Dell xps 13 convertible - better than iPadPro and Surface pro x?

Smart

 

All the more reason for Apple to make Penabled convertible MacBooks. Despite, the MacBook keyboard fiasco, people still trust apple for it's quality control. Also, I don't think anybody is fooled by iPadOS. Most people with iPads still own a proper laptop.

It already has been able to minimise and FaceID to an extent that can be easily hidden in a narrow bezel (as opposed to Windows hello Camera that continues to ruin the symmetry and sleekness of Surface family products, from Surface go to SPX). There will be a stampede, in Apple stores when that happens.

I can only imagine a bigger trackpad if MacBook comes in iPadPro aspect ratio.

i have read a similar complaint about the noise in a YouTube comments section of Lisa Gade's review.

 

You should checkout https://www.fakespot.com/. It helps spot those armies of fake reviewers.

 

The key to evaluating the owner reviews is to focus on the 1-3 star ones. Forget the potentially fake positves, but there is some consistency to the % of 1-3 star reviews, as a snapshot of a potentially troublesome device. Then scan the low reviews, they will not appear fake, and you can even search for key problems that recur.

The fake reviews have been around forever, although I've found fakespot.com to be unreliable as well, it's all algorithm and I've found it's gotten it wrong quite a few times.

Bottom line is that tech reviews tell you nothing about QC and reliability but the high incidence and specific issues in the low reviews provide the best database available on high volume devices, and it has steered me away from a lot of bad devices. Of course, back it up with TPCR threads on the device if you can find them - eg, the bad news with the X1-Yoga 3rd gen. Caveat emptor.!

The other bottom line: the XPS 13 has always been a bad apple. Be really careful.

 

I haven't used fakespot.com enough to know it's reliability level so I'll defer to Jeff.

Regarding the XPS 13, we have about 60 of them (including 9343, 9350, 9360, 9370, and 9380) and we've had a significant amount of very swollen batteries (which Dell has done nothing about). Getting OEM replacement batteries for these machines is difficult. Parts People is frequently out of stock (I wonder why). Also, we've had issues with the Killer Wireless cards that are included with the 9360 model. We've replaced several with Intel Wi-Fi cards.

I was thinking about this review issue for the past couple of days. It plagues the computer market, along with the car market. It's difficult to get a true feel of what a used car is going to be like without scouring specific forums regarding a specific vehicle.

Is there a market for a website that conducts reviews of the true cost of ownership of computers / vehicles along with the realities of dealing with in warranty repairs via customer support? Definitely. But logistically this seems like a very difficult service to provide since time has to pass while the reviewer continues to use the device as the consumer would for potentially years. I don't see how viable in depth, long terms reviews like that are.

 

Hate to beat a dead horse, but failing the kind of service @ORTOX suggests or a real Consumer Reports - like database on owner satisfaction and specific areas of problems for device models, all the major retailers - Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, Costco have enough aggreagation of individual experiences that you can indeed synthesize absolute and comparative customer ownership experiences across different devices. EG, I have yet to see anyone on this thread dispute the notion that the XPS13 has always been plagued with problems, real basic ones such as expanding batteries, coil whine, driver problems, bad Killer wifi hdwe, and you can discent these from reading the high volume owner reviews. Until we have something better, this is the best - and a very useful - guide to the ownership experience, separate and apart from the specs/benchmarks and appearance. (The XPS13 has always been a looker, and I think many, many buyers have come to hate themselves for going with the "pretty one," over the more solidly reliable competition.

One strong caveat: the surveys by tech magazines by brand are entirely useless! They have scores that are so close to each other that there is no statistical difference between rankings (except MS and Apple at top. They are also not model specific. They're really just click bait and advertiser stroking exercises.

 

I just returned an XPS 13 2-in-1 (7390), but for none of the reasons that have been discussed so far. For me, it was the pen/inking experience: lines were jittery and jagged--and not just diagonal ones, but curves and circles, too. Compared to the inking on the two Surface Pros I've owned, it was dreadful.

I went back and forth with Dell customer service for two weeks trying to figure out what was wrong, but nothing helped. And when I asked, repeatedly, "Did I get a faulty unit or does the inking experience just suck?" none of them could answer my question.

Does anyone here know? Other than that, I quite liked it for my purposes (teaching, for which I need traditional laptop and tablet/inking functionality in equal measure).

*If this should be posted as a new thread instead, please let me know.

 

Lisa @MobileTechReview mentioned that the lines were jittery, but still usable for art @9:04:





Looking at the screenshot, it doesn't seem terrible...about on par with the wobble of the lines on my Z Canvas, which I really enjoy sketching with:

If your lines looked considerably worse, it was probably a just bad unit or more likely, the pen.

 

Thanks. Here's an example from OneNote. Blue "circles" are with XPS 13 2-in-1. Yellow circles are with Surface Pro 5. I've seen jitter on diagonal lines on almost any tablet I've tried. But not on curves.

 

That actually looks like vectoring caused by the pen driver/controller not updating quickly enough to capture the curve.

If you did a fast circles test:

did you notice the lines getting more jagged as you sped up?

If your CPU load wasn't maxed while that happened, then it's most likely a digitizer driver/firmware issue.

If you decide to get a replacement, you could try installing the Wacom Feel drivers for AES (along with all Dell firmware updates). It comes in a generic version and Dell-specific version.