Dell XPS 15 7590 (2019) vs Microsoft Surface Book 2: Which one to buy?

This is the comparison review of DELL XPS 15 7590 (2019) and the MICROSOFT SURFACE BOOK 2 15″ 

DELL XPS 15 7590 (2019)	MICROSOFT SURFACE BOOK 2 15″
BUY NOW	BUY NOW
PROS	PROS
Striking 4K OLED display, Slim, attractive design	Excellent and responsive touch screen. Powerful machine with Nvidia graphics. Xbox Wireless support good battery life.
CONS	CONS
Below-average battery life, Only 1 NVMe drive, Weak audio, OLED only offered on most expensive configurations.	Underpowered Dock makes multi-monitor support problematic. USB-C without Thunderbolt is a mistake

SPECIFICATIONS:

Expert reviews for Dell XPS 15 7590 (2019)

By NotebookCheck

The G7 15 7590 is positioned at an interesting spot. It houses similar Core i9, GeForce RTX, and IPS/OLED options as the higher-end Alienware m15 R2 but for a lower starting price. If you want the power of an Alienware laptop but are otherwise turned…

By PCWorld 

If you’re shopping for a thin-and-light workhorse (with compromises) you’ll like this price. Our unit with Core i9, 32GB of RAM, 1TB SSD and 4K OLED was selling for $2,649 at the time of our review. A similarly configured Macbook Pro 15 with the same CPU, as well as the same amount of storage and RAM, hits the wallet harder at $3,600. So yes, believe or not, the XPS 15 7590 is a deal. But know what your buying and what you’re buying it for.

By  HotHardware 

Summed up, the new Dell XPS 15 is a premium laptop in every sense, from its physical design and eye-popping OLED display, to its fasten-your-seat-belt performance. It’s still one of the very best 15-inch laptops on the market and an easy HotHardware Editor’s Choice.

By zdnet.com

Even at the entry level price, the XPS 15 7590 is an expensive laptop. Boost the configuration with an OLED screen, plus plenty of RAM and SSD storage, and you’re looking at a serious price tag. For that money, we think Dell should provide more…

By Neowin 

The Dell XPS 15 is always one of my favorite laptops of the year, because it has that just right level of power. It comes with a 45W Intel Core processor and dedicated graphics, along with a beautiful 4K screen. And that’s just what you get with every…

Expert reviews for Microsoft Surface Book 2 15″

By techent.tv

When Microsoft first announced the Surface Pro, it was met with a little confusion and a whole lot of curiosity. The company rethought productivity on the go with a tablet form factor and a keyboard that doubles as a protective screen cover as well….

 

By  The Inquirer

 

We see a lot of claims about “the power of a desktop” here at INQ, but Microsoft looks to have genuinely cracked…

By liveatpc.com

Review: Microsoft Surface Book 2 – Perfect All-in-OneNobody Saw It ComingFirst introduced in 2015, the original Microsoft Surface Book launched to rave reviews and massive positive response. No one expected it; in fact, no one imagined the premium…

By  goodhousekeeping.co.uk 

The Microsoft Surface Book 2 15in is a stylish and versatile laptop, with the power to do anything you ask of it. Its high price, though, might be a bit too much for most people.

By Neowin

But if the Surface Book 2 sounds like something that you want, then you should buy it. As I mentioned earlier, you’re paying for the form factor here. If you just want a laptop, you can buy a Surface Laptop, and if you just want a tablet that you can use as a laptop, you can buy a Surface Pro. If a powerful laptop with a detachable display sounds like what you’re in the market for, go for the Book 2. The one suggestion I’d make is to make sure you get the Core i7 model. In fact, it’s probably best to not let the Core i5 model touch your new PC at all.

 

DESIGN

Dell XPS 15 7590 (2019)

The chassis is CNC machined aluminum, the lid is silver metal, while the interior has a black carbon fiber composite with a sort of rubberize feeling texture. There were no sharp corners or edges anywhere and the whole laptop felt extremely well built and premium in terms of materials and design. This thinner footprint allows it to have 8mm thin screen bezels on the sides. The 15.6” 4K 60Hz OLED screen has a glossy finish and looks excellent, however, it’s also available with a 1080p 60Hz 500 nit IPS screen too, or a 4K IPS touch screen.

