Dell XPS 16 (2024) review: A creative tour de force with style and substance

When Dell launched its XPS 13 Plus in the summer of 2022 I hailed its brave new design language as the shape of things to come. I didn’t expect it to be almost two years before that same design language was applied to the rest of the Dell XPS laptop range.

The American manufacturer has finally taken the plunge and given its flagship Dell XPS 16 a makeover, adding the same seamless glass touchpad, capacitive function row and zero lattice keyboard that tickled my fancy on the XPS 13 Plus.

Dell XPS 16 (2024) review: What you need to know

Of course, the update isn’t purely cosmetic. Inside you’ll find the latest Intel Core Ultra 7 and 9 CPUs and a choice of Nvidia RTX 40-series GPUs. There’s also the option of a large, super-sharp 16.2in 3,840 x 2,400 90Hz OLED display and the latest wireless communication technology.

That specification should tell you that the XPS 16 is aimed at pro-level creatives, modellers and such who need the performance to run the most demanding programmes and a colourful, smooth, pin-sharp display on which to view the results of their endeavours. It’s not too shabby when it comes to gaming either.

Dell XPS 16 (2024) review: Price and competition

Configuration tested: Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 16.3in, 90Hz, 3,850 x 2,400 OLED touch display. Price when reviewed: £3,099 inc VAT

This being a Dell, there is a wide price gap between the cheapest and most expensive models of the XPS 16. Pick the weakest CPU (the Ultra 7 155H), the FHD+ display, 16GB of RAM and no discrete GPU and you’ll only pay £1,649. Opt for the Ultra 9 185H CPU, 4K OLED screen, 64GB of RAM, 4TB SSD and Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU and you won’t see much change from £3,500.

In between are more than a dozen options including a choice of GeForce RTX 4050, 4060 or 4070 GPU. The model I was sent to review felt like a reasonable compromise between price and performance though the identical model with an RTX 4060 rather than a 4070 GPU was a whopping £600 cheaper. As always, careful and in-depth navigation of the Dell configurator will pay dividends.

The obvious competition comes from the 16in MacBook Pro, which occupies a similar space as the more expensive XPS 16 models with prices ranging from £2,599 to £4,099. It excels as a media machine thanks to a superb display and speaker package while the battery life is epic.

If you want a compact laptop for creative work and gaming, HP’s new Omen Transcend 14 has a lot going for it. Performance from the RTX 4060 and Core Ultra 7 155H is impressive, as is the 120Hz 2.8K OLED screen. It only weighs 1.6kg, which is nothing for a laptop with a potent dGPU.

If you’re not worried about a discrete GPU then Huawei’s superlight MateBook X Pro has a lot going for it. Performance from the Core Ultra 9 CPU is outstanding, the 3K OLED screen is supremely accurate and the whole thing weighs less than 1kg.

Fishing in the same waters as the Omen Transcend 14 is Lenovo’s Legion Slim 5 Gen 8 but it’s rather more sober. The performance of both the AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS CPU and Nvidia RTX 4060 GPU is solid, the 2.8K OLED screen is bang on and the keyboard is excellent. It’s good value, too.

Dell XPS 16 (2024) review: Design and build quality

• Capacitive Fn bar and seamless touchpad
• Three Thunderbolt 4 ports
• No space for a second SSD or more RAM

Like the XPS 13 Plus, I can see the XPS 16 being a “Marmite” design: you’ll either love it or hate it. Some will see the seamless glass touchpad, capacitive function row and zero-lattice keyboard as superfluous. My take is that Dell has successfully pushed the design evolution of the laptop forward.

Made from computer numerical machined (CNC) aluminium and with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 covering the palm rest and capacitative function row, the XPS 16 is a very solid laptop. That solidity doesn’t come with a weight premium; the XPS 16 weighed 2.05kg on my scales, which makes it marginally lighter than the 2.14kg 16in MacBook Pro. At 358 x 240 x 18.7mm (WDH), it’s also a similar size to the Apple machine.

