Dell XPS 16 (2024) AI Laptop Experience: Premium Powerhouse, Gorgeous OLED

Introduction + Specs Tested

It has been a while, but this is my first long-form article since the beginning of 2023. I stepped away for a little break after 13 years of non-stop pounding out news and reviews on graphics cards, desks, gaming chairs, covering live events across the planet, and so much more.

But now I'm back, and with a smaller place to live, I've adopted the laptop lifestyle. I don't have the room for the 5+ desks and 6+ monitors I used to use and I've accustomed to it, and now I love it. Last year when I re-joined TweakTown, I asked to take the lead on AI PCs and AI laptops of the future, and that future is fast approaching us.

In the last few months, we've seen Microsoft's huge push of Copilot+, Qualcomm's launch of AI PC processors, including its new Snapdragon X series processors, which launched as the first wave of Copilot+ AI PCs, the soon-to-be-released AMD Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APUs, and Intel's new Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake" CPUs.

Dell reached out to me a few months ago to take a look at their XPS 16 (2024 model) to which I agreed, and I have been using it as my daily driver for the last few months. Months and months of writing news articles, reading and reading my life away, and pumping hours and hours into Overwatch 2, the XPS 16 has been flawless.

24

Dell's new XPS 16 is a beautiful piece of machinery, very Apple-y in its design, and it has been as sturdy as a powerful multi-thousand-dollar desktop PC system. Everything you need, and more, with plenty of CPU power, GPU, RAM, and SSD power, tons of battery life, and a gorgeous 16.3-inch 4K 90Hz OLED display.

Specs Tested

Dell sent over the XPS 16 packing the Core Ultra 7 155H "Meteor Lake" CPU, which carries 16 cores and 22 threads of power with an integrated NPU for AI workloads. There is a nice-to-see 32GB of DDR5 RAM, a 1TB Gen4 SSD from KIOXIA, and NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU with 40W of power available, and 6GB of GDDR6 memory.

• CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 155H (16C/22T)
• RAM: 32GB DDR5
• GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4060 (40W)
• SSD: 1TB Gen4 KIOXIA
• OLED: 3840 x 2400 @ 90Hz

Dell XPS 16 (2024)

	Today	Yesterday	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$2699.00	$2699.00	$2699.00	-	Buy
* Prices last scanned on 9/9/2024 at 5:55 pm CDT - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission from any sales.

XPS 16 spec choices

Spec choices:

It starts with the baseline Core Ultra 7 155H (16C/22T) up to the Core Ultra 9 185H (16C/22T also), but the Core Ultra 9 185H has higher clock speeds. Dell provides the option of 16GB of RAM, with upgrades to 32GB and even 64GB if you need a monster amount of RAM.

Note: Both the 16GB and 32GB options are LPDDR5X-6400, while the 64GB option is LPDDR5X-7467.

Gen4 SSD storage options are aplenty: 512GB Gen4 SSD for starters, with the review sample Dell sent us had 1TB Gen4 SSD storage, but there are options to upgrade to 2TB or even 4TB of Gen4 SSD storage.

You've got integrated Intel Arc graphics from the Meteor Lake processor exclusively, with no discrete GPU, or the option for NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4070, RTX 4060, or RTX 4050 Laptop GPUs. This provides some hefty gaming performance, even with the RTX 4060 Laptop GPU inside of our review sample easily handling 4K 90FPS gaming on the OLED panel.

Note:

• RTX 4050 6GB, 50W
• RTX 4060 8GB, 50W
• RTX 4070 8GB, 60W

Display options:

Dell ships its XPS 16 with two different display options: 16.3-inch non-touch LED with a native 1920 x 1200 (1200p) resolution, or the beasty 16.3-inch OLED touchscreen with 3840 x 2400 (2400p) resolution.

24

Dell shipped over the XPS 16 configuration with the 4K 90Hz OLED display, and I will say this repeatedly: once you go OLED, you can't go back.

Initial Thoughts

Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU: The new Intel Core Ultra 7 155H "Meteor Lake" CPU is inside the XPS 16 configuration the company sent me, with 16 cores and 22 threads with an Intel AI NPU for AI workloads. I virtually live in Google Chrome all day and night working for TweakTown, reading and writing through sometimes unlimited Chrome tabs.

24

The Core Ultra 7 155H processor with 32GB of RAM and a 1TB Gen4 SSD were enough to do everything I do simultaneously on a high-end desktop PC on the XPS 16 laptop. I didn't feel the difference, with enough power to handle everything I threw at it.

