Dell XPS 15 9510 – Top 5 Pros and Cons
There are a few options that combine the portability, performance, and built quality that the XPS 15 9510 offers. It is one of the most portable workstations out there while offering some of the most powerful processors on the market.
The laptop also offers two discrete GPUs along with the integrated offerings, which give you plenty of options, if you want the laptop to be useful in games or not. The truth is if you have ever wanted an experience similar to a MacBook, but don’t want to mess with macOS and the Apple ecosystem, this is a good alternative.
Today we are presenting you with LaptopMedia’s top 5 picks about the Dell XPS 15 9510.
Dell XPS 15 9510: Full Specs / In-depth Review
3 reasons to BUY the Dell XPS 15 9510
1. Design and build quality
Being an XPS laptop, it comes with unmatched build quality, featuring premium materials. The device is entirely made of aluminum and carbon fiber. The lid and chassis are made from aluminum, giving them a smooth and shiny finish, while the base is made out of carbon fiber, which has a nice pattern and a more grippy texture. The sides on the laptop are glossy, which contrasts nicely with the matte exterior.
The lid opens easily with one hand, revealing almost invisible and very slim bezels. The top one features an HD Webcam, which has a 4-element lens with an IR face recognition sensor. The base features a fingerprint reader, embedded in the power button, along with two speaker cutouts on the left and right sides. The keyboard has decent key travel for its 18 mm profile and the feedback is plenty clicky. The keycaps are well-sized, while still leaving enough room for a touchpad of gigantic proportions. The whole thing is massive, with great accuracy and feedback.
2. Upgradeability
Despite the thin profile, we have decent upgradeability options, with a total of two SODIMM RAM slots, that can fit up to 64GB of DDR4 memory, and two M.2 PCIe x4 slots for SSD expansion.
Here is our teardown video, which shows exactly how to access both the RAM and SSD slots.
3. Display quality
The laptop is equipped with a 15.6-inch 4K UHD+ IPS panel with a 16:10 aspect ratio, which seems to be the standard when it comes to productivity and workstation laptops. The panel has comfortable viewing angles, a max brightness of 465 nits, and a contrast ratio of 1740:1, which is good. The color coverage is fantastic, with the panel fully covering the sRGB gamut, while also covering 96% of the DCI-P3 gamut.
The accuracy, however, isn’t quite as good as we would have hoped it to be. The stock settings provide a dE value of 3.7, which isn’t below 2, thus the laptop is not suitable for professional work. Even with our Design and Gaming profile, the dE value remained at a 3.4, which is still unusable.
Here you can compare the scores of the Dell XPS 15 9510 (with Premier Color Calibration) with our profile.
Buy our profiles
Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Dell XPS 15 9510 configurations with 15.6″ 4K IPS Sharp 90T02-LQ156R1 (SHP14D0).
*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].
Read more about the profiles HERE.
In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work
Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming
This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard
Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.
Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount
2 reasons NOT to buy the Dell XPS 15 9510
1. I/O
The I/O on the laptop seems pretty limited, but it covers a lot of ground, with a total of two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a single USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2) port, an SD card reader, and a 3.5 mm audio jack.
2. Cooling
The cooling isn’t on par with the hardware that it is supposed to cool down. There are two heat pipes that both cool down the CPU and CPU. There are two heat spreaders above the VRM modules and graphics memory, along with two fans on the left and right sides.
Max CPU load
In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.
Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.
Intel Core i7-11800H (45W TDP) | 0:02 – 0:10 sec | 0:15 – 0:30 sec | 10:00 – 15:00 min | Max Fans |
---|---|---|---|---|
Dell XPS 15 9510 | 3.41 GHz (B+48%) @ 99°C @ 82W | 3.00 GHz (B+30%) @ 99°C @ 63W | 2.71 GHz (B+18%) @ 93°C @ 48W | – |
Lenovo Legion 5i (17″ Intel, 2021) | 3.84 GHz (B+67%) @ 96°C @ 113W | 3.69 GHz (B+60%) @ 96°C @ 101W | 3.36 GHz (B+46%) @ 81°C @ 80W | – |
Dell G15 5511 | 3.67 GHz (B+60%) @ 97°C @ 100W | 3.54 GHz (B+54%) @ 98°C @ 91W | 3.43 GHz (B+49%) @ 93°C @ 79W | – |
Acer Predator Helios 300 (PH317-55) | 3.67 GHz (B+60%) @ 90°C @ 103W | 3.66 GHz (B+59%) @ 99°C @ 103W | 3.40 GHz (B+48%) @ 99°C @ 84W | – |
ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 GU603 | 3.87 GHz (B+68%) @ 95°C @ 106W | 3.90 GHz (B+70%) @ 95°C @ 109W | 3.58 GHz (B+56%) @ 86°C @ 80W | – |
MSI Creator Z16 (A11Ux) | 3.12 GHz (B+36%) @ 96°C @ 68W | 3.03 GHz (B+32%) @ 95°C @ 62W | 2.76 GHz (B+20%) @ 95°C @ 53W | 2.90 GHz (B+26%) @ 95°C @ 59W |
MSI GE76 Raider (2021) | 3.22 GHz (B+40%) @ 95°C @ 67W | 3.11 GHz (B+35%) @ 94°C @ 62W | 3.14 GHz (B+37%) @ 94°C @ 61W | 3.26 GHz (B+42%) @ 94°C @ 64W |
ASUS TUF F15 (FX506, 2021) (Turbo Mode) | 3.98 GHz (B+73%) @ 86°C @ 102W | 3.88 GHz (B+69%) @ 95°C @ 100W | 3.44 GHz (B+50%) @ 87°C @ 77W | – |
MSI Pulse GL76 | 3.16 GHz (B+37%) @ 95°C @ 65W | 3.00 GHz (B+30%) @ 95°C @ 59W | 2.87 GHz (B+25%) @ 95°C @ 55W | – |
MSI Pulse GL66 | 2.94 GHz (B+28%) @ 94°C @ 58W | 2.76 GHz (B+20%) @ 94°C @ 52W | 2.77 GHz (B+20%) @ 94°C @ 52W | – |
The laptop doesn’t do its CPU justice, making it throttle down to nearly base speeds. while keeping a temperature of above 90°C.
Real-life gaming
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti | GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min) | GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min) | GPU frequency/ Core temp (Max fan) |
---|---|---|---|
Dell XPS 15 9510 | 1187 MHz @ 74°C @ 40W | 1293 MHz @ 75°C @ 44W | – |
Dell G15 5511 | 1882 MHz @ 71°C @ 88W | 1878 MHz @ 72°C @ 89W | – |
Dell G15 5515 | 1857 MHz @ 76°C @ 80W | 1850 MHz @ 77°C @ 80W | – |
Acer Nitro 5 (AN515-57) | 1616 MHz @ 70°C @ 66W | 1607 MHz @ 72°C @ 65W | 1632 MHz @ 69°C @ 66W |
MSI Katana GF76 | 1619 MHz @ 76°C @ 60W | 1594 MHz @ 82°C @ 60W | 1632 MHz @ 70°C @ 60W |
Graphics-wise, with a TGP of only 45W, we can’t expect good speeds, and that is what we get. The temps however are within the reasonable, with even more room to grow.
Gaming comfort
The laptop heats up on the outside, but not by that much. An outside temperature of 45.4°C is right in the middle when it comes to comfortability uncomfortable.