Dell XPS 17 9710 Laptop review: a workstation that hides its game well

Almost entirely in aluminum, the design of the Dell XPS 17 is particularly sober. The only small fancy, an XPS logo under the PC with a mirror effect.

The opening of the 17-inch screen reveals a black keyboard on a black background without a numeric keypad, something quite surprising on this format of laptop. Dell preferred to integrate two huge perforated grilles for the speakers on each side of the keyboard, in addition to the two others already present under the chassis, for a total of four. The rim of the keyboard is made of carbon imitation plastic.

The typing of the backlit keyboard is good and does not suffer from any particular flaw. We notice in the upper right corner the power button which also acts as a fingerprint reader compatible with Windows Hello.
The huge touchpad requires some adaptation time to take full advantage of its entire surface. Centered on the chassis, it blithely exceeds the width of the space bar. The glide is fluid and the gestures are well taken into account. We have noticed, however, that pressure is not taken into account at the end of the left and right clicks, even though there is audible feedback. You have to get slightly closer to the center to properly activate the clicks.

The connection makes no compromises and offers four Thunderbolt 4 ports, an SD card reader and the classic mini-jack socket. However, we would have liked to find a USB-A port to ensure compatibility with certain devices without having to go through a USB hub. Especially since the charger is in USB-C format and therefore occupies one of these four ports.

Wireless connectivity is provided by an Intel Killer AX1650 chip which is none other than an AX200 sprinkled with marketing. It allows you to benefit from Wi-Fi 6 at 2400 Mb / s and Bluetooth 5.2. The tiny 720p webcam sits in the very thin top edge of the screen and delivers an image that’s particularly lacking in detail, even in excellent lighting conditions.

Cooling is provided by two very large fans arranged on either side of the keyboard. The hot air is evacuated under the hinge of the screen by two large outlets.

So, after our usual encoding session, we measured a temperature of 49 ° C between the two air outlets at the bottom of the screen. The hot spot on the keyboard is logically located between the two fans and reaches 43 ° C.
During this same encoding, we noted a sound level of 42.9 dB. Noise nuisance is perceived as a heavy breath that will obviously be heard by your office neighbors during processing or rendering; however, the computer remains perfectly silent outside of heavy loads.

Disassembly requires the removal of 8 Torx screws which are particularly painful to unscrew despite the appropriate tools. It is then necessary to unclip the shell once again particularly well retained, mainly because of a rod located at the level of the XPS logo.

Too bad the opening is so complicated. © Digital

The unclipped shell gives access to the two memory modules, two M.2 slots (only one of which is occupied) and the battery. Unfortunately, the wifi card is soldered to the right of the motherboard and cannot be replaced in favor of a Wi-Fi 6E card, for example. The enormous 97 Wh battery is also perfectly removable.

The Dell XPS 17-9710 that we tested has an Intel Core i7-11800H processor (8 cores / 16 threads, 4.6 GHz), 16 GB of RAM and a 1 TB NVMe SSD. The graphics part is entrusted to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 equipped with a 70 W TGP. It is not there for its video game performances but to accelerate the processing times of creative software.

Processor performance index. © Digital

The performance of the Core i7-11800H is top notch. Its index measured at 123 exceeds that of the Ryzen 7 5800H embedded in the VivoBook 14X Oled. The Core i7 thus benefits from the excellent cooling allowed by the size of the Dell XPS 17 chassis.

Performance index by activating processing via the GPU. © Digital

By activating the acceleration of processing via the RTX 3060, the XPS 17 closely follows the Lenovo Legion 7S which also has an RTX 3060, but with a TGP of 100 W. Note that for the calculation of this index, we use Blender 2.9.3, Premiere and Photoshop. At the moment, Apple’s M1s do not benefit from GPU acceleration under Blender and are therefore at a disadvantage.
Since the Dell XPS 17 is intended for content creators, we have not subjected it to our full gaming battery. However, its performance will approach that of the MSI GF75 Thin with a 75 W RTX 3060 and which has the same screen diagonal.

A word about the onboard SSD by Dell: it can reach 3.1 Gb / s in reading and 2.6 Gb / s in writing. We did not notice any slowdowns when transferring large files, for example with our video rushes used for the encoding test in Premiere.

Our test Dell XPS 17-9710 comes with an IPS panel displaying no less than 3840 x 2400 px. It is equipped with a tactile overlay with a brilliant rendering. Dell also offers a non-touch version on this model, but limited to a definition of 1920 x 1200 px.

The thin borders allow a screen occupancy ratio of 90% to be achieved. © Digital

Dell delivers a near-perfect copy with its InfinityEdge UHD + panel, as it likes to call it. The contrast is particularly high on this IPS panel (1984: 1), while the average for this type of panel is rather around 1200: 1.
The maximum brightness (474 cd / m²) is not far from the promised 500 cd / m², but the low reflectance of the panel (25.7% of reflected light) makes it possible to be satisfied with it.
Colorimetry is also perfectly mastered, proof of this is the delta E of less than 3 (1.5 measured), a pledge of imperceptible colorimetric drifts. Finally, the temperature is a bit high (6869 K), but sufficient for a video standard set at 6500 K.

From left to right, the gamma curve, the color temperature and the delta E. © Les Numériques

As we noted above, the Dell XPS 17 has four speakers (two under the chassis and two on each side of the keyboard). When listening, the maximum sound volume is high and makes it easy to watch a series 2 or 3 m from the screen. The rendering is slightly metallic, with piercing highs and absent lows. We would have liked to hear a slightly warmer rendering to take full advantage of it.

The Dell XPS 17 has four speakers, two of which are like this. © Digital

Attention, by default Dell activates in its MaxxAudio software a follow-up of the face supposed to adapt the sound rendering to your movements. This mode completely disturbs the rendering and we therefore strongly advise you to deactivate it.

The headphone output offers excellent performance. However, its low output level will not make it possible to take advantage of high impedance headphones.

Obviously, with a 17-inch panel, which is also tactile, the XPS 17 is bulky. Our version weighs 2.42 kg (2.21 kg for the non-touch version). It measures 37 cm wide by 24 cm deep; the thickness is however limited to 1.9 cm. The 135W charger adds 488g to the set, for a total of almost 3kg. With an adapted backpack, the Dell XPS 17 remains perfectly transportable, even daily.

In terms of autonomy, with its 97 Wh battery, the Dell XPS 17 lasted 7 h 30 min under our usual protocol (Netflix under Chrome at 200 cd / m²). An honorable result which could have been better if Dell offered an option to deactivate the GeForce RTX 3060.

1 thought on “Dell XPS 17 9710 Laptop review: a workstation that hides its game well”