The impression of extreme modernity continues when you open the lid. The bezels surrounding the screen are super-slim, just 4mm at the sides and barely 2mm more at the top and bottom. The lid only opens to 135 degrees so you can’t lay the whole thing flat.

The list of I/O ports ends at three Thunderbolt 4 ports, a MicroSD card reader and a 3.5mm audio jack. That’s a step up from the XPS 13 Plus, which only has two Thunderbolt 4 ports, and broadly comparable to the MacBook Pro, which has two Thunderbolt ports, a separate MagSafe charging port, an SD card reader and an HDMI port. Dell has seen fit to bundle a USB-A/HDMI adapter, though this isn’t as easy to use as it should be as the two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the left are unnecessarily close together.

Wireless communications are bang up to date thanks to an Intel Killer BE200 card that supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. I found the XPS 16’s wireless performance to be superb.

Opening up the XPS 16 is very easy but once inside all you can do is swap out the 2280 M.2 SSD and clean the fans. Everything else is soldered to the motherboard and there’s no space for a second SSD.

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Dell XPS 16 (2024) review: Keyboard, touchpad and webcam

• Capacitive function keys
• Seamless glass touchpad
• Good 1080p webcam

The zero-lattice keyboard doesn’t run edge-to-edge as it does on the XPS 13 because it’s bracketed by the loudspeakers but the keys are still as large as they could be given the space between the speaker grills. The keys themselves are slightly concave and feel comfortable when you type on them. The half-height up/down arrow keys are not ideal but I got used to them in time.

As with the XPS 13 Plus, there’s a fingerprint scanner built into the power button in the top right corner or you can set the laptop to power up when then lid is opened in the BIOS.

The auto-adjust white backlight isn’t ideal given the light grey colour of the keys on the Platinum model. The lack of contrast means the keycap graphics are rendered close to invisible unless you are in a very dim environment, a problem the darker keyboard on the Graphite model would presumably ameliorate.

Above the keyboard are 15 always-on illuminated symbols on a capacitive touch bar. Here you’ll find the usual shortcuts for print screen, volume adjustment and the keyboard backlight. Hit the Fn key and the 12 other symbols swap to F1 to F12 keys, or you can use the Fn-Lock to have the F keys rather than the symbols as the default. Below the keyboard, there’s, well, nothing. Just a full-width sheet of glass.

The touchpad is roughly 160mm wide and 100mm deep, the latter being the whole distance between the bottom of the keyboard and the edge of the palm wrest. It’s a capacitive design with minimal physical feedback in terms of action or sound and once mastered is a joy to use – one day all laptop touchpads will be made this way.

The 1080p webcam is technically unremarkable but performs well. Video shot at 30fps looked crisp, colourful and bright and things didn’t fall apart when the light levels dropped. There are the usual effects delivered by Windows Studio Effects and there’s support for Windows Hello facial recognition.

Dell XPS 16 (2024) review: Display and audio

• Colourful 90Hz OLED 4K touchscreen
• Colour profiles could be more accurate
• Powerful sound system

The XPS 16’s Samsung-made display is 16.3in corner-to-corner. That, combined with the 3,840 x 2.400 resolution, results in a super-sharp 278ppi compared to the 16in MacBook Pro’s 254ppi. The Apple has a higher refresh rate at 120Hz vs 90Hz but I defy anyone to tell the difference in either metric using just their eyes.

In SDR mode the display hit a maximum full-screen brightness of 382cd/m2, a figure which jumped to 615cd/m2 in HDR mode. Those levels can’t quite match the MacBook Pro’s Liquid Retina XDR but given the choice between the MacBook’s IPS panel and the XPS’ sumptuous OLED screen, I’d opt for the latter. 

The XPS 16 lets you swap between the Adobe RGB, DCI-P3, Rec 601, Rec 709 and sRGB colour profiles in Windows’ colour management settings and there are four temperatures available for each gamut. Five more profiles – Internet, Cinema, HD Video, Photo and Vibrant – can be accessed via the My Dell control panel, though I got more accurate results without these on.

