Dell XPS 15 7590 Review (OLED, i7-9750H, GTX 1650)

75 Comments

  1. JayHD

    July 19, 2019 at 4:14 pm

    The GPU throttling issue has a fix on reddit as of yesterday. I expect Dell will implement this via a BIOS update soon, and hopefully they'll give the redditor a job, because he is single-handedly going to prevent dozens if not hundreds of returned units.

    https://old.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/cdq5wr/how_i_stopped_my_xps_15_7590_gpu_from_throttling/

    • Douglas Black

      July 19, 2019 at 4:54 pm

      Thank you for posting this fix. Also, shoutout to old reddit ;)

    • mkdr

      July 19, 2019 at 9:14 pm

      What the heck are you talking about? I dont see any "fix" in this reddit post. He just posted that he undervolted his dGPU, wow, which you did obviously already same with each XPS in the past years. What are you even talking about? You seem like the typical XPS buyer with no idea, how a computer works.

      • TJP

        July 21, 2019 at 9:32 pm

        Why do you feel the need to go on every XPS discussion thread and troll? If you don't want/like the XPS don't get one spend your money somewhere else and learn how to share an opinion that actually matters.

    • Jeff

      July 21, 2019 at 9:31 pm

      That's a tweak that's been done on every single XPS since the 9550. It's nothing new and why I wish that subreddit would pin posts to prevent people from "finding" a solution for "the first time" when it's been documented for years.

    • Steven Mitchell

      August 23, 2019 at 12:13 am

      Your review states that the Graphics card (GPU) is an Nvidia GTX 630. It is not it is the Intel 630 UHD. This should be specified in the benchmarks.

  2. Fvyr

    July 20, 2019 at 8:10 am

    Is burn in a real problem for OLED laptop displays now? Enough vendors have or will release in the next month models with oled displays ( hp, Dell, Lenovo , gigabyte). Is it a bad choice for professional use? ( Mainly office, text reading and writing applications, web browsing and in a lesser extent multimedia consumption 40% – 40%-20% respectively. Could you make again a new and separate article on this?

    • Douglas Black

      July 20, 2019 at 8:15 am

      The simple answer is that we still don't know this yet. In terms of the technology and what is going on with research, my impression from scientists in the field is that they still consider it an unfinished technology, and that is why it hasn't been adopted for non-consumer usages.

      My impressions (I've updated the article today) are that the OLED panel is nice if you are doing work in dark-themed apps, but it feels a bit uncomfortable to switch to text editing with white backgrounds.

      • IMO

        July 20, 2019 at 11:41 am

        In terms of display tech, microled is the future. OLED has had a decade to fix all it's issues (pwm, poor efficiency displaying whites, poor greyscale accuracy, purple tint/pentile issues, poor brightness, burn-in and etc).

        There's a reason why apple have engineers currently working on developing in house displays based on microled and why even samsung (the main manufacturer/producer of oled) are now looking towards microled too.

      • Marco

        July 21, 2019 at 3:19 am

        Hi Douglas, your final thoughts on the XPS 15 7590 Oled? Would you recommend it? And what do you think of the new Lenovo S940 as an alternative? Thanks!

      • Douglas Black

        July 21, 2019 at 7:36 am

        I need a good solid week of usage before I can start to give a meaningful opinion, I think. It's up against stiff competition in the segment.

        The s940 is a very different laptop in many ways. 15w 4 core CPU, integrated graphics, soldered memory, much lighter. If you're looking for a laptop to bring with you everywhere for work that also looks eye catching, the s940 would probably be a better pick.

  3. Koen De Jaeger

    July 20, 2019 at 8:07 pm

    Can you test, before black Friday ends, if those latency spikes cause audio dropouts in NI Traktor? And how is the latency when WiFi is turned off as well? I have seen less critique on forums since the so called DPC latency fix on the 'previous' model.

    • Douglas Black

      July 21, 2019 at 1:50 pm

      I believe Traktor has a trial version, right? I use rekordbox (pioneer decks!) but I will try to give both a shot in the next couple days.

    • Douglas Black

      July 22, 2019 at 11:52 am

      See my results under the "latency" section. I didn't hear any audio artifacts, but latencymon did spike around once a minute.

  4. Nick

    July 21, 2019 at 10:54 am

    Thank you for a great review!
    Regarding fan noise, does it ever turn off all fans and go dead silent?
    Does it stay dead silent for lighter workloads like, say browsing wikipedia, editing a google doc, watching youtube?
    What kind of workload would typically turn on the fans (even just a little bit) and leave the dead silent state?

