We’ve had less than a year to mourn the loss of Dell’s iconic XPS laptop brand, and frankly, I’m still not over it. But time goes on. Engadget has already reviewed the Dell 14 Premium, formerly the XPS 14, and now I’ve finally had a chance to put the larger Dell 16 Premium through its paces. My conclusion? It’s still just as beautiful as the previous XPS 16, but I also think Dell needs to seriously rethink its cutting-edge design strategy.
With its minimalist design (look mom, no visible trackpad!), the sleek metal case and clean lines, the Dell 16 Premium looks like a work of art. It’s the kind of thing I’d imagine seeing as an accessory to a sci-fi movie in the ’90s, when we could barely imagine actual notebooks moving out of thick gray bricks. But those good looks come at a cost — both in terms of price (it starts at $2,000) and basic functionality.
Ditch
- sleek minimalist design
- fast performance
- solid keyboard
- Invisible trackpad is not user friendly
- Capacitive function keys disappear in sunlight
- need more ports
- mediocre battery life
$2,000 at Dell
If you’ve read my reviews of the XPS 16 and XPS 13 Plus, which are Dell’s first models to use this aesthetic, you might think I’m just beating a dead horse. But it’s worth pointing out againMore than three years after I first chided Dell for chasing style instead of function, it seems the company hasn’t learned anything. Sure, it’s a little faster than before, thanks to Intel’s Core Ultra chips and NVIDIA’s RTX 50-series GPUs, but that’s not saying much.
I’m still having trouble using the 16 Premium’s borderless trackpad because it’s hard to tell where the clickable areas are. I still hate the capacitive function row, as it miraculously becomes invisible in bright light and it’s hard to build muscle memory for specific keys (like changing brightness or volume). And honestly, I still don’t know how Dell can justify offering only a USB-C port and a microSD card slot on a laptop meant for serious work. Even Apple realized it needed to include a wider variety of ports for professionals, and other PC makers like ASUS and Acer offer the same. Did Dell miss the memo?
Worst of all, the 16 Premium’s 4K OLED screen seriously hurts its battery life. It lasted just six hours and five minutes during a basic video rundown, while the previous XPS 16 lasted eight and a half hours in the more demanding PCMark 10 battery test. (For some reason, that benchmark didn’t run properly on my 16 Premium review unit.) Larger laptops often cram in larger batteries than smaller models, but the 16 Premium can’t even manage it.
At least it’s faster than before. The Dell 16 Premium I reviewed was equipped with a lower-wattage version of Intel’s Core Ultra 7 255H chip and NVIDIA’s RTX 5070 GPU. In PCMark 10 it scored about 10 percent higher than last year’s XPS 16, and thanks to Intel’s revised NPU it was noticeably faster in the Geekbench AI benchmark. i was even able to play cyberpunk 2077 In 4K at 84 fps thanks to the 5070, although I had to enable DLSS4 frame generation to do so. However, for some reason, the system crawls to a complete crawl whenever I enable ray tracing features. When using low ray tracing settings, I only saw around 60 fps at 1080p.
Dell 16 Premium from the back. (Devendra Hardawar for Engadget)
Of course, this isn’t a gaming laptop, so I can’t directly compare it to something like the Razer Blade 16. But it’s strange to see one of NVIDIA’s latest GPUs handle ray tracing so poorly. As you’d expect, the Dell 16 Premium got pretty loud whenever its fans turned up. However, at least they managed to keep the system relatively cool: its CPU and GPU were at 68C and 70C respectively under load.
The more I looked at the beautiful aspects of the Dell 16 Premium, the more I wanted something more… more. It needs more useful ports like HDMI and a full-size SD card reader. It needs more useful function keys that are visible in bright light – and also stay in the same place – so I can touch and type more easily. And for the love of God, give up the invisible trackpad. This is a parlor trick that makes it difficult to distinguish left and right mouse clicks, despite the impressively large trackpad area.
The 16 Premium’s “invisible” trackpad blends seamlessly into its wrist rest, while the keyboard lies flat and a row of capacitive function keys sit above. (Devendra Hardawar for Engadget)
Given its premium status, I expected more from the laptop’s speakers. They sound fine compared to most Windows laptops, but they can’t beat the audio wizardry Apple achieved with the 16-inch MacBook Pro. When playing music, the 16 Premium doesn’t have much dynamic range or low-end tone, whereas Apple’s speakers often surprise me with their depth and breadth of sound. During late-night writing sessions, I often find myself playing music directly through the 16-inch MacBook Pro, rather than putting it on my Sonos speakers like the 16 Premium forces me to do.
To avoid being completely negative, I will reiterate that I really enjoy Look Dell 16 at a premium. I love the way its keyboard and large key caps lie perfectly flat with the bottom half of the notebook. And I admit that the 16-inch OLED screen looks attractively colorful when it needs to be. I’m just asking Dell’s designers to consider a better balance of styles And functionality for their next step on a premium 16-inch laptop.
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