Display, I/O, keyboard, etc: Dell provides 3 x USB Type-C ports with Thunderbolt 4 support, a microSD card reader, and a headphone jack. This means there are no regular USB ports (USB-A) on the XPS 16. It's a pure USB-C clean laptop. Nothing else, which means any USB devices you want to plug into the XPS 16 will need to be done through a USB hub (they're cheap). The company does include a mini dock in the box for the XPS 16, a USB-A to HDMI adapter, allowing you to hook up a monitor to the laptop.

The keyboard... oh, the keyboard: Dell has crafted an utterly gorgeous laptop that you can look closer at any point of it, and see the engineering work that has gone into the XPS 16. But, when it comes to the keyboard... I found it almost unusable for my typing style and speed. I use the Logitech G915 Lightspeed wireless keyboard (I have multiple G915 keyboards, they're awesome for me) and couldn't get used to the XPS 16 keyboard.

24

It looks great, and felt great to use, but if you're non-stop typing on it all day and night long, it's not something I could use daily. This is where Bluetooth and wireless dongles come in handy, so I used a USB Type-C dongle and plugged in the USB dongle for my Logitech G915 Lightspeed wireless keyboard. That, along with the Logitech G502X wireless gaming mouse with its USB dongle, and then through Bluetooth, I've got my personal Apple AirPods Max headphones (they're fantastic, the only Apple product I own).

The LED touch buttons are really nice: I did like the LED touch buttons at the top of the XPS 16, which turn off and disappear when you're not using the touchpad. This means that in my use case - with a wireless mouse and keyboard - the touch buttons don't enable it. But, if you're using the laptop as intended (for the most part) and using the touchpad, those buttons lighting up and turning off are neat.

The invisible touchpad is invisibly cool, kinda: If you're using the XPS 16 laptop on the go, the touchpad is fantastic in terms of feel and size, but it's completely invisible. There's no light to show you that the touchpad has been enabled, which feels like an oversight. It would've been nice to have seen a light around the touchpad, maybe for the 2025 model.

Dell uses a beautiful soft-touch coating over Corning Gorilla Glass, which means it feels a bit thicker, sturdier, and more resistant than traditional touchpads. It looks and feels fantastic, but its useability (without the light) is questionable. There were times when I just simply didn't know where the touchpad started or ended, which made it a guessing game of shifting your fingers - on that beautifully soft touchpad - until you found the end of the touchpad.

Moving from desktop to laptop lifestyle

Until now, I had set up my workstation at a proper Secretlab gaming desk with a high-end office chair for ultimate luxury, with a top-of-the-line desktop gaming PC powered by an Intel Core i9-13900K and another with the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D. Both of these systems had a GeForce RTX 4090 and GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER, both with 32GB of DDR5 RAM and oodles of Gen4 SSD storage.

This was all hooked into either a 48-inch 4K 120Hz OLED TV from LG, or my monster 77-inch 4K 120Hz OLED TV (also made by LG). 4K 120Hz gaming on a huge OLED is truly another level of awesomeness, so going down into the Dell XPS 16 and its 16-inch OLED was a huge screen size downgrade, but the lifestyle change from using desktops to laptops was made far better with the Dell XPS 16 laptop.

Copilot+ button + AI testing

The new Dell XPS 16 laptop is the first AI PC I've used, with a physical Copilot+ button that I became accustomed to. After shifting into the AI PC and AI laptop review side of TweakTown, I've been forcing myself to use Copilot+ more regularly.

I'll be doing this style of testing for all Copilot+ AI product reviews moving forward, to come at them like a consumer, as there aren't many AI benchmarks so far. Running AI benchmarks just shows you the raw performance of the NPU, which we'll be covering in other articles. For now, I'll look at the consumer and gaming use cases for AI.

Copilot+ was immensely useful when making social images for my news posts on TweakTown, of which I write around 35-50 news posts per week, depending on the week. Most of those news articles had a social image made by Copilot+, so pressing the single button on the laptop to bring it up made things useful.

24

Outside of that, to be brutally honest, I haven't used Copilot+ or anything AI for anything that a regular user would need. I have used ChatGPT to work out an error on the washing machine a few days ago, which was - once again - really useful. But that wasn't on my PC, just ChatGPT (which is obviously available on the desktop, but doesn't use an NPU).

AI benchmarking is different, and I used a few different pieces of software and tests to put the NPU under stress. Procyon provides fantastic AI workloads for your CPU, GPU, and NPU, so we tested those. GeekbenchML is also good for a quick run, while using a mod for Audacity to squeeze the NPU for audio workloads using AI is another thing I tested on the NPU inside of the Meteor Lake chip in the XPS 16 laptop.

Note: AI benchmarking is coming in a separate article... but still, the NPU is mostly useless for probably 99% of people who buy an AI PC right now. This will change; we're in the baby steps of AI right now.

A regular user won't do that, but as AI matures on laptops and desktops, we'll cover more and more things that you'll actually use outside of these very strict amounts of software or use cases that use the NPU.

