Dell XPS 13 9380 Owners Thread

I received mine about a week ago and have been using it intensively. Here are my impressions (and would of course love to hear from others). First, my model:

FHD 1080p Matte Non-Touch
Core i7
16gb Ram
"Frost White"

I cloned the 250gb hard drive it came with onto a new Samsung 970 EVO 1TB, and have been using that (the replacement process was super easy, once I was able to "carefully" pry the cover off).

My overall impressions are very very good, especially when compared with my XPS 9343 non-touch 1080p, i.e. the original tiny bezels model from 2015 which I liked very much but was getting too slow (it's now my backup computer).

Positives:
Display: Great. Very bright, brighter than the 9343.
Keyboard and track pad: Fantastic once I adjusted the trackpad to low sensitivity
Speed: fast! I don't have "waiting" issues anymore as I was having with the 9343 increasingly over the past year. I'll leave it to others to do actual benchmarks.
Battery life: good after an initial scare. Yesterday I was working on battery for the first extended period of time (just typing on Word and normal Firefox browsing), and the power drained completely in just over four hours, despite my having display brightness at roughly a third of max. This was unacceptable. So I did two things:
1. Changed the Power setting to "Dell"
2. Put the laptop in "Battery Saver" mode (just search for "Battery Saver") automatically whenever I'm using the battery (i.e. set the slider to 100%)
Now I'm getting a 10% reduction in battery charge per hour, i.e. roughly 10 hours of battery life, when the screen is set to just under 50% brightness. Thus "battery saver" mode has worked well for me - it still allowing me to do everything I need to on battery -- 10 hours is pretty good!
Appearance: very nice! I like the white/frost because sometimes I like to work out in the sun and the black surface of the 9343 would make that impossible on a day that's even just a little bit warm.

Ok but not great:
Speakers: I find they just aren't loud enough to clearly hear all videos (some are ok, some not).

Problems:
I've seen this reported before. The battery drains significantly while on sleep mode (the 9343 doesn't have this problem). I switched to "hibernate" when closing the lid, which works for me; these chips are so fast now that the extra few seconds coming out of hibernate is manageable.

Issues I haven't experienced: coil whine. I don't hear it. The fan comes on a decent amount of the time but is not too loud.

Looking forward to reading others' impressions.

 

Any reason why you went for the i7? Or was it just to get the 16GB RAM?

I don't think enabling the battery saver mode is a permanent or acceptable fix for battery life. Without knowing the full details of the "battery saver" power mode on your particular system, the default Windows 10 feature limits background app activirty and push notifications.

The huge dissapointment for me with the 9380 is the fact Dell feel it's acceptable to release a 2019 premium laptop with a base display spec that's non-touch.

 

I went for the I7 because of a combination of best-performance and avoiding waiting longer until the I5 was available with 16Gb (I definitely wanted 16GB) - as my need for a new laptop was becoming urgent.

When I get a chance I'll try without the battery saver mode and then report back on the difference (i.e. while still keeping the "Dell" power option). Personally when I'm on battery, which isn't too often, I don't care so much about the background/push-notification activity that "battery-saver" limits. I understand that you/others may feel differently.

 

Is DPC latency and audio popping an issue on this machine? Thanks.

 

I've listened to a lot of video/audio on this machine already and have heard no audio popping or problems of any kind. The speakers just could be a bit louder. I've also used Bluetooth to connect to speakers, which has worked fine. WiFi seems good as well. Based on this experience, I would have to say that DPC latency (as I understand it) is not an issue.

 

How many watts can you sustain under a stress on the CPU if you get rid of power limit throttling by using ThrottleStop to disable and lock the power limits in its FIVR menu and set the Turbo Boost Power Maxes to very high values in the TPL menu?

 

What audio drivers did you use? The original ones?
And, did you do a clean install of Windows or did you use the one it shipped with?

I hope to receive my 9380 in the coming days somewhere and will share my experiences here as well once I receive it!

 

I ordered one it has shipped and should be here this week I ordered the I7 as well I wanted the 16gb ram and you can't upgrade the ram after.

I will be upgrading from the 9360 so I will let you know if it's worth it.

 

Could you please let me know what type of screen (matte/glossy) your 9380 system has as soon as you receive it? And if it has a matte screen, tell me what exact configuration you ordered? Thanks in advance!

 

I ordered the i5, 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM model (1080p non-Touch). Will let you know once it’s here!