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As great as the MacBook Pro is right now, there's one important feature that's always been missing. A touchscreen. It's something Windows laptops have enjoyed for years now, and many have viewed it as a missing piece of the puzzle for the Mac. But where the MacBook Pro 14 really shines is in battery life. While the XPS 15 will struggle to hit eight hours of on-screen time, the MacBook Pro 14 can make it to 18 hours depending on the task. If you need a laptop that will make it through not just one working day, but well into the second, then the MacBook Pro 14 wins out. The MacBook Pro 14 is in another class The Inspiron 16 Plus came to us running Windows 11 Home with a relatively light software payload. Aside from the typical drivers and control panels, Dell only included a McAfee LiveSafe 30-day trial and the standard Dell applications, including Digital Delivery and MyDell. As you'd expect, the most important of these is the MyDell application because that's where the Color & Display and Power control features live. WCCFTech made the point that the OLED touchscreen MacBook Pro would likely require tweaks to the macOS interface to accommodate for the precision needed when using touch on a display. Notably, the iPad Pro already has the assistance of the Apple Pencil, but there's no telling how accessories will fit into the equation. Largely, you can overcome these issues and end up with a hugely capable, portable studio laptop but you should go with eyes wide open to the fact Windows laptops inherently need a bit of ‘optimising’ before they’re recording-ready. That said, with the XPS 13 being one of the most popular laptops on the market in 2023, it’s not like you’re buying into some obscure Windows ecosystem. Whatever issue you have, you can guarantee there’ll be another XPS user who had and then solved the problem online.
Non- gaming laptops with integrated graphics tend to plod through these tests, but the discrete GPUs in this group showed their graphics and 3D chops with impressive results. For super-heavy-duty animation or modeling workflows, you'll want something from the workstation aisle, but video editors and mainstream content creators will be more than satisfied.
Dell Inspiron 16 Plus (7630): Affordable, Attractive And High-Performance Mobile Computing
Where the current version of the XPS 13 has drawn controversy is in the removal of some of its connectivity options. While Apple users will, by now, be familiar with (and occasionally frustrated by) the smaller number of USB-C ports, it does mean users of the newest XPS models will have to be dongle or hub-ready. What makes the XPS range great for musicians? Neither laptop has received any design changes in several generations. That’s a good thing, because both are among the best designed and built laptops available today.
After the introduction of the OLED touchscreen MacBook Pro, Apple is expected to push both features to MacBook Air models in 13.6-inch and 15.3-inch variants. This could happen starting in 2026 and beyond, depending on the tentative timeline of the MacBook Pro launch. All are premium laptops of various sizes that, like the XPS 15, are aimed at professional digital content creators and enthusiast-level users. Among them, you'll find a decent array of recent AMD, Intel, and Nvidia components. Productivity Tests Three further benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Geekbench 5.4 Pro by Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better). Technology enthusiasts love premium PCs. Flashy machines made from ultra-premium materials, with the thinnest profiles or the fastest components, speak to us on a primal level that cause us to make caveman noises like Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor on Home Improvement. The problem with those PCs, of course, is that premium features usually come at a premium price. But if you don't want to part with the big money, the subject of this article -- the Dell Inspiron 16 Plus (7630) -- is an excellent alternative. Just like most of Dell's performance laptops, the Inspiron 16 Plus starts with an Intel Core i7-13700H with six P-cores, eight E-cores, and a 5.0 GHz boost speed, strapped with a 45-Watt TDP. It's fed by 16 GB of DDR5-4800 memory in a dual-channel configuration, by way of a pair of upgradeable SO-DIMMs, with an official maximum capacity of 32 GB. There's also a 1 TB NVMe PCI Express SSD in the standard M.2 2280 form factor on board.
No matter what you think of the overall design, you have to agree that the XPS 13 Plus boasts awesome build quality. It's really solidly constructed. The all-metal chassis is very rigid without even a hint of flex that can often be felt with a thin ultraportable. The 13.4-inch XPS 13 Plus weighs 2.8 pounds, which is slightly heavier than the 13.6-inch M2 MacBook Air that weighs 2.7 pounds. For a more portable OLED ultraportable, the 13.3-inch Asus Zenbook S 13 weighs a scant 2.2 pounds. High-res OLED display, low-res IR webcam The MacBook Pro 14 also has better connectivity, with both more Thunderbolt 4 ports and an HDMI connection. Both laptops have full-size SD card readers, which is welcome. The XPS 15’s wireless connectivity is a generation behind, giving the MacBook Pro 14 another win. Images and text looked so sharp on the 3.5K resolution that I wouldn't recommend the higher 4K display option unless you needed a brighter display for outdoor use. The higher resolution isn't needed on such a compact screen and the added pixels will only decrease battery life. The 3.5K panel is rated for 400 nits, and my tests showed it a bit dimmer than its rating with a peak brightness of 369 nits. Each display option features touch support, which can come in handy when the haptic touchpad flakes out.
Yes, the MacBook Pro 14 is more expensive than the XPS 15, especially when fully configured. But the laptop has turned into the best portable creator’s workstation you can buy today. Terms Apply. Promotion ends 3 December 2023. Items are subject to availability. Max 5 units per customer. All other products will be delivered via the fastest available method (excluding bank holidays and weekends) and generally within 3-5 days, depending on customer location.For its current range, Dell has split things up a bit and now offers two variants of the XPS 13. There’s the base XPS 13, which offers a balance between performance and efficiency - which means a longer battery life - and a newer Plus model which favours power over efficiency. Aside from that, both of the 13” models come with the same gorgeous, sleek design, with a lightness that rivals even the current super-skinny MacBook Air models. We didn’t test the MacBook Pro 14 in the same version of the PugetBench Premiere Pro benchmark, and so we can’t directly compare numbers. However, in this benchmark that runs in a live version of Adobe’s Premiere Pro and uses the GPU to speed up certain tasks, the MacBook Pro 14 with the M3 Max achieved the second-highest score we’ve seen in a laptop. Only the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 with an AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D and an RTX 4090 was faster. The XPS 15, even in its most powerful configuration, won’t come close to matching the MacBook Pro 14. Desktop replacements spend much of their time plugged in, but long battery life is always a plus when business takes you out of the office. The XPS 15 passed with flying colors and more than 14 hours of stamina. You'll see shorter runtimes if crunching through content creation rather than playing video, but should still have plenty of headroom to work away from a wall outlet. Alongside the two 13” models are the equivalent 15” and 17” versions, as per normal, with the larger screens and enhanced specs making for highly capable music production machines.
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