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 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 minMax Fans
Dell XPS 15 95103.41 GHz (B+48%) @ 99°C @ 82W3.00 GHz (B+30%) @ 99°C @ 63W2.71 GHz (B+18%) @ 93°C @ 48W
Lenovo Legion 5i (17″ Intel, 2021)3.84 GHz (B+67%) @ 96°C @ 113W3.69 GHz (B+60%) @ 96°C @ 101W3.36 GHz (B+46%) @ 81°C @ 80W
Dell G15 55113.67 GHz (B+60%) @ 97°C @ 100W3.54 GHz (B+54%) @ 98°C @ 91W3.43 GHz (B+49%) @ 93°C @ 79W
Acer Predator Helios 300 (PH317-55)3.67 GHz (B+60%) @ 90°C @ 103W3.66 GHz (B+59%) @ 99°C @ 103W3.40 GHz (B+48%) @ 99°C @ 84W
ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 GU6033.87 GHz (B+68%) @ 95°C @ 106W3.90 GHz (B+70%) @ 95°C @ 109W3.58 GHz (B+56%) @ 86°C @ 80W
MSI Creator Z16 (A11Ux)3.12 GHz (B+36%) @ 96°C @ 68W3.03 GHz (B+32%) @ 95°C @ 62W2.76 GHz (B+20%) @ 95°C @ 53W2.90 GHz (B+26%) @ 95°C @ 59W
MSI GE76 Raider (2021)3.22 GHz (B+40%) @ 95°C @ 67W3.11 GHz (B+35%) @ 94°C @ 62W3.14 GHz (B+37%) @ 94°C @ 61W3.26 GHz (B+42%) @ 94°C @ 64W
ASUS TUF F15 (FX506, 2021) (Turbo Mode)3.98 GHz (B+73%) @ 86°C @ 102W3.88 GHz (B+69%) @ 95°C @ 100W3.44 GHz (B+50%) @ 87°C @ 77W
MSI Pulse GL763.16 GHz (B+37%) @ 95°C @ 65W3.00 GHz (B+30%) @ 95°C @ 59W2.87 GHz (B+25%) @ 95°C @ 55W
MSI Pulse GL662.94 GHz (B+28%) @ 94°C @ 58W2.76 GHz (B+20%) @ 94°C @ 52W2.77 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 TiGPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (Max fan)
Dell XPS 15 95101187 MHz @ 74°C @ 40W1293 MHz @ 75°C @ 44W
Dell G15 55111882 MHz @ 71°C @ 88W1878 MHz @ 72°C @ 89W
Dell G15 55151857 MHz @ 76°C @ 80W1850 MHz @ 77°C @ 80W
Acer Nitro 5 (AN515-57)1616 MHz @ 70°C @ 66W1607 MHz @ 72°C @ 65W1632 MHz @ 69°C @ 66W
MSI Katana GF761619 MHz @ 76°C @ 60W1594 MHz @ 82°C @ 60W1632 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.


All Dell XPS 15 9510 configurations:

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