You can drop down in display resolution and get better battery life from the XPS 15, but neither is the most portable laptop around. Neither laptop was terribly impressive, with neither making it past seven hours on any of our tests. In our testing, the XPS 15 lasted for about an hour longer in each of our tests - web, video, and benchmarking - thanks to the Spectre x360 15’s power-hungry AMOLED display. However, you can buy the XPS 15 with a Full HD display, meaning that if you want more longevity, then you have that option. Dell packed 83 watt-hours into the XPS 15 while the Spectre x360 has 82 watt-hours. That makes battery life a more important consideration. And while the XPS 15 is slightly smaller, both will take up some room in your backpack. Neither of these machines is particularly light, at over four pounds. But the XPS 15 is simply the faster laptop, and that matters in the 15-inch class. It’s also brighter at over 400 nits, and there’s a Full HD option that’s also very good if you want to save on battery life.Įach of these 15-inch machines provides the kind of performance you might be looking for in a larger laptop, and both have displays that creative types crave. The XPS 15, on the other hand, has a superior 4K IPS touch display (no pen support) that offers significantly better contrast than HP’s IPS version but can’t hold a candle to the Spectre’s AMOLED display, slightly wider color gamut (by a few percentage points), and excellent accuracy. At this time, there’s no Full HD option, but there is also an AMOLED display that’s extremely bright and has class-leading contrast and the most accurate colors you’ll find on a Windows 10 laptop. The Spectre x360 has a very good touch- and pen-enabled 4K (3,840 x 2,160) IPS display available that offers good contrast, an average color gamut with good accuracy, and just short of our preferred 300 nits of brightness. Their displays are another area where these laptops digress.

However, the XPS 15 is going to be several frames per second faster in every game thanks to its faster GPU. As long as you’re willing to hold graphical detail to reasonable settings, then you can play most modern games on both the XPS 15 and the Spectre x360 15. Both use the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Ti, but HP utilizes the slower Max-Q version. The same held true for gaming, where the laptops are again built around similar but not quite the same components. In our CPU benchmarks, the XPS was the clear winner thanks to being equipped with the eight-core Core i7-10875H. In addition, while the HP maxes out at 16GB of RAM, the XPS 15 can be upgraded to 64 GBs. While the HP Spectre x360 15 can be equipped with the six-core 45-watt Intel 10th-gen Core i7-10750H CPU, which is fast enough for moderately demanding creative tasks, the XPS 15 can be configured with up to the eight-core 10th-gen Core i9-10885H. The Dell XPS 15 retakes its position as the more powerful of the two laptops. Performance Image used with permission by copyright holder The Spectre x360 15 has a more standout design and better connectivity, but the XPS 15 makes better use of its size to pack in a display with a useful 16:10 aspect ratio. Both laptops support Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1. The XPS 15 is all-in on USB-C, with three Thunderbolt 3-enabled ports to go with a full-size SD card reader and a 3.5mm audio jack. The Spectre x360 15 has two USB-C with 40 gigabits per second (Gbps) Thunderbolt 3 support, a single USB-A 3.1 port, and a full-size HDMI port. Both touchpads support Microsoft’s vastly superior Precision Touchpad protocol.Ĭonnectivity is strongly in HP’s favor. It’s much larger than the Spectre x360’s thanks to extra keyboard deck space due to the 16:10 display. The XPS 15, though, has a much better touchpad. In addition, both enjoy great keyboards with sufficient travel and precise feels - although we prefer the HP’s version for its more springy and slightly deeper mechanism. The Dell is also heavier at 4.5 pounds versus 4.23 pounds. The XPS 15 is 13.57 x 9.06 x 0.71 inches, compared to the Spectre x360 15 at 14.17 inches x 8.91 inches x 0.79 inches.

The bezels are a closer match now that HP has reduced the Spectre x360 15’s versions to much more modern dimensions. XPS 17: high-performance siblings duke it outīoth laptops are built around 15.6-inch displays, but the XPS 15 enjoys a 16:10 aspect ratio that’s better for productivity and a slightly higher 4K+ (3,840 x 2,400) resolution. HP Envy deals: HP’s most popular laptop starts at $550ĭell XPS 15 vs. This midrange HP laptop beats the Dell XPS 15 in one important way

Hp spectre 15