    • Douglas Black

      July 21, 2019 at 10:58 am

      Hi Nick! I'd say it's dead silent for word processing, email, and basic YouTube in a few tabs. If you start running 4+ applications and the CPU starts hitting 5% or so, they'll spin up to 1k+ rpm and will be slightly audible

      • Nick

        July 21, 2019 at 1:20 pm

        Great, that was what I was hoping for. Cheers

  5. Nick

    July 21, 2019 at 10:58 am

    Can you please test sleep mode battery drain? For example, charge to 100%, unplug, put to sleep, wait 10 hours and then wake and check battery level.
    Thank you

    • Douglas Black

      July 21, 2019 at 11:28 am

      Will do!

    • Douglas Black

      July 21, 2019 at 3:44 pm

      Drain seems quite terrible at around 2% per hour.

      • Karolis

        May 10, 2020 at 6:41 pm

        Hello there. Just wanted some thoughts about this laptop agains c940 15 inch, what would be better for long term use and some light gaming? Thank you!

      • Douglas Black

        May 10, 2020 at 8:02 pm

        I think Dell has better support and generally treats its customers better. The c940 has a number pad and converts fully. It's also got one more TB3 port. I think it depends on how much those are worth to you

  6. Koen De Jaeger

    July 21, 2019 at 2:47 pm

    Cool. Yes there's a demo. Also Ableton has a demo too and starts with a demo track that you could run at startup. The discount still lasts one day so I'd like to know before that. I'd say try recordbox first, what you're familiar with to check the stuttering. Run 4 decks :).

  7. oled_muc

    July 23, 2019 at 5:07 am

    I've been using a 13 inch OLED Spectre for roughly 2 years and had the same color bending during the whole life span. That's an unsolved and common issue on OLEDs this size, however not really noticable in daily use.

    Moreover, a touch panel might not be better, as the screen will suffer from a lack a clearness: I am currently testing a 15,6" AMOLED Spectre and this one obviously has got an additional layer for pen input. You can see the input raster if you look closely. Due to that raster whites appear a bit grainy and grey…

    • Volker

      July 26, 2019 at 11:37 pm

      @Douglas Black: have you encountered the same? Thx

      • Douglas Black

        July 28, 2019 at 9:32 am

        The color-banding? It's noticeable on blacks and darker colors, yeah. If you pull up a black/grey scale, you can see the first 4 levels of black/dark grey are crushed to black.

      • oled_muc

        July 31, 2019 at 8:12 pm

        What about the honeycomb-like and greyish-layer? It's visible when you have a closer look at the display. The layer is between the OLED panel itself and the Gorilla Glass. It's probably for pen input detection (and for HPs tilt pen 'hover' functionality)

      • Douglas Black

        July 31, 2019 at 8:17 pm

        I haven't noticed that, but I have noticed a somewhat "polarized" effect when looking at the display from angles.

  8. Jedy617

    July 25, 2019 at 9:05 am

    I've also been having a problem with audio becomes unsynced while watching streaming videos (youtube and twitch confirmed so far). Tested on multiple browsers, using i7 9750 and OLED. Wonder if this is DPC related. If anyone knows a fix let me know.

    • Douglas Black

      July 25, 2019 at 2:13 pm

      I haven't been able to confirm this issue. Are you using waves audio maxx?

      • Jeremy

        August 4, 2019 at 7:38 am

        I think it was a problem with chrome. Latest version of chrome has the issue fixed. However now I'm noticing sometimes watching full screen video on YouTube and twitch the screen will go black every once and awhile for a few seconds and then reset itself.

      • mkdr

        August 4, 2019 at 5:58 pm

        @Jeremy the "going black" for 1-2 seconds meanins your gpu driver crashes with a kernel panic 141 event. open Windows reliability monitor and you should see this:

        https://i.imgur.com/bFDq0re.png
        https://i.imgur.com/qoROvvi.png

        It can have mmumtiple reasons. Undervolt, faulty cpu or iGPU, driver issue. I have this issue on my 9570 but have fixed it right now or lowered the chance by 99%, of lowering undervolt to 98mv instead of 125mv, giving iGPU 10mv more voltage offset, and removing the dell Intel drivers and use latest Intel ones.

      • Jeremy

        August 4, 2019 at 6:02 pm

        Thanks for the info

      • Jeremy

        August 4, 2019 at 6:03 pm

        It was a code 117.

      • mkdr

        August 4, 2019 at 6:13 pm

        @jeremy 117 and 141 are kinda related, so if you see one of them for the time the black flickering happens it meant the gpu driver crashed and restarted. you have to find out step by step why. if you have undervolted cpu with TS or Intel Extreme too lower it to something like 90mv. give igpu 10mv more voltage. remove dell intel gpu drivers with DDU and use latest intel ones.

  9. tony

    July 30, 2019 at 9:30 pm

    hello there, thank you for the review. I see you recommended the X1 Extreme at the end, does the X1 Extreme not have GPU throttling issues and also better quality control?