Microsoft Surface Book 2 15″:

Dell XPS 15 notebook is great this can do one thing with a card and that is with a press of a button detach the screen hopefully yep there we go and use it as a full 15 inch Windows 10 tablet which is just insane and actually the whole thing surprisingly light and easy to use for and say a 15-inch tablet it’s got the processor and the RAM inside of here.

WEIGHT & DIMENSIONS

Dell XPS 15 7590 (2019):

The weight is listed at 2kg for the larger battery option I’ve got, and mine was right on this. With the 130-watt power brick and cables for charging the total weight rises to 2.4kg. The dimensions are 35.7cm in width, 23.5cm in-depth, and 1.7cm in height.

Microsoft Surface Book 2 15″:

The weight is almost 312 mm x 232 mm x 15-23 mm (L x W x D) 12.3 in x 9.14 in x 0.59 to 0.90 and dimensions are i5 total: 1,533 g (3.38 lbs) i7 total: 1,642 g (3.62 lbs) Tablet 719 g (1.59 lbs)

KEYBOARD AND TOUCHPAD

Dell XPS 15 7590 (2019):

The chiclet keyboard has 1.3mm of travel and white backlighting which can be adjusted between two levels of brightness or turned off with the F10 shortcut key. It illuminates all keys and even secondary key functions, Overall I liked typing on the keyboard, it’s got no Numpad which some people may not like, personally I only didn’t like the small arrow keys which Dell always seem to use. Here’s how it sounds to give you an idea of what to expect. There’s an optional fingerprint scanner in the power button, which is found on the top to the right of the keyboard, and I found it to work very fast. There was only a little keyboard flex when pushing down hard, overall the body felt very solid and I found the letter keys needed 61 grams of force to actuate.The glass touchpad uses precision drivers and worked very well, it feels very smooth, gives a satisfying click and has all the usual gestures. I liked its size and had no problems using it. Fingerprints and dirt show up on the black interior, but they’re harder to see due to the carbon fiber pattern, and despite it being kind of rubbery feeling it was easy enough to clean.

Microsoft Surface Book 2 15″:

The trackpad is one of the best I’ve used on a Windows laptop and is the daily MacBook Pro user I appreciate having multi-touch gestures on the trackpad.

PORT SELECTION

Dell XPS 15 7590 (2019):

On the left from the back, there’s the power input, USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A port, HDMI 2.0 output which goes via the Intel graphics, USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C port which also offers Thunderbolt 3 with 4 PCIe lanes, power delivery, and DisplayPort 1.2 output, followed by a 3.5mm audio combo jack. On the right from the front, there’s a full-size SD card slot, USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A port, a button you can press to show the battery charge level, and a wedge lock slot. There’s nothing at all on the back, the air is exhausted out below the screen, while the front has holes for the microphones and white light in the center. The metal lid is all matte silver with the Dell logo in the center with a shiny mirrored finish. Once inside we’ve got the WiFi 6 card up the top left corner, single M.2 drive on the left in the middle, battery along the bottom, and two memory slots in the middle just below the heat pipes.

Microsoft Surface Book 2 15″:

Dell XPS 15 is the fact that the service book 2 uses Intel’s 15 watt new series of 8th gen processors, as opposed to say the 45 watt i7 7700 HQ in the XPS 15 and MacBook Pro 15, so CPU intensive tasks may suffer a bit but it also maxes out at 16 gigs, of ram which is more than enough for most people but serious editors or 3d renderers would appreciate a 32 gig option. The headphone jack is here which is handy when you’re using in tablet mode it means you can still plug your headphones.

