Dell XPS 15 (2023)

Still a stylish, high-quality and speedy laptop, but we expected more from this annual update

- ALLISA JAMES

PRICE As reviewed, £2,582 (£3,099 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk

The new Dell XPS 15 is a refresh of the phenomenal version from 2022 (see issue 337, p54), which scored a perfect five stars. Sadly, we can't say the same of this year's model.

Prices start at £1,499, for which you receive a Core i7-13700H, Intel Arc A370M graphics, 16GB of DDR54800 RAM, a 512GB SSD and the basic 1,920 X 1,200 non-touch IPS display. For us, Dell upgraded to GeForce RTX 4070 graphics, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and the 3.5K 15.6in AMOLED touchscreen. As it happens, you can't buy that spec in the UK: upgrading to this top-end graphics option automatically switches you to the Core i9-13900H, and suddenly you're looking at a price of £3,099.

Essentially, this turns the XPS 15 into a gaming laptop in disguise.

And that disguise is all too effective.

Gaming laptops will move mountains to feed the graphics card with power, but here the RTX 4070 is undercooked: a 3DMark Time Spy result of 7,124 is far behind even the Samsung Galaxy Book3 Ultra (see issue 344, p46), which returned 9,342.

Mind you, that laptop included a Core i9-13900H processor compared to the 17-13700H in our review sample.