With the Dell profiles turned off I recorded Delta E variances of 1.23 vs the sRGB profile, 1.96 vs Adobe RGB, 1.3 vs DCI-P3 and 2.98 vs Rec 709. Those are not bad scores, but I’ve tested laptops aimed at creatives that scored under 1 against those same profiles out of the box. Of course, the XPS 16 has plenty of colour on hand, with gamut volumes of 149.7% sRGB, 103.2% Adode RGB and 106.1% DCI-P3, so recalibrating the panel is always an option.

If I had to criticise the display, the only thing I’d point to would be that it’s rather reflective due to its high-gloss finish. That’s not an issue indoors but in direct sunlight, it can be a little irksome.

The XPS 16 features a quad-speaker sound system with 2 x 3W main drivers and 2 x 2W tweeters for 10W total and it certainly doesn’t want for volume. I measured an output of 77.4dBA against a pink noise source at 1m and it sounded even louder to my ears; at maximum volume, the XPS 16’s speakers easily filled a fair-sized room.

The upward-firing position of the speakers on either side of the keyboard creates a wide and spacious soundscape with ample bass to underpin the detailed sonics. At maximum volume, however, there’s just a hint that the amplifier is asking more of the speakers than they can comfortably deliver and distortion creeps in.

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Dell XPS 16 (2024) review: Performance and battery life

• Potent performer despite 60W TGP on the GPU
• Advanced Optimus GPU-switching
• Average battery life of just over 8 hours

The Nvidia GPU may only have a maximum total graphics power of 60W but combine that with a 16-core CPU, in this case, the Intel Core Ultra 155H, and you get a very potent system capable of working as a genuine desktop replacement.

The XPS 16 scored 460 points in our highly demanding 4K multi-media benchmarking test; to do better by a meaningful amount you’ll need to spend far more and buy a top-end gaming laptop running an RTX 4080 or 4090 GPU. The XPS 16 ran the SPECviewperf 3dsmax 3D modelling benchmark test at 91.4fs at FullHD and 59fs at native 4K, which underscores the 4K multi-media performance result.

Gaming is where the 90Hz refresh rate could be an issue for some, but given that Dell is not selling the XPS 16 as a gaming laptop I can’t mark it down on that front. Refresh rate aside, the gaming performance was good.

At 1080p, the Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark ran at 60fs at maximum detail but no ray tracing while with ray tracing, DLSS and Frame Generation all engaged that jumped to 92fs. Metro Exodus ran at 1080p 55fs at the highest settings with ray tracing and DLSS2 set to Balanced. The XPS 16 didn’t demonstrate any abnormal thermal issues under prolonged stress testing and the fan noise, even at full speed, was surprisingly subdued.

Storage on my test machine came courtesy of a Samsung PM91A drive and it did not want for speed, returning impressive sequential read and write speeds of 5,549MB/s and 4,473MB/s. Only the Lenovo Legion bettered it in my comparator group and only by the smallest of margins.

Despite the capacious 99.5Wh battery, the XPS 16 only lasted 8hrs 11mins in our standard video rundown test. At the end of the day, there’s just no masking the amount of power a 4K OLED screen consumes. If you want better in an XPS 16 you’ll need to opt for the 1,920 x 1,200 model, though even that is unlikely to match the MacBook Pro’s 15-hour-plus runtime.

Dell XPS 16 (2024) review: Verdict

Does the XPS 13 Plus design heritage make the XPS 16 more than the sum of its impressive parts or are the new additions just some silliness designed to terrify the clergy? For me, it’s the former: I genuinely like all facets of the new design, but I can understand those who deem them change for the sake of change.

If you want a laptop that is capable of acing intensive creative and productivity tasks, easily handling AAA games, functioning as a media machine par excellence and all the while looking like a design classic, the new XPS 16 is the laptop for you. The wide range of options at the time of purchase even takes the sting out of the non-existent post-purchase upgrade options.