We know the Dell brand, specialized in offering computing solutions for professionals and educational environments. Its Alienware brand specializes in the gaming market, thus Dell XPS 17 9710 laptop is missing from it. The Dell XPS 17 9710 is not a laptop designed for gaming but for creative professionals.
At first glance, we note that this model bet everything on USB-C connectors, specifically the Thunderbolt 4. This means that any keyboard, mouse, webcam or any other component that we want to connect to it must use a transformer or a hub.
We are grateful to Dell for providing us with the product for review.
No products found.
Table of Contents
Unboxing
The Dell XPS 17 9710 comes to us in a black box with the Dell logo. A very standard box that will be used for all laptops and will be filled with the necessary padding and components for each order.
We open the box of the Dell XPS 17 9710, and after removing the laptop itself, under it we find two different compartments.
In them we find the power connection cable that will connect to the transformer, a hub to connect it to any of the USB ports, the transformer and the USB-C cable to connect the transformer to the laptop.
The transformer that is going to power the Dell XPS 17 9710. In its favor we can say that it is not very big and is easy to carry, which allows us to easily carry it along with the laptop itself.
Integrated
The lid of the laptop, with a simple design with the Dell logo in a reflective metallic finish. Plenty of space to put stickers on so you can set your laptop apart from the crowd.
Its lower profile, where we see that it has a lot of area for cooling and ventilation. To ensure long-term proper ventilation, there is a large riser bumper at one end and integrated into the shell to provide room for air to flow.
This way, if the adhesive on the tires wears off in the future, there will always be some space for airflow from the ventilation system.
As you can see, the Dell XPS 17 9710 can boast that it is extra slim, which helps keep it very light in weight and extremely easy to carry.
On this side you can see two of the four USB-C connectors with Thunderbolt 4 that this laptop has. As for the number of connectors, it does not fail, but a traditional USB port is missing. We imagine that if we had put it on, it would have made the thickness increase.
We open the laptop, and there is a perfectly clean design. a design that says it is totally professional, in a black finish, without any RGB lights. Plain and simple a laptop.
A closer look reveals the keyboard layout, with non-glare matte finish keys. On the sides of the keys are the sound speakers.
This is what the laptop would look like on a desk. If simple and elegant design becomes something in favor, since although we appreciate that laptops are made for gamers with high-end components, the stereotype of the overloaded, angular and ultra-colorful design becomes saturated. A much simpler design comes through and if you want to personalize a laptop, there are a ton of custom stickers you could use that would stand out a lot less than the usual RGB lights.
But we see that this laptop is not so much for gamers, that although they could perfectly take advantage of it; it is more designed for professionals. And in a professional setting, this laptop wouldn't turn heads if we didn't want it to.
Specifications
Within the configuration section, we can see that the operating system itself recognizes the NVIDIA RTX 3060 graphics card in its portable version, which in itself is already very powerful and could justify the price of the Dell XPS 17 9710 if we are looking for a computer from scratch that allows us to play games.
In the bezel of the screen you can see the small webcam that comes as standard. We have been able to test it, since now more than ever a webcam is going to become an essential piece in any equipment worth its salt.
Unfortunately, we have noticed that the quality of it leaves much to be desired, and that it does not reach 1080p. It will be very grateful to buy any webcam that reaches 1080p to be able to offer a decent video quality to those who are going to have to see us, which will mean that we will have to dedicate a connection port to it, and with that, look for a USB-A to USB-A transformer. USB-C
We disassemble the bottom cover of this laptop to appreciate its interior. We see that it has a huge removable battery, two symmetrical fans, and two SATA SSDs with PCIe connection.
Under the protective plastic sheets we see one of the two RAM memory modules that move the laptop. These are two 16 GB modules that achieve a total of 32 GB in dual format, which makes it more than ready to last for many years.
In the absence of confirmation, we can guess that these memory modules can be replaced and expanded to 32 GB modules, which would be the maximum allowed by the DDR4 protocol that the Intel Core Tiger Lake CPU with which it is equipped allows.
The two SSDs that come standard are of the SATA PCIE model. On the outside it does not say what capacity is the one they have as standard.
Gallery
Benchmarks with the Dell XPS 17 9710
Apart from listing and looking at its external components, we have decided to test the capabilities of the Dell XPS 17 9710 through various benchmarks. It is important to test its real capabilities when using it in modern games, and what internal components it has. The laptop itself comes with an energy saving system when it detects that it is not being powered enough or is disconnected.
The Dell XPS 17 9710 tries to save battery life by reducing the maximum power of the cores. It switches to using the graphics integrated into the CPU instead of trying to power the RTX 3060.
The processor that comes standard is an i7-11800H, which is a high-end laptop, from the Tiger Lake generation. It is from a generation of more than a year ago, but also being almost the top of the series, an 800 model and a laptop, it is a very positive impression that we have with it.
Being a Tiger Lake, it will not have the news that the Alder Lake family brings, which are mainly DDR5 and PCie 5.0. But it is not that they are essential elements, less today, since they are quite modern technology and that little software and hardware take advantage of.
Don't be put off by the fact that the processor is somewhat outdated for enthusiasts, because it's still quite powerful. Get 608 points in monocore, and 5919 points in multicore, with which few tasks or games are going to resist.
When we pass the becnhmark, now without connecting it to the network; we see that it has dropped to 440 in monocore and 1842 in multicore. They are both considerable drops that in many cases will cause the most common applications to suffer, and it is no longer a laptop capable of playing games.
