The Dell XPS 17 9700 has a charging drawback

The new Dell XPS 17 is drop-dead attractive, skinny, comparatively quick, and has what appears like a doubtlessly show-stopping charging drawback.

How severe is it? We’ll simply say that based mostly on our evaluate unit, it’s sufficient to advocate that you simply put a pause on a possible buy till the issue is addressed by Dell.

The charging situation first got here to gentle on July 10, when revered expertise web site Notebookcheck.com reported that its XPS 17 9700 evaluate unit discharged the battery underneath heavy masses even when plugged into the wall. 

This in all probability isn’t a shock to anybody who pays consideration to the unsung hero of laptops: the facility brick. When we noticed that Dell had chosen a 130-watt USB-C charger for the XPS 17, we even expressed our concern in a video posted on YouTube in May.

If you don’t have time to observe the video, it is best to know that the overwhelming majority of laptops we’ve seen with six- and eight-core CPUs plus GeForce RTX 2060 GPUs function 180-Watt energy bricks utilizing standard “barrel” plugs. 

Why use a much less highly effective lighter energy brick?

Why use “only” a 130 watt energy brick? The reply is much less weight and barely much less bulk. That could seem trivial to many, however the XPS 17’s 130-watt brick weighs simply shy of a pound (0.9 kilos, to be exact). A typical 180-watt brick weighs about 1.Three kilos, about 30 % heavier.

Power consumption on a laptop computer isn’t fixed, both. Doing gentle duties you may use 40 watts, whereas a video encode may use 100 watts.

Dell’s math is that most individuals will not be going to push a laptop computer to 11 all day lengthy. Instead, they could push it to 11 for a half-hour or possibly an hour. For these occasions when a laptop computer is definitely drawing greater than the 130-watt energy brick can ship, Dell makes use of a “hybrid” system, the place it is going to faucet the reserve energy from the battery for the hour or so it’s wanted, then recharge the battery as soon as the heavy load is completed. The finish result’s a lighter general weight on the highway.

We can say we reproduced it, although.

We first took the XPS 17 9700’s 130-watt energy brick and related it to the Dell XPS 15 9500 that we simply reviewed. It truly makes use of the identical energy brick because the XPS 17 9700, however we used it with the XPS 17’s energy brick to assist eradicate variables. We then measured the facility consumption on the wall socket of the XPS 15 9500 underneath numerous masses utilizing a logging watt meter. In the chart beneath, you’ll be able to see the crimson line representing watts consumed on the wall each second.

We first set off Maxon’s Cinebench R20. This specific check is pure CPU and doesn’t contact the GPU. The XPS 15 9500 spikes as much as about 130 watts after which tiers down because the work progresses. 

We then began the CPU-intensive sport, PUBG, setting the in-game decision to 1920×1080 and Medium high quality. With the CPU and the GPU working, the laptop computer is pulling 130 watts on the wall.

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We then powered down the XPS 15 9500 and plugged the identical energy brick into the XPS 17 9700. If you take a look at the chart, the crimson line once more represents wattage consumed on the wall by the laptop computer. Running Cinebench R20, the XPS 17 attracts about 105 watts on the wall. We then began PUBG set to 1920×1080 and Medium high quality, and once more, we see the laptop computer will draw not more than 105 models on the wall. In neither of these runs did we see observable battery discharge. 

We then began Quake II RTX and ran the in-game benchmark. Again, we see roughly 105 watts most draw from the laptop computer. With each video games, we didn’t see discharge throughout the quick time we ran them.

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We subsequent ran LuxMark 3.0, an OpenCL benchmark that may be run concurrently on the discrete GPU and the built-in Intel graphics. With this intense workload, we truly did start to…