Dell AI features

The now regular AI-powered features inside of smartphones, tablets, and laptops through AI-powered camera upgrades are something worth using. I had my XPS 16 setup on the kitchen bench and was on a video call with my brother, when the camera panned and zoomed to different positions as I was walking around in the kitchen.

That's a nice touch, as well as blurring the backgrounds when you're on a video call for something work-related, they're actually useful. But, they don't use the NPU... these are just software tricks that are becoming part of our everyday lives through Windows and software upgrades over time.

Gaming on the XPS 16

The Intel Core Ultra 7 155H "Meteor Lake" processor, 32GB of RAM, 1TB Gen4 SSD, and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU provide more than enough power for everyday tasks and one of my favorite games of all time: Overwatch 2.

I have 1200+ hours in Overwatch 2 - which I played copious amounts of hours on with the Dell XPS 16 laptop. The Core Ultra 7 155H, 32GB of RAM, and RTX 4060 Laptop GPU powered through the 4K 90Hz OLED at 90FPS+ in Overwatch 2, which put a smile on my dial.

4K 90FPS+ in Overwatch 2 was an impressive feat for the laptop, which isn't very thick. The 4K 90Hz OLED panel is an absolute pleasure to look at while playing (any game, that is). The colors pop, the blacks look that "inky OLED" black that only OLED gives you, and Overwatch 2 excels on the XPS 16 laptop.

Cyberpunk 2077 was also a joy to run on something that only has an RTX 4060 Laptop GPU. Thanks to NVIDIA DLSS 3.5, I was able to get 4K 30FPS+ with High graphics settings, which is fantastic to see out of the XPS 16 laptop. It's even better thanks to the beautiful 16.3-inch 4K OLED panel.

I would definitely like to see 4K 120Hz refresh rate on the Dell XPS 16 2025 laptop, which would be a nice bump from the 90Hz refresh rate on the XPS 16 2024. 90Hz is far, far better than 60Hz, but it doesn't come close to that smoother 120Hz refresh.

Pros & Cons

PROS

• 4K 90Hz OLED display: Man, oh, man... Dell's new XPS 16 laptop has a gorgeous 16-inch 4K 90Hz OLED display that is utterly gorgeous. Once you go OLED, you cannot go back. I switched between the 16-inch 4K 90Hz OLED panel on the XPS 16 to another laptop with a 16-inch 4K 120Hz Mini-LED display, and the OLED is definitely the better-looking panel. It's utterly gorgeous.
• Gorgeous design: Dell has crafted a gorgeous laptop that is worthy of being called an Apple MacBook Pro competitor. It has the power inside from the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H "Meteor Lake" CPU, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU all inside of a beautiful design, thin, only USB-C ports, and a tiny bezel around the 16-inch 4K 90Hz OLED touch panel.
• Dedicated Copilot+ button: I found the physical Copilot+ button on the Dell XPS 16 laptop useful over time. It's not something that absolutely everyone would use, but over the coming months and years, Copilot+ will be a larger and larger part of our everyday lives using Windows.
• All-day battery life: The Dell XPS 16 is a powerhouse laptop, but it doesn't just exhaust its battery in a couple of hours. Rather, I could do a full 12-14 hour day of work on-battery with the XPS 16, and it just kept going on and on and on. 14+ hour battery life with a 90Hz OLED display is fantastic.
• Powerful components: Between the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H "Meteor Lake" CPU, 32GB of RAM, 1TB Gen4 SSD, and a discrete RTX 4060 6GB GPU, you've got plenty of hardware. Sure, there are faster systems, but not in this style of build with near-silent operation. The powerful components mixed with a 90Hz OLED display make for a potent combination for the XPS 16.

CONS

• Keyboard is not good, at all: I simply couldn't get used to the keyboard, it has key placement that is truly odd on something Dell is pushing as a MacBook Pro competitor, but the keyboard sucks. I simply couldn't use it, and to get the amount of writing I need to get done on the daily, I wouldn't be able to do that on the XPS 16 keyboard.
• 90Hz is nice, 120Hz is better: The 16-inch 90Hz OLED display is beautiful, don't get me wrong, but a 120Hz refresh rate would just be a cherry on top for the XPS 16 2025 laptop.
• Only USB-C ports: Sure, it looks good... and for the most part, heaps of products and devices are USB-C now, but it would be nice to have a USB-C to USB-A hub included in the box (instead of the USB-C to HDMI adapter, even).

Final Thoughts

If you look at the Dell XPS 16 laptop from the side of an "AI PC" then is it a good buy? Absolutely. You've got pretty much the same features across the board from the NPU inside of the XPS 16 as you do any AI PC right now, with the dedicated Copilot+ button ready for your AI workloads.

