Gadgetory

some things are made for one task and one task only like this 10 gigabit network card it only does networking and my car for example is only good for making other people jealous conversely this XPS laptop is excellent at nothing really but it is OK at many things so is it like a Swiss Army knife useful in almost any situation or is it like a Swiss Army knife when all you really wanted was a real knife speaking of useful today's video is brought to you by madrenas madrenas coffee blends specialty cold brew coffee Zin two 16-ounce grab-and-go cans for everyone's convenience check them out and use offer code linus to say 40% at the link below whether you go for the core i5 or the core i7 model you will immediately notice the snappy performance of the four core low-power processor but what really separates this puppy from other non gaming laptops is the integrated Bega GPU to be clear this is not explicitly a gaming laptop you would need a discrete GPU in a fatter heavier form factor for that so don't expect to be playing any triple-a titles at 1080p ultra details but it ain't no scrub either gaming on this machine is a night and day difference compared to Intel's own integrated graphics and lighter competitive like eSports games can break 60fps on it but it'll work up a sweat when it does the CPU can redline at a hundred degrees and you will always notice the keyboard getting uncomfortably hot over fifty degrees by our measurements while gaming even though the clock speed gets significantly reduced when the CPU and GPU are both being stressed at the same time because due to the way they're designed they actually have to share their power ok so it performs better than a thin in light but it's not that thin in light and worse than a gaming laptop but it's not that thick so all of this makes sense and you got to think about this in a two-in-one Machine gaming performance is purely just a bonus and the XPS 2 and 1 is really intended as a day-to-day laptop so sure it's a little on the heavy side and if I'm being honest the design is anything but edgy but I'm willing to forgive boring design when you open up a machine and you get to feel some of the best build quality available today the screen and the chassis are both exceptionally rigid and like what Apple did in 2016 Dell has completely removed the USB type a ports but I'm not mad because unlike Apple they included for type-c ports two of which are Thunderbolt three that's something that's hard to complain about in the 2018 dongle era as for the screen it's excellent fantastic colors really high brightness and touch functionality whoo I'd actually recommend though going with the 1080p version instead of the 4k one because at this size even side-by-side it's not that easy to tell the difference with my eyes but with my wallet with my wallet I can tell moving down Dell has created a completely new type of keyboard for the XPS two-in-one and that's dangerous because I already likes Dells keyboards a lot so they're calling this maglev and it's meant to give you a lot of tactile feel despite a very short throw distance and actually okay the risk was worth it it took a little bit longer to get used to than normal it's having a bit of trouble feeling the different keys given how close they are to the key bed but once I got rolling I was able to type extremely quickly and hopefully these maglev keys don't stop working at the first sign of dust going further down the line we get to the touch pad which is one of the many things about this laptop that is good but not excellent it's sizable but it has poor palm rejection by default though that can be fixed by tweaking the settings and unfortunately the settings won't help you solve some annoying acceleration issues it's something that you'll probably get used to but for us where we're using a lot of laptop side-by-side it does stand out next in the pile of things that are kind of math is the extra hundred dollars for the Dell pen it provides a fairly good writing experience but it just doesn't feel as natural as the surface pen which has a softer tip with a bit of give and a tiny bit more friction which makes writing notes and drawing feel a lot more natural so if you were getting a tune one primarily for drawing you might still want to consider the surface lineup and two Dells credit short of inserting it inside the chassis this is far and away the best attachment mechanism well that we've seen bringing us to yet another complaint the speakers sound pretty good at lower volume but they do start distorting at around fifty percent and at full volume sounds just plain bad and it has one of those abominable chin bar webcams which is fine if you flip the screen around and use a webcam like this but if I was on a conference call and I was trying to take notes with my keyboard all the other participants would see is my fingers speaking of fingers it's a good thing that it has a fingerprint reader built into the power button because if I want it to unlock using the windows hello IR camera that it actually has I would end up adjusting my screen basically every time future-proof miss isn't a strong point of this thing either besides the storage basically nothing in here can be upgraded or replaced so make sure that you get the specs you want including RAM up front and by the way this massive 75 watt hour battery only got us five hours in our work battery life test a fairly average result so then I've complained about quite a bit over the last six minutes or so but these are the sacrifices that come with a laptop that is able to do everything and don't get me wrong overall I actually quite liked the XPS 15 two and one what other device gives you excellent touch support lots of performance a beautiful screen super high build quality and pretty good battery life all in one okay the surface book - which also has a better keyboard and a discrete GPU and on a level playing field yeah come to think of it I would choose the surface but the pricing of the XPS saves it with what we'd call our recommended loadout coming in at $1500 it's not really a budget option but it is a full five hundred dollars cheaper then the cheapest surface book that we think is even worth looking at so for someone that needs a dual Dahl device and can live without full dedicated graphics the XPS 15 two and one looks like a solid all-rounder option speaking of a solid option King does mobile phone service differently there's no contracts no overage fees and no other carrier tricks you just pay a fair price for the talk text and data that you end up using each month King gives you full control over your cell phone account - allowing you to set alerts and caps for each device on your account to keep your usage in check and nationwide LTE coverage means that you'll get great network coverage from coast to coast almost any phone will work with ting from that ancient Motorola RAZR sitting in your basement to the latest Galaxy S nine or iPhone 10 so check out your phone's compatibility at Linus dot ting comm and while you're over there get twenty-five bucks off your bill or towards a new phone in the ting shop so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description also down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which you should totally join