DISPLAY

Dell XPS 15 7590 (2019):

Now, one of the main features they’ve added this year is the option for an OLED panel on the display. And it’s a really nice looking display. Now, this isn’t the first OLED panel I’ve reviewed on this channel. I’ve talked about a couple of other devices, mostly gaming devices. But they all use the same panel. These all use the Samsung panel, OLED, 4K, really nice image. and it’s particularly noticeable in media consumption. Like if you’re watching stuff that supports HDR, or just stuff that has a lot of colors, and can show off the vibrancy, and the benefits of an OLED screen, this thing looks AWESOME.

Microsoft Surface Book 2 15″:

Graphics card and more powerful graphics card than the 15 inches, one is the way forward but it’s the screen that is really a standout feature of the surface book – 15 with a 30 to 40 by 2160 resolution it’s not quite 4k it’s actually just 600 pixels off but it’s still one of the nicest displays I’ve ever seen.

BATTERY

Dell XPS 15 7590 (2019):

The XPS 15 is powered by either a 3 cell 56wh or 6 cell 97Wh battery, I’ve got the larger 97Wh option here, so expect lower results with the smaller battery. I’ve tested it with the screen brightness at 50%, background apps disabled, and keyboard lighting off. While just watching YouTube videos it lasted for 8 hours and 11 minutes, and it was using the Intel integrated graphics due to Nvidia Optimus. This is one of the best results I’ve ever had with this test, especially with this level of hardware. While playing the Witcher 3 with medium settings and Nvidia’s battery boost set to 30 FPS the battery lasted for 1 hour and 45 minutes, and it ran at 30 FPS for the whole test without any dips, so well above average battery life and good results. The 130-watt power brick that’s included with the XPS 15 seemed to be adequate in terms of there not being any battery drain while gaming or under heavy stress test, though as we’ll see next that may just be due to harsh power limitations.

Microsoft Surface Book 2 15″:

Microsoft says you’ll get 17 hours of battery life in the real world you’re looking at around 10 hours which is still very good especially considering the high-resolution screen the equivalent 4k Dell XPS 15, for example, gets about half that charging speed is pretty average, not 200% takes about three hours altogether with a hundred-watt AC charger bundled with a laptop.

PERFORMANCE

Dell XPS 15 7590 (2019):

I’ll only briefly cover thermal performance, you can check out the detailed thermal testing with the card in the top-right if you want all the juicy details. The Dell power manager software allows us to select from four different performance modes. When under the combined CPU and GPU stress tests, I found that the temperatures were on the lower side. The exception was with the highest ultra-performance mode in use, for the first 3 minutes where I saw higher temperatures, but these dropped down after the first 3 minutes. This was because the CPU power limit was capped to 30 watts for the first 3 minutes or so after this PL1 drops down to 15 watts, which results in less performance in terms of clock speed for long term workloads.

Microsoft Surface Book 2 15″:

Performance the East generation quad-core i7 processor on this top-of-the-line surface book 2 works really well in everyday tasks, and some casual gaming now in Geekbench for the surface book 2 scored 5000 81 in single-core and 15,500 95 in multi-core which is surprisingly in line with a base model 13-inch MacBook, pearl that retails for just $12.99 in Cinebench. r20 we received a CPU score of 942 which is way below the base model 13-inch MacBook Pro which posted a CPU score of 1583.

CONCLUSION

Dell XPS 15 7590 (2019):

With all of that in mind let’s conclude by looking at the good and bad aspects of the Dell XPS 15 laptop. Overall the XPS 15 is a nice looking machine, it feels like it’s built very well with quality materials. The OLED screen looks amazing, though it’s not without its drawbacks which include glossy finish, use of PWM to adjust brightness, and potential burn-in later on.

Microsoft Surface Book 2 15″:

The surface book – a ridiculously good but also ridiculously expensive super high-end two-in-one highway laptop all-singing all-dancing bells, and whistles make you breakfast in the morning everything you can think of all-in-one laptop it’s a great laptop but it’s expensive it’s not perfect and not everyone needs a detachable 15-inch tablet and I think it also may be worth waiting a few months. For a laptop like a refreshed XPS 15 notebook or the 2018 MacBook pro that comes with a more powerful intel 8th gen hate q series of chips for more intensive tasks but I would still highly recommend it if you can afford it