Dell XPS 17 9700 facing worrying charging issues, drops from 100 percent to 65 percent battery while “recharging”

[Joel]

Please try the 130W AC adapter that came with the 9500 to see if it exhibits the same behavior.  It would be nice to be able to rule out the 9700 AC adapter altogether.

[LL]

Time to praise Notebookcheck.

[splus]

Thanks NotebookCheck for investigating this! It'll help a lot of people and make Dell solve the issue much faster.

[Sterlinger]

I've seen a handful of reviews about this laptop and I don't think I've seen even one where the reviewer didn't have to return it over some broken hardware issue, be it the trackpad, the speakers, or something else.

...

I think the speaker problem you mentioned could be solved updating the driver, so it was not a hw problem

[sandybo]

To be honest, if you knew the amount of power the you need when designing a system, you should have put adequate power source for it. If you knew it at first place but didn't make it right, that is an obvious engineering mistake, isn't it? If the compromises had to make, then don't provide RTX option (or other power hungry stuff) so that the total power can be confined to a given source. Even if we are not the dell engineers a simple math can get to the bottom of this issue. The engineering decision Dell made for XPS 17 9700 is a mistake.   

Again, praise for Allen, the editor in chief of Notebookcheck!

[Shervin Aslani]

I have yet to see anyone comment or review the ports on the XPS 17 9700. I have found posts that the RTX 2060 GPU is directly hardwired to the displayport outputs. Its 9700 capable of supporting DisplayPort 1.4? Dell spec sheets show that it supports Displayport 1.2 but I'm hearing that in the BIOS you can activate the RTX to bypass to Intel GPU. Would this result in supporting 1.4? Allen are you able to determine if the 9700 supports 1.4 data transfer?

[Shervin Aslani]

I have yet to see anyone comment or review the ports on the XPS 17 9700. I have found posts that the RTX 2060 GPU is directly hardwired to the displayport outputs. Its 9700 capable of supporting DisplayPort 1.4? Dell spec sheets show that it supports Displayport 1.2 but I'm hearing that in the BIOS you can activate the RTX to bypass to Intel GPU. Would this result in supporting 1.4? Allen are you able to determine if the 9700 supports 1.4 data transfer? Can I connect a DQHD monitor at 120 Hz?

[modernlife73]

I've just been playing Hexcells Infinite. It's a 95MB puzzle game. My battery drained whilst playing even though I was plugged in to mains. If that doesn't say something is very wrong with the XPS 17 I don't know what will.

[XPS User]

It's obviously going to be a very niche an impractical workaround, but does using the XPS 17 with an eGPU go anyway to preventing battery discharge during sustained loads?

I'd be interested to see what difference an eGPU being output back to the XPS' own screen and also an eGPU with output to an external monitor makes regarding it's power draw.

[Sterlinger]

what about the Precision 5750, the pro version, there are even higher configs possible, so I guess it was a bad idea and they should have used an extra power plug and a normal 230 W power supply instead of this customized TB power plug solution.

Another thought: this may be the reason why Dell batteries are worn out pretty fast in general? too small power supplies

However, could maybe all be fixed with a BIOS update... ;)

[_MT_]

Anyway, this is not the first time they did this either. For example, the base config Dell G5 gaming laptop with 1050Ti from 2018 only shipped with a 130W barrel plug because they decided to cut cost on that part (shame on you Dell). As a result, battery drain was quite insane when both the CPU and GPU could boost properly. The best solution for that was to shelve out extra money for a 180W barrel plug instead.

As far as I know, it's a standard feature. It has been around for at least 15 years. It allows you to, for example, take a 200+ W workstation and power it from a 12 V travel adapter rated at something like 65 W. As long as you had juice in the battery, it could use it to supplement the external power supply and provide more performance. Or to use a weaker supply in a pinch from a different laptop. Also useful for docking stations. Not to mention, laptops are typically designed to be primarily used on the go, powered by battery. Weaker supply then simply means slower charging. It's not preventing you from using a laptop as a laptop. It allows you to use whatever supply you happen to have on hand and make the best of it. This is exactly how it should be.

Yes, they sometimes leave it up to you to choose the appropriate power supply. Again, nothing new. Even 15 years ago, there were options to buy more powerful "bricks" for many laptops, even high end models (like top of the range Latitudes, Precisions). I believe my first Latitude came as standard with a 65 W supply and I opted for the optional 90 W one. It wasn't much and it was nicer (it was nice even by today's standards, designed so that you can nicely wrap the cables around it with its curves rather than edges, double insulated with a two pin plug rather than the annoying three pin, it had an integrated elastic cable strap). I believe there was an even more powerful supply listed in the configurator, but it was more of a brick.

In this case, I believe they really want to use USB-C for charging. It's meant to be a MacBook with Windows kind of a machine. Form over function. And they have to live with the limitation. But that's not really the issue here. The issue is that a 130 W supply isn't providing 130 W. That's not intentional.

[_MT_]

what about the Precision 5750, the pro version, there are even higher configs possible, so I guess it was a bad idea and they should have used an extra power plug and a normal 230 W power supply instead of this customized TB power plug solution.

Another thought: this may be the reason why Dell batteries are worn out pretty fast in general? too small power supplies

However, could maybe all be fixed with a BIOS update... ;)

It's not a full size workstation. It's an ultrabook on steroids. We'll see how it performs but I expect it to be quite thermally constrained. There is little point in bundling a 200 W supply if it can't cool 200 W of heat. Not to mention that it's funny when you have a laptop that's supposed to be very thin, very light and then you have a beast of a brick to go with it. If you don't mind traveling with a brick, you can buy a full size system.

[Tierney]

I assume there has been no update from Dell since 11th? I'm beginning to assume that they hope that this thing just blows over with time...

[Andreas R]

I want to order one with the 2060, but i will w8 to see what dell says after reading this. Don't think i can leave with this when i pay this premium.
CHecking notebookchat daily to see if there has been any updates.

[Throdor]

This is a deal breaker for me... I was so exsited about a proprer 16:10 screen... Its a pitty that the 7750 doesn't have the samr 16:10 screen