Dell XPS 17 9720 RTX 3060 laptop review: 50 percent faster processor than before

[Redaktion]

The Alder Lake platform has done wonders for the XPS 17 series in terms of raw performance, but it comes at a cost that power users ought to be aware of.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-XPS-17-9720-RTX-3060-laptop-review-50-percent-faster-processor-than-before.622992.0.html

[NikoB]

Glossy screen - all your glare along with eye fatigue. Wildly brake matrix. Dell, why not 120Hz with a response time below 10ms? Why is it not given in rewvie the scatter of color disbalance in calibrated mode?

According to the processor - too slow from PSU performed by Dell, which is clearly visible against of HP OMEN with the same almost weight. Despite the fact that the AIDA64 test "FP64 RAY-TRACE" clearly pronounces the catastrophic lower performance of Alder Lake vs. Tiger Lake-H (11800h), with a _large consumption_!.

And with such a strangled processor compared to HP Omen, Dell managed to make a noisy cooling system at an average load...

And again, oh horror! Castled keyboard in 17" models from 14"! Definitely, this is not a model for office work and not for profissenals that require a digital block. Dell, but for whom are you doing this? For bloggers?

[Ednumero]

Sleek as usual. I do agree about the glossiness, fan noise, and numpadless keyboard though.

I hope more companies do start using this size + aspect ratio of display. There's still a drought of 17" 16:10 options.

[LostInSpace]

>>>Dell, but for whom are you doing this?

Well, for me for one. I am a 'professional engineer', I appreciate the centered keyboard more than the missing numpad. I write code and I design with CAD programs.

I am also an actual 9700 owner.

[Kom]

Boring.

I'd like to see Asus M7601 (VivoBook Pro 16X) review and how it compares to XPS, because that looks much better on paper.

- 16", 3.2K, 120Hz OLED
- Efficient Ryzen 6000 chip
- RTX 3060
- All the ports including HDMI 2.1, SD Express and 2.5GbE
- 1080p webcam and better mic
- Built in Wi-Fi 6E support
- 90Wh battery
- Beefy 240W charger
- Just under 2.3kg

Asus M7601 has pretty much everything XPS17 buyers asked for YEARS that Dell refused to listen to.

[NikoB]

>>>Dell, but for whom are you doing this?

Well, for me for one. I am a 'professional engineer', I appreciate the centered keyboard more than the missing numpad. I write code and I design with CAD programs.

I am also an actual 9700 owner.

I am a professional software developer, who wrote at least hundreds of thousands of lines of code. Writing a code without an additional digital block is physically impossible. I use it as a navigation unit and 4 main operand (+Enter). It is also extremely important in this mode for effective group file operations in normal file managers. So I don't need to tell me how you effectively "write the code" on the cut keyboard from 14 "(I have such) laptop. The speed of entry of code without a digital block in navigation mode falls at times. This is a long -proven fact in a dispute with such Here, assureing that they are cooked on keyboards of a normal digital unit in navigation mode and key operands in all languages ​​without exception (as well as effective, quick commenting of code). The effectiveness of the coding is much lower, especially with blind printing in 2 hands.

Selling a keyboard on 17" models without a digital unit is pure nonsense and blessed. On the Internet is full of replicas of even us programmers who will never buy XPS line. They are all fans or Latitude/Precision or HP/Lenovo lines. It is because of a normal keyboard. Effective speed coding, when you were mentally  working in the "stream".

[Altan]

I was waiting new Dell XPS 17 9720 review from NotebookCheck.net before purchasing my new notebook.
I am a supply chain processes and systems (SAP etc) consultant but I am also an optimization (production planning) software developer (back-end with Python and SQL server).
For coding, I prefer (perhaps as every programmer) ThinkPad keyboards with numpad as notebook but I use 95% my desktop computer for coding and rarely notebooks at customer site. I had 35" 3440x1440 and 27" FHD monitor set-up at office and even another 34" 3440x1440 at my parents house when I need to visit and stay there for a few-nights.
Even though I rarely use notebook for coding I still looked for 17" or bigger therefore as first choice and the Dell 9720 is one of the most portable 17" notebooks.
Unfortunately I had to buy a 16" at this weekend since I wanted to set-it-up completely before my new project starts.
After reading this review, I saw that I made a correct decision by the choice of MSI Summit E16 Flop A12UDT. Thanks for your detailed review (as always you have even not a close competitor on detailed reviews).
A12UDT misses very few issues (not upgradeable, 3050Ti instead of 3060 and 12700H instead of 1280P) but it is lighter and very quiet and at half the price.
Even the CineBench 23 results are better than Notebookcheck.net's 1280P results as well.
But I really miss ThinkPad keyboard and fingerprint sensor is not usefull.

