Last summer I bought a new laptop because my ASUS K501UX was literally falling apart. This new laptop was the Dell XPS 7590. Good but has some room for improvement. I flashed the SSD to an external image file on an external drive so that I would be able to flash the machine back to factory defaults if I ever needed to. This is my personal standard practice when getting a new laptop. I am happy with the machine and while it is not the very best of machines it was the best decision I could have made at the time given the constraints I had to work with. I hope someone at Dell sees this and will consider some of my suggestions.
I installed Linux Mint 20 on the machine immediately after confirming it all worked and that I would not be sending it back for any defective parts related reasons. It actually ran Linux mostly fine but the graphics chip just would not shut down and was burning through a battery in less than two hours that normally lasts for eleven hours. Oddly enough I solved this power draw issue when I installed the Nvidia drivers and set the GPU to maximum performance... not sure why. The best battery life I get is when the laptop has the graphics driver set to "ondemand" mode and for some reason the GPU starts drawing its full power whenever constantly whenever the "powersave" mode is selected that should in theory power off the Nvidia GPU and only use the Intel one.
Compatibility is good. It runs Linux almost the way I want and this unit has been a far better experience than my ASUS K501UX has ever been... though it did cost a lot more to buy so that might have something to do with that. However, the number of USB ports could be improved because I only have three ports total if I include the USB type C port. I would have liked to see a second USB A port or USB C port on the right hand side of the machine where the battery meter is located (love that meter though, quite handy).
I have a few issues I want to see on future models moving forward if they're not already in current XPS models.
- The display while not bad for color once calibrated should - ideally - not have a strong green tint to it. Displaycal was not happy with me about that... but it does look alright once calibrated.
- The display in the base model is really slow for a modern laptop. Fine for office work or photography but anything with significant motion is going to show slight streaks on the display even at the relatively slow but standard 60hz refresh rate. Please make the display pixels a little faster because even at 60hz the mouse makes trails rather than discrete images of the pointer.
- Cleaner audio circuitry would have been nice to have, the included headphone jack is not bad and not exactly to be taken for granted these days but I would like to not be able to hear a hissing in the background when a quiet but not silent sound is playing (the amp cuts out during silence to mask its hissing, clever but I can hear it cut in and out a little too much)
- Ports. We need ports. USB A is not yet dead which is why I got the last model with both USB C and USB A (both the rounded and square USB ports for the less tech savy). Please add another USB port either type A or type C for a total of four ports because that makes things so much easier when trying to keep a mouse dongle plugged in.
- CPU. The Intel CPU was king in laptops for a while but now they have fallen behind AMD for power usage and performance. If at all possible please make a model with either an AMD or ARM CPU even if that means scrapping the Nvidia graphics for those models.
- Graphics. The GPU from Nvidia is not slow and performs well in my limited use case but there is a huge amount of lag on the screen. This is not present when something is running on the Intel graphics. Please either wire the GPU to either the HDMI or to the USB C DisplayPort Alt mode or use a MUX chip (allows both GPUs to talk to all displays and switches them for you) so the GPU can draw directly to the screen and there will be no noticeable lag.
- Linux. The 13 inch version has a "developer edition" model that ships with Linux preloaded. Even if price is the same I would love to see officially supported Linux preloaded on the 15 inch version preferably with some basic optimizations for the graphics and battery life.
- Keyboard. It's not bad but I would prefer more key travel and some slight tweaks even at the cost of one more millimetre extra thickness.
- Basic ability to tune the fan curves would be nice since I would prefer to have the fans more aggressively ramp up for more performance when plugged in but keep their current and quiet profile when on battery.
- If possible I would like some Ethernet port even if its a folding port or something. I rarely use Ethernet when not gaming because the Wifi 6 card is really fast but there are rare times where Ethernet makes my life so much easier but if I forget my dongle then I cannot use Ethernet... Even a low quality connector for Ethernet would suffice for me for the once a month I need Ethernet.
