You might be disappointed if you expected high-end performance from the XPS 15 at any time and in every situation. The XPS 15 not only reduces the CPU clock to 1.6 GHz on battery power, but it also acts sluggish, which will certainly not please power users. It is annoying when the system does not recognize that you attached the PSU over multiple CPU benchmarks and that it should run at 2.8 GHz, because you will lose time. This is also one of the reasons that we deduct one point from the overall rating. Unfortunately, the i5-6300HQ cannot utilize its full performance on mains either, at least in single-thread scenarios.

The matte Full-HD panel of our review configuration manages good results in respect of brightness and contrast. An sRGB coverage of almost 100% is also a positive aspect. We did not really like the (for professional users) inaccurate color accuracy ex-works. This is particularly unfortunate since calibration can really help. PWM only sets in at the lowest brightness level and should therefore not be a problem.

We also mentioned the battery runtimes before. A runtime of nine hours – but only while idling and on the lowest brightness level – is not really good, either. The notebook manages around 5.5 hours during web browsing, which is not overwhelming, but it should still be sufficient for many situations. For comparison: Apple's MacBook Pro 15 Retina lasts around 2 hours longer (Mac OS) in the same scenario.

If you want longer battery runtimes, you will either have to buy the expensive SSD-only model with 84 Wh or purchase the 84-Wh module separately in 2016 and waive the HDD. An "inexpensive" non-HDD version (e. g. FHD + i5 + 128 GB SSD (M.2)) is unfortunately not sold by Dell; the high capacity is linked to 4K touch and Core i7.

The emissions are not a big strength, because the XPS 15 has to throttle the GPU and CPU quite severely to manage the heat during the stress test, but the chassis still gets very warm. Our stress test is more of an extreme scenario and does not represent realistic conditions, but one thing is clear for power users: High parallel loads for CPU and GPU will throttle both components, and we are not speaking about running on battery power. The problem is not an insufficient power adaptor, but the thermal limit of 95 °C. We can soothe any concerns for gamers, though: The performance of the GTX 960M did not differ from any other laptops with the same GPU during the gaming tests.

Yes, the Dell XPS 15 (9550) is a sophisticated multimedia notebook. However, a closer look reveals many technical details that affect the overall impression of the XPS.

We liked the pretty balanced speakers, but the microphone cannot quite live up to the expectations. The recordings are affected by a more or less strong murmur.

The hybrid HDD is a successful compromise of performance and TB storage capacity. The read transfer rates cannot keep up with a real SSD, but they are clearly superior to those of slow conventional hard drives. Dell's "Raid array" can convince our application benchmarks, so the resulting scores are almost on par with real SSD-based systems. Hybrid drives with an integrated cache did not manage that so far.