heavy gaming use.
-Battery life: I've managed over 2 hrs while having the brightness level at 6/8 and having a dvd playing, not bad at all!
-And finally the LCD: I ended up with an LG and it turned out to have fantastic colors.
Cons:
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-LCD: I listed it as a pro but it also has a downside. As I mentioned in my previous comment, Dell had an ongoing issue with their lcd units in regards to sparkling. The unit I have fortunately does not have much of a problem with "sparkling" but it does suffer from a little bit of light "leakage" at the top and bottom of the screen which is somewhat disappointing.
-Dell's overclock restrictions: I'm really irritated over the fact that Dell decided to lockout the 6800 Go Ultra's bios so that end users cannot overclock it. The only known method thus far is to use the auto overclock feature built into the nvidia drivers but it is far from reliable. I'm also irritated by the fact that they purposely use PLL's that prohibit overclocking of the CPU. The video card's GPU runs between 52C-63C during gaming so there's no reason mild overclocking should not be allowed, especially since nvidia has built-in clock throttling to prevent damage to the GPU.
Overall Score: 8.2, it could've been a perfect system but the lack of overclocking and ongoing problems with the display bring down its overall score.
- 6 replies to this review
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Great review !! Our Laptop is a "10" !! I've had "Zero" problems ! This "Baby" plays games great !! Everything else works like a "charm" !!
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The upgrade from a 2 to a 2.13ghz M 770 is $300... will it make that much of a difference in the system, or is that overpriced?
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You said the sound quality is excellent... do you mean the built-in sound quality, or did you upgrade with the Audigy 2zs? Would you recommend it?
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I bought a "gaming" computer because of my application - Autocad. By the time I tricked out an inspiron with added ram etc I would pay more for it, this xps has it all. It turns heads wherever I go. I have to be sure to lock it down. It is not heavy either for all the power that it has. I give it a nine only because you one must clean the screen almost daily. Other than that, I love it!
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Wow, thats ridiculous about the two LCD's, thanks for pointing that out! Since im going through small business to buy it, i'll see if I can specify....
As for the limit on overclocking, they probably feel it will guarantee a longer longevity for the laptop and eliminate relatively short term warranty usaage....
But thanks a lot m8! -
Thank you a lot for those valuable information.