Overall this machine is not bad even though it does not have a Linux preloaded option. I have not tested on Windows nor do I intend to run Windows on it ever again. My next machine will likely be a gaming machine though for their superior cooling systems that allow the CPU to run faster for longer and also for their usually slightly better keyboards with more travel due in part to the thicker case they have to make room for airflow. I may buy another Dell in the future because I like to support them releasing a service manual and selling parts like the battery. The ability to repair a device even in theory makes the device feel like it's yours rather than a leased unit the belongs to someone else. I like that it can charge on USB C PD power adapters so I can leave the full power charger at home and save on weight and space in my bag. Even though it only does 60 watt USB Power Delivery from a non-Dell adapter, just having the option to use a universal power adapter than can replace my phone charger is really handy. Mind you it still uses the old style barrel jack for most of the charging which I really don't mind so long as it has 30 or 60 watt USB Power Delivery compatibility for those times I am unable to lug around the included charger.
I did not mention the webcam because like most laptops it is unusably bad. I have been on video calls with others using their laptop webcams from all different manufacturers and they are generally low quality thanks in part to their pitiful size optics and sensor along with the generally poor lighting that most people have near their PC... I never use the included webcam in my devices and generally disable them in the BIOS settings so the system and programs are not even aware there is a webcam. I plan to remove the wires powering the webcam if I ever find out where they are in the machine at some point.I recommend using your phone camera instead of a webcam since everyone has a phone these days and their cameras have smarter computer algorithms and better optics behind them than a laptop webcam. Personally I use a Nikon Z5 mirrorless camera with its massive full frame sized sensor (FX format in Nikon land means full frame). Because the sensor is the size of a 35mm film exposure and the lenses were made to specs that professional photographers can use, my camera will decimate any and all webcams in any and all lighting. However I do not recommend people drop a few grand on photography gear just to do a video call... even if everyone notices how much clearer and cleaner my video feed is compared to their phone's "selfie" camera or their laptop webcam. The rear camera on a modern phone is good enough for most video conferences and doesn't cost you anything extra to use since you already bought the cell phone for other reasons. I use the large camera so I can get away with dimmer lights that I find more comfortable and also because I already bought the camera because I got interested in photography so for me the cost to use the camera was essentially zero.
I would have preferred Dell add a second NVMe slot for a second SSD so I could maybe keep a copy of Windows on a small SSD and keep Linux on the main SSD or keep a Windows virtual machine on the second SSD and Linux of the main SSD or even just use the second SSD as a media and bulk storage slot with a cheap SSD to keep my main (and expensive) SSD free from my media library thus allowing more write cycles on the main SSD before failure. SSD drives last a long time but each cell wears out a little each time it get written to, most SSDs have a ton of cells due to being hundreds of gigabytes to a few terabytes in size and also have smart wear leveling programming that extends their lifespan by spreading out all the wear so no one area fails before the entire drive is pooched. Empty SSDs can spread wear out easier and thus will be able to write data faster than a full drive and will also survive more data being written before they wear out... it also allows me to keep my media and games on one drive and just move that from laptop to laptop without having to actually copy anything over... even with my network where files are stored on a local NAS and not on "the cloud" this is a significant time savings because most of my network is standard gigabit speeds... or Wi-Fi which is even slower than normal Ethernet, but most people store their files on "the cloud" which is really just a fancy way to say their data is stored on some server farm somewhere in the world and would have to be downloaded at the painfully slow speeds most people call residential internet. A local NAS is faster than the traditional cloud but even it is far slower than the time it takes me to transfer the data that could be stored on a large secondary SSD by physically moving the SSD into the new machine.
Dell was not my first choice but they were an okay choice. Lets hope they improve their line up in the future. The XPS is good but not as great as I would have wanted for the price I paid... though its not like there were any better options for me at the time... at least in the under $4000 CAD price bracket. I prefer not to spend four grand on a laptop if I can avoid doing so. I would rather save that money for something more meaningful like a camping trip with friends or something.
