It's new Intel processor day, as the firm introduced its Tiger Lake-H processors for gaming laptops, creator laptops, and mobile workstations. That means that a whole bunch of OEMs are lining up to announce their wares as well. That includes Dell, and while it has plenty to show off, the top of the lineup is a new XPS 15 and XPS 17, two of the best laptops from last year.
First of all, they both come with Intel's new 11th-gen processors. The Dell XPS 15 9510 comes with up to a Core i9-11900H, while the beefier XPS 17 9710 comes with the unlocked Core i9-11980HK. For graphics, the XPS 15 comes with NVIDIA's newly-announced GeForce RTX 3050 or 3050 Ti, marking the first time that the XPS 15 has come with RTX graphics. The Dell XPS 17 will be upgrading from the RTX 2060 to the newer RTX 3060.
Those are the key changes. There's also a new display option on the XPS 15, which is OLED. You might recall that when the XPS 15 9500 came around, it was the first redesign of the product in five years. The aspect ratio of the display changed from 16:9 to 16:10, so the OLED option was removed. Now, it's back with a 3,456x2,160 resolution. If you still prefer non-OLED, that 3,840x2,400 panel is still available. For the XPS 17, there's still no OLED option, as there are simply no suppliers that make 17-inch OLED panels.
Another important change is Thunderbolt 4. While Thunderbolt 3 could technically do everything that Thunderbolt 4 does if the OEM used all four lanes, Dell didn't. Dell used the minimum spec for Thunderbolt 3 on its premium XPS PCs, so this is a big upgrade. The XPS 15 has two Thunderbolt 4 ports while the XPS 17 has four.
The Dell XPS 15 and XPS 17 start at $1,249.99 and $1,449.99, respectively.
Update: Dell has updated its pricing on the new XPS laptops. An earlier version of this story had the XPS 15 starting at $1,199.99 and the XPS 17 starting at $1,399.99.
Next up is Alienware. Dell teased a new X-series from the series, starting with the Alienware X17. Coming with 11th-gen processors and RTX 30-series graphics, it also promises Element 31 thermal interface material that's made from Gallium-Silicone. It's meant to decrease thermal resistance, and Dell says it's the first of its kind. It also has a new quad-fan design, which is obviously meant to improve thermals as well.
The X-series was just a teaser, so there's no release date around that.
As far as products ready to ship go, there's a new Alienware m15 and Dell G5, the latter of which was something we thought was one of the best cheap gaming laptops. There aren't any design changes here. They come with 11th-gen CPUs and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30-series graphics. They're going to start at $949.99 and $1,299.99, respectively.
Next up are Dell's Precision mobile workstations. There's a new Precision 3561, Precision 5560, Precision 5760, Precision 7560, and Precision 7760 on the way. Yes, it's time to refresh all the things. The first digit in the product number is the tier, so 7000 series is the best. The second digit is screen size, so the 7560 is a 15-inch laptop while the 7760 is a 17-inch laptop.
At the top of the lineup with the Precision 7760 and Precision 7560, Dell is aiming for slimmer bezels, smaller footprints, and lightweight designs. However, these are still very powerful machines made to do the most complicated of tasks. The Precision 7760 comes with up to a Core i9-11980HK or a Xeon W-11955M, depending on your workload. For graphics, it comes with up to an NVIDIA RTX A5000 with 16GB GDDR6 memory.
Dell said that it would provide pricing on its new mobile workstation portfolio as we get closer to the launch.
Finally, there are some new Latitude laptops, specifically the Latitude 5421 and Latitude 5521. It's the same deal, with the upgrade to 11th-generation processors. Dell did not provide any pricing or availability information for them though.