CPU-Z confirms that its maximum TDP is only 45 W, which is quite low consumption on its own, although still somewhat high for a laptop. But it is one with almost top-of-the-range components, with an RTX 3060.
The motherboard is a Dell proprietary z560, which allows up to PCie 4.0
In the case of the RAM of the Dell XPS 17 9710, CPU-Z confirms that it is two dual channel DDR4 modules of 16 GB each to have 32 GB. We already said it, but it is more than enough to last for several years.
Although it is likely that some enthusiasts may think that the memory can be a bit slow.
We now turn to benchmarks for gaming performance. We are going to test it both with its connected mode and its energy saving mode when we disconnect the power.
The DirectX RayTracing benchmark gives us an average of almost 18 frames per second, which is not a very high score.
The same benchmark with the Dell XPS 17 9710 using its own battery drops to 16 frames per second.
Fire Strike Ultra gives us a score of 4.297 graphics, and 20.386 physics, for a combined 2.255 in networked performance mode. It tells us that playing Battlefield V in 1440p Ultra quality, we can comfortably go above sixty frames per second.
This benchmark tells us that it is quite a laptop for gamers, although its appearance and design do not seem so. It is what you have to use an RTX 3060, one of the most demanded by professionals for the RTX suite and its graphic capacity for programs such as AutoCAD or Photoshop and many others.
Fire Strike Ultra gives us a score of 3.773 for graphics, and 11.108 for physics, for a combined 2.039 in efficiency mode without power. It is a very positive performance to be a saving mode and although a certain difference can be noticed, unless we go to the most demanding recent games, we should be able to continue playing them at the cost of better image quality. Very surely the ones that suffer the most are the games that most depend on the CPU.
Port Royale, a slightly more demanding benchmark, gives a score of 4.075 points if the Dell XPS 17 9710 is plugged in, and insists that we can play Battlefield V 1440p on Ultra at more than seventy frames per second.
If we disconnect it from the power, the results are very similar, with a reduction to 3.624 points. It's not a very noticeable loss, just an eighth of its score, but we can still play Battlefield V with the same graphics settings with almost a token loss of frames.
Dell XPS 17 9710 experience and conclusion
After testing the benchmarks, we proceeded to use it for normal tasks in which a laptop of this type would be used. The benchmarksm, although they are demanding tests, do not represent their actual use. In office automation tests, such as writing articles on this website, had no problems with the simplest and most repetitive tasks text editing, or handling images with GIMP. We can say the same with the different most used web browsers, in which we barely noticed any compatibility problems.
When it comes to playing, we have been able to play many very demanding games. We wanted to put in Elden Ring, but its PC port isn't well done enough to make a real assessment. Since the benchmarks suggested us to use Battlefield V, we tried to play it in Ultra quality. Was a very rewarding and fluid experienceIt almost didn't feel like we were playing on a laptop. We can say without any doubt that such a model will not be outdated. That is until we have to put memory in DDR5 format to reach 128 GB of RAM in dual channel, but it is possible to expand it up to 64 GB.
small drawbacks
His biggest problem is the battery. Even without heavy usage, the battery in the Dell XPS 17 9710 It usually took us two and a half hours. disconnected from the electrical network. If it was heavy gaming use, it would be understandable. But it is a duration with normal and little intensive use, which makes it more inclined to be “a computer easy to move” than a laptop. Basically, if you want to use it to work while you are on the AVE or Madrid-Barcelona air bridge, the battery could last if you want to write or navigate. PBut don't expect to play video games for a long time with him or advance work in demanding programs such as Adobe Premiere or AutoCAD.
Its other major drawback is that the webcam is of low quality. Laptops have always been characterized by their integrated webcams. But in this time when we have Google Meets, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams, or streaming on Twitch, that it is necessary to buy a separate webcam, occupying another additional port and having to use an adapter if it does not have a USB-C connector, it is a drawback.
A highly recommended laptop except in very extreme cases
With all this we can say with great comfort, that although its price can be a bit high for entry, it makes up for it by having a high-end processor, a top-of-the-line CPU from less than two years ago, and an amount of RAM that can drive any software. It is a great computer for professionals who move a lot. It is even for those who have their home office and hardly move, because in the raw it still has a great configuration. The same for the most demanding gamers, it may be insufficient since it has certain problems with ray tracing as it is a portable GPU. But seeing as it runs Battlefield V at over 60 frames per second on Ultra at 1440p, it's a good investment for those professionals and students who need a laptop and have gaming needs.
It is weighed down by the poor battery life and the webcam, but they are inconveniences that are not so serious in the long term. The first of them is solved by the fact that you are going to use the laptop without connecting to the power on rare occasions. It would only be serious if the university you go to and for which you need the laptop does not provide power connectors for laptops; and the other is to buy any high definition webcam if you are a very active user of video calls.
Easily, we recommend it to everyone who knows that it is an investment. A very safe investment for a laptop that is not going to be obsolete any time soon.
The best and the worst
- El battery saving mode for when you are without power.
- Having RTX 3060 as graphics and an i7-11800H as CPU together with 32 GB of RAM leaves it as a spectacular choice for gaming and creative work. It is a setup that can last for many years.
- It uses a USB-C connector for charging, so that when traveling we can use it to charge the mobile.
- It maintains a full size SD card reader instead of forcing the micro SD format.
- The battery itself lasts very little, which makes it feel more like an easy PC to take from work to home.
- Disconnected from power, gaming performance drops considerably.
- Your webcam is of low quality, so you have to get one so that the video calls have a certain quality.
- It only has USB-C connectors for everything, so you depend on having accessories with the new connectors, an adapter or a USB hub.
