Dell isn’t letting the 3-D craze go quietly into the night, and with its XPS 17 3D, there’s a case to be made that maybe it shouldn’t.
Dell’s 17.3-inch, 1920 x 1080-pixel laptop is a beast of a machine, an 8.2-pound monster that is unlikely to ever see an actual lap. Specs are pretty much on the cutting edge across the board: 2-GHz Core i7, 12 GB of RAM, dual 500-GB hard drives and a Blu-ray optical drive. The Nvidia GeForce GT 555M is blazing, powering some of the best video game framerates I’ve ever achieved. General app benchmarks were solid, though considerably short of record highs.
All of that pales, however, next to the XPS’s glorious LCD. It’s not just the brightest laptop screen I’ve ever tested, it’s brighter than the screen of every all-in-one desktop PC I’ve ever reviewed, too. It’s almost as bright as the monster 22-inch flat panel on my desk. And it doesn’t just light up the night, it looks good at just about every angle, too.
Connectivity includes two USB 3.0 ports and one USB 2.0 port, a USB/eSATA combo port, dual headphone jacks, HDMI and a mini-DisplayPort jack.
While performance is good, what you really need to see is how well adding that extra dimension works. The 3-D is effective and didn’t stutter, no matter what 3-D-capable games we played or movies we watched. If you can stomach sitting a few feet from your PC with funky shades on your face, you’ll enjoy the entertainment experience. I found it to be the most effective 3-D laptop I’ve worked with to date.
What’s not to like? Mostly cosmetics: The keyboard is pretty, especially with the backlighting on, but the ultra-flat, island-style keys are awfully slick. I goofed more while touch-typing than I should have. Other issues come across as simple, weird design quirks, like the way the volume buttons are designed: To tick the audio up or down you have to hold down the Fn button and hit a function key. But muting the sound has a dedicated button of its own, no Fn required. None of that, however, is a nuisance that reaches the level of the chicklet-sized arrow keys on the XPS 17: There’s just no excuse for a machine this big to have essential buttons this ridiculously small.
In the end, Dell’s latest XPS is a solid entry into this venerable laptop series, and if you really need 3-D capabilities, it stands up as perhaps the market’s machine to beat. But at a price that approaches two grand and with some distinct drawbacks in its “con” list, you probably have to ask yourself one question before you whip out your Diner’s Club: Do you really need 3-D? Well, do ya, punk?
WIRED Great performance and a top-notch 3-D experience. High-end feature bundle, just as you’d expect at this price level. One of the best LCDs on the planet.
TIRED Gets moderately warm to the touch even under minimal load. Huge fan noise. Questionable keyboard design. Overloaded with Dell shovelware and an unnecessary quick-launch system. Pricey. Awfully heavy.
Photos courtesy Dell