24

The 16.3-inch 4K+ 90Hz OLED display is utterly gorgeous to look at. No matter what you're doing, it looks better doing it: working, watching content, gaming, everything. The 90Hz refresh rate on top of the smoother OLED panel makes regular workloads like using Windows, browsing the internet, etc., a breeze for your eyes.

Dell has a beautiful-looking unit with its XPS 16, and while the keyboard lacks and needs a radical rehaul for 2025, inside, the amount of CPU, RAM, SSD, and GPU grunt you can option in is fantastic. Up to the Core Ultra 9 185H, 64GB RAM, 4TB SSD, and RTX 4070, all with the 4K+ 90Hz OLED display. Not too shabby for a MacBook Pro competitor.

The all USB-C connectivity can be jarring for some, but we live in a world where companies want that super-sleek Apple-like look, and Dell delivers that with the XPS 16 and its many USB-C and Thunderbolt 4 connectors. It definitely does look nice, and everything is moving into USB-C anyway.

The Copilot+ button makes using AI easier through Windows, but you're not tapping into the NPU using Copilot+ anyway. You'll have to wait a few more months for some intensive NPU-based software, which will squeeze AI processors, something I'm truly excited to see.

24

The big difference between the Dell XPS 16 laptop and a high-spec Apple MacBook Pro is that the XPS 16 runs an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H "Meteor Lake" CPU based on the x86 architecture. Apple uses its M-series processors in its new MacBook Pro laptops based on the Arm architecture.

Windows has both x86 and Arm support, while the Arm-based M-series processor from Apple will run natively through macOS on the MacBook Pro laptops. This means we don't get a true apples to apples look at AI PCs, regular PCs, Arm-based AI PCs, and Apple MacBook Pro laptops.

With the mix of x86 desktop and laptop processors, Arm-based laptop processors, and multiple operating systems, it makes it hard to compare in pure benchmarks. That's where the more casual use case scenario makes things more fair for comparison, because it's how people will actually USE the system, versus pure specs.

Alright, Anthony, you've written enough...

Should you buy the Dell XPS 16 laptop? If you are after something like the Apple MacBook Pro laptop but in a premium Windows laptop, then the Dell XPS 16 is for you. It has up to a powerful Core Ultra 9 185H "Meteor Lake" CPU, up to 64GB of RAM, up to 4TB of Gen4 SSD storage, and up to a GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU with 8GB of GDDR6 memory.

It's all wrapped in a premium finish, with a gorgeous 16.3-inch 4K+ 90Hz OLED touchscreen that is beautiful to look at. The all USB-C ports add to the premium finish whether you like them or not, but with super-fast USB-C and Thunderbolt 4 connectivity on the XPS 16, you won't be lacking in options or speeds.

The Copilot+ functionality on the Dell XPS 16 is a joy to use for everyday tasks. It's just not for everyone yet.

As my daily driver, the Dell XPS 16 has exceeded my expectations. Going from a beasty desktop gaming PC with a huge 48-inch 4K 120Hz OLED TV as my monitor and some of the fastest PC components known to man, down into a 16.3-inch display was hard... but the gorgeous 4K+ OLED panel that Dell has used, is beautiful.

24

The Core Ultra 9 185H + 32GB of RAM + RTX 4060 Laptop GPU provides enough PC hardware grunt to run my game of choice - Overwatch 2 - at 4K 90FPS+ which looks sublime on the OLED panel on the XPS 16. It would be perfect if it were 120Hz, but 90Hz is better than 60Hz, and that's all that matters (and the price would've been more expensive, again, maybe for the XPS 16 2025 model).

There was no sluggish performance, I was multi-tasking like a mad man and the XPS 16 keeps up with me, it has totally been my BFF for months now. It's a powerhouse laptop, with my wireless keyboard and mouse ready to go with the 16.3-inch 4K 90Hz OLED touchscreen and my Apple AirPods Max headphones, I'm able to handle the endless list of tasks with the Dell XPS 16.

There have been times when I've needed to move between places recently, and with no regular setup, the Dell XPS 16 has been a lifesaver. It has enabled me to do everything I need to do content wise, all on-the-go, in a premium design that truly is a MacBook Pro competitor (and some) from the company.

If you don't want all the RGB gaming bling and a full-on gaming laptop, the Dell XPS 16 is a fantastic buy. You can configure all of the specifications that you need. There's no need to get 64GB of RAM if you're not going to use it or the RTX 4070 Laptop GPU if you're not gaming.

I would stress that you should not buy the XPS 16 without upgrading to the OLED display option; it is truly worth every dollar. Once you go OLED, you won't go back, and you won't regret the upgrade on the XPS 16.