To stay ahead, the company needs to listen to feedback and it seems to be taking at least some heed, based on one key update. The best improvement to this year's model is webcam placement. The sensor now sits in its rightful place above the screen, as opposed to below the display. Praise the PC lords! Now I can take video conference calls on an XPS 15 without forcing my coworkers to stare directly up my nose. To make this happen, Dell had to miniaturize its camera to fit into the skinny bezel, but it also had to sacrifice Windows Hello compatibility. This means if you want to unlock your laptop just by glancing at it, well, you can't. At least you can still easily log in with the fingerprint sensor embedded in the power button.

Keyboard and trackpad

Another nice upgrade from the older XPS 15 is the keyboard, which now has noticeably deeper travel and softer feedback. It's not as cushy as Lenovo's Thinkpads, but it certainly feels more comfortable than a MacBook Pro, and offers more depth than the Surface Laptop 2. The trackpad, on the other hand, is unchanged. It's the same size as before and just as responsive. It's a totally serviceable trackpad, though I would have appreciated a little more room for performing gestures.

Display and audio

Our XPS 15 review unit has a 4K OLED display, which is just gorgeous. These extra bright, colorful panels are cropping up all over laptop town and I fully support the trend. HP's Spectre x360 15 has one, Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Extreme's got one, and gaming notebooks from Razer and Dell's own Alienware also have them. They're great. Not only is it lovely to edit photos and watch videos on the XPS 15's display, the brighter panel also makes it easier to see detail in scenes that take place in the dark. Bonus, the speakers on this machine are loud and crisp, so you can truly enjoy, say, Lea Michele's sparkling vocals when you're binge-watching Glee. For the more hardworking among us, the XPS 15's OLED is also a better canvas than an LCD for editing videos or photos of dimly lit scenes.