Dell XPS 15 2023 Review: A Developer’s Laptop With Stealth Gaming Capabilities

One of my favorite tricks with laptops is finding a system that can play games well without looking and feeling like a gaming machine. Among the front runners in this stealth category is the Dell XPS 15, which looks and feels like a MacBook Pro alternative but also offers the same performance as many gaming laptops.

But those gaming skills are just a bonus. The real appeal is that it’s a sleek, stylish system for creative professionals looking to do photo and video editing or design work. Razer’s Blade laptops partly cover the same area, but without the crossover office-suitable appearance of the XPS 15.

Dressed in a light silver grey, with a textured palm rest and a large touchpad, the XPS 15 would look just as at home in a coffee shop as it does in a boardroom. A MacBook Pro, either 14-inch or 16-inch format version, also combines an excellent display with plenty of CPU and GPU power, but Apple systems are notoriously gamer-unfriendly, if that’s something that matters to you.

The model tested here is a high-end model with an Intel Core i7-13700H, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD and an Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU. This configuration costs $2,799, and switching to an even faster Intel Core i9 brings it to $2,949. The XPS 15 currently starts at $1,499 with a Core i7 CPU, Intel Arc graphics, 512GB SSD and a regular 1920×1200 non-touch LCD.

design and presentation

What the XPS 15 offers that many of its competitors don’t is a touchscreen OLED display. These screens have become more common on laptops in recent years, but they’re still not the norm. On the plus side, an OLED display offers excellent brightness and contrast and can look amazing while gaming and watching videos. On the other hand, the 3456 x 2160 OLED option in the XPS 15 is locked to a 60Hz refresh rate, while gamers are increasingly demanding higher refresh rates.

Still, the display looks great and, in keeping with the rest of the modern XPS range, has a very thin bezel around the screen – Dell calls it ‘Infinity Edge’, which just means ‘really thin bezel’. But the very thin top bezel around the screen could be the reason this system is lagging stuck on a 720 resolution webcamwhich is frankly unacceptable on an otherwise premium laptop like this.

The chassis, like many premium laptops, is crafted from solid blocks of aluminum to ensure durability, and the screen also has a Gorilla Glass coating. A carbon fiber overlay sits atop the aluminum chassis and features the signature XPS pattern along the palm rest. It’s the same as last year’s XPS 15, so this 2023 version basically just updates the available components inside. A key feature remains the keyboard, however, with large keycaps and good tactile feedback without being overly rickety.

Convenient connections

While slim laptops quickly do without ports, the XPS 15 is in the midfield. It has three USB-C ports, along with a headphone jack and a full-size SD card slot. That means USB-A, HDMI or anything else is missing, although Dell does include a tiny USB-C hub in the package.

Power is supplied via USB-C, so almost any similar charger will work, which is a rarity for a system with a powerful GPU. However, if you use a low-power charger, the system will warn you. It still works, but loading may not keep up with heavy GPU use, for example.

creativity and gaming

I’ve used the XPS 15 for some photo and video editing with Photoshop and Premiere and found it to work flawlessly, although I wasn’t expecting anything else given these high-end specs. The bright screen helped me with photo editing, although I missed the MacBook Photoshop navigation due to the good, but not great, touchpad.

With an Nvidia 4070 by default, it’s also a high-end gaming laptop (and costs about the same as a comparable high-end 4070 crossover gaming system like the Razer Blade). In addition to our regular benchmark tests, I’ve run several recent games on it, from Hogwarts Legacy to Marvel’s Midnight Suns to Star Wars: Jedi Survivor. Everything ran smoothly, even the poorly optimized Jedi Survivor. It helps that the screen’s 60Hz refresh rate means you don’t have to worry about higher frame rates, but I found it helpful to play at a lower resolution, like 2560×1200, rather than the full resolution of nearly 4K .

The only catch is that it’s a lower-powered 40-watt version of the 4070 GPU, while the larger XPS 17 has access to the more powerful 60-watt version. For FHD gaming, however, it should make a big difference. Also keep in mind that if you’re going to be using it primarily for creative work, you should download Nvidia’s latest studio drivers (which come pre-installed) rather than the usual gaming drivers.

I love being able to play games at serious detail settings on a conservative looking laptop and get by with just a basic USB-C charger. It weighs around 4.25 pounds, so it’s not a laptop you’d want to carry around in a shoulder bag every day. For a bigger screen at a low weight, check out LG’s excellent Gram range, for example. With its large, high-resolution OLED screen and powerful components, I see the XPS 15 as a good Windows-based alternative to a MacBook Pro, or as a semi-desktop replacement system for your home office.