[_MT_]

Well, for me for one. I am a 'professional engineer', I appreciate the centered keyboard more than the missing numpad. I write code and I design with CAD programs.

So, you work with CAD and you don't miss a numpad when entering dimensions? You are an engineer and you don't miss a numpad when using a calculator application, a spreadsheet processor or something like Matlab or Mathematica? It would drive me nuts to do it on the numeric row. I find it pretty annoying even when I'm just entering IP addresses. I guess IPv6 kind of solves that problem as it's hex and a numpad won't help you with that. And you write code and you don't mind the ridiculously huge centred touchpad when touch-typing? I find that palm rejection struggles with fast typing.

[n5334]

>>>Dell, but for whom are you doing this?

Well, for me for one. I am a 'professional engineer', I appreciate the centered keyboard more than the missing numpad. I write code and I design with CAD programs.

I am also an actual 9700 owner.

Sure you are dude. What type of CAD like software doesn't have shortcuts on numpad? Without shortcuts it would take like 10x more time to design stuff.

I have my work laptop with useless garbage half-sized arrow keys, but at least there is a numpad which can replace them.

Dell's keyboard has half sized arrow keys, no numpad, no dedicated pgup/pgdown keys as well as weirdly place delete key. This keyboard is so useless it boggles my mind how it passed to production.

As a software engineer it would be a perfect machine for me, but this keyboard design is a big no-no.

[_MT_]

Dell's keyboard has half sized arrow keys, no numpad, no dedicated pgup/pgdown keys as well as weirdly place delete key. This keyboard is so useless it boggles my mind how it passed to production.

Well, it's meant for consumers. It's a premium multimedia laptop. What's worse, these layouts are making it into Latitudes and Precisions. Either engineers at Dell are not using their own products or nobody listens to them.

The ThinkPad T16/ P16s looks interesting (finally a bigger battery) as long as you don't need a more powerful GPU. Unfortunately, the AMD version is impossible to find at least where I live (Lenovo even de-listed it). It seems that AMD can't supply the processors.

[Lorry]

Why all this debate?

XPS 17 is the ONLY 1 out of 50 windows laptops of 16-17 size that has a "centered inputs + good speakers" design. Don't like that because you want a numpad? Well lucky for you, you have 49 other laptops to choose from. Let Dell and their customers have it.

[Tom79]

Dell configuration shows two CPU options: i7-12700H and i9-12900HK.
In which cases would the i9 be the prefered choice?

I'm not very tech savvy, but understand that i9 CPUs are commonly playing out their strengths only at intense multi tasking. But there is hardly ever a good explanation on what 'intense multi tasking' means in more detail. So, e.g. from how many apps/processes running at the same time would an i9 start to make sense - just roughly?

[RobertJasiek]

Never. Cooling is never good enough. i9 in Notebooks is just a rip-off.

[Ray519]

@notebookcheck:
have you looked at the thunderbolt controllers?
Dell advertises the nvidia gpu-variants of the 9720 as having "direct graphics output mode", just like the previous generations (connect external graphics outputs to the nvidia GPU instead of the iGPU, allows integrated display + 4 external ones, allows VR support, slightly more perf. for external screens).

But Intel's specs say that Alder Lake CPUs no longer have the ability to route dGPU displayport connections through the integrated thunderbolt controllers, as the previous Tiger Lake generation did (the one before that used external controllers).

So there are 3 possibillities:
1. Intels Specs are wrong (unlikely)
2. Dell is once more providing wrong specs and lying about what their devices can do.
3. Dell is not using the Alder Lake integrated Thunderbolt controllers and is adding 2 additional discrete Maple Ridge Thunderbolt Controllers with additional power draw in order to make this work.

Because of my own history with Dell with their specifications being wrong, I am highly interested which one the options is actually true. This should be able to be confirmed by finding the BIOS option and verifying it works. Device manager should list the Thunderbolt Controller PCI-IDs, which would be 1137 for the additional controllers.