u/anonymous_t223

Hi all,

I am defending my PhD soon, and I have the chance to buy the laptop that the university gave me during my studies (in 2021). It's the Dell XPS 9500 (first gen), and IT told me I can buy it for around 350 USD. I did my phd with this laptop, and it could manage my workflow (data analysis, multiple Word and PPT documents, LabVIEW, Matlab, etc.) fine.

Specs:

CPU Core i7-10750H

GPU NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti 

RAM 16GB DDR4

Display FHD+ (1920 x 1200), 500-nit

My personal opinion

Pros:

• I really like the build quality
• Amazing speakers (best speakers I heard so far, excluding the MBP)
• Even though the display is not 4K, FHD+ is enough for me and I like the 500 nits brightness
• I am the first user of this laptop (IT gave it to me new)

Cons:

• Terrible wifi adapter (very low speed on different routers, at the moment I am using it with Ethernet). If I end up buying it, I will purchase an external wifi adapter
• Flimsy trackpad (it was a big problem with the first generation of XPS laptops, but I saw some tutorials on YouTube on how to fix it)
• The battery is degraded and lasts about 1.5-2 hours (but it is expected for a 5-year-old laptop)
• A few months ago, I wanted to charge it, and I used one of the USB-C ports on the left side, but a warning icon showed up on the battery saying the port could not be used for charging the battery. After a few days, this problem disappeared, and now it charges just fine with the same port.

So is the 350 USD a good deal for this laptop?

Hi all,

I am defending my PhD soon, and I have the chance to buy the laptop that the university gave me during my studies (in 2021). It's the Dell XPS 9500 (first gen), and IT told me I can buy it for around 350 USD. I did my phd with this laptop, and it could manage my workflow (data analysis, multiple Word and PPT documents, LabVIEW, Matlab, etc.) fine.

Specs:

CPU Core i7-10750H

GPU NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti 

RAM 16GB DDR4

Display FHD+ (1920 x 1200), 500-nit

My personal opinion

Pros:

• I really like the build quality
• Amazing speakers (best speakers I heard so far, excluding the MBP)
• Even though the display is not 4K, FHD+ is enough for me and I like the 500 nits brightness
• I am the first user of this laptop (IT gave it to me new)

Cons:

• Terrible wifi adapter (very low speed on different routers, at the moment I am using it with Ethernet). If I end up buying it, I will purchase an external wifi adapter
• Flimsy trackpad (it was a big problem with the first generation of XPS laptops, but I saw some tutorials on YouTube on how to fix it)
• The battery is degraded and lasts about 1.5-2 hours (but it is expected for a 5-year-old laptop)
• A few months ago, I wanted to charge it, and I used one of the USB-C ports on the left side, but a warning icon showed up on the battery saying the port could not be used for charging the battery. After a few days, this problem disappeared, and now it charges just fine with the same port.

So is the 350 USD a good deal for this laptop?