    • Douglas Black

      July 30, 2019 at 9:31 pm

      Hi Tony,

      I can't speak for the Gen 2, but for the Gen 1 I believe so.

      • rob

        July 31, 2019 at 7:50 pm

        Hi, are you planning to do a review of the X1E/P1 Gen 2? I think not all of its configurations are shipping yet.

      • Douglas Black

        July 31, 2019 at 7:51 pm

        It's a laptop I'd love to get my hands on, but I can't even purchase it with my own money at the moment — it's just sold out.

  10. maurizio

    July 31, 2019 at 12:02 am

    my xps with oled has the vertical banding issue and yes it is annoying. I am afraid you can keep going replacing it forever but you won't find the display without banding because it is on all oled

  11. Sam Daman

    August 1, 2019 at 12:07 am

    Very thorough and detailed review! Thank you for this as others don't even mention these issues which is a travesty as the OLED option is $2000! I love your updates as well! I'm seriously reconsidering this laptop now that the GPU throttling issue has been fixed. Or maybe I'll wait for the Project Athena version with its 10nm CPU…

  12. Vince

    August 1, 2019 at 5:56 pm

    Hi, i'm considering to buy this laptop in this exact configuration due to the fact that both the 4K Touch and 1080p screens have a way too high Grey-To-Grey latency which leads me to have headaches and general sickness after a while due to the excessive ghosting (experienced that on a 9380 XPS 13), so i was wondering if you could provide some data about the panel regarding those times please, i know they should be lower than the classic panels but by how much?

    Kind Regards.

    • Douglas Black

      August 2, 2019 at 8:12 am

      They should be around 10 times faster. The IPS in the XPS are quite slow at around 30/50 ms g2g and b2w response times. OLED is around 3 ms each

  13. Naota

    August 4, 2019 at 5:15 am

    Great review. I wonder how the UHD screen on the 7590 compares to xps 9570 or 9560? Didn't the NITS go up 100? Any other changes?

  14. Michael

    August 5, 2019 at 7:00 pm

    While various configurations are indeed available, the ability to choose just what you want is very limited. For example, if you want a core i9 processor, you are forced to get 32G of ram. Also, the option for Windows Pro only shows up on the higher end configurations. This sort of thing is pervasive. If you chat with Dell, they can find you better options, but it is rather infuriating to have specific ideas about what you want only to find out after a long and fruitless search that it is not possible.

  15. Michael

    August 6, 2019 at 10:19 pm

    Hello Douglas, you're saying that on the OLED-screen it's not comfortable to view white content for long periods, particularly reading text in black letters.
    I would like to know how it changes if you reduce the brightness of the screen. I personally watch a lot of movies (for which OLED is great), but also read news and long PDFs. So it will matter a lot for me if the problem of the high contrast between black letters and white background can be solved by dimming the screen or not.
    (I have to mention that I usually close the curtains in the room when I'm on the laptop, so reducing the brightness of the screen won't be an issue in order to see the screen clearly.)

    • Douglas Black

      August 7, 2019 at 5:26 am

      That helps, but it means it isn't great to use in brightly lit spaces then due to low brightness.

  16. muc-oled

    August 7, 2019 at 12:59 am

    Is there audible coil whine on the OLED model? Or is it still silicon lottery?

    • Douglas Black

      August 7, 2019 at 5:25 am

      I haven't heard any, but I'm not sensitive I'm afraid

  17. Maurice

    August 8, 2019 at 10:39 pm

    Hi, did you check the “third” replacement? Same banding issue?

    • Douglas Black

      August 17, 2019 at 6:50 am

      The third replacement was significantly better. A little uneven at the bottom but no banding

      • Maurice

        August 17, 2019 at 10:39 am

        Uhmm, "cherry picking"? I have returned mine.

  18. Markus

    August 17, 2019 at 7:08 pm

    Hi Douglas,
    I want to play some games (CS:GO, Minecraft, etc.) sometimes. Mostly I would work with it – I saw that the Dell XPS 15 9570 i7-8750H archieved long-term better performance, because it didn't throttle so much. Should I buy the 7590 with i7 9750H or take the gen. 2018?

    • Douglas Black

      August 18, 2019 at 9:24 am

      The 2018 has never been fixed by Dell, it still is crippled with throttling I believe. Go with the 2019

      • Basile

        August 27, 2019 at 7:06 pm

        Hi Douglas,
        Thanks for all the useful information.

        Dell currently offers a discount on the XPS 9570, so it is currently 400€ cheaper than the 7590 right now, for similar specs(I7-16G RAM – 512G SSD).

        If I follow the procedure you proposed to solve the throttling issue (https://www.ultrabookreview.com/14875-fix-throttling-xps-15/), isn't it more reasonable to go for the 2018 version ? What do you think ?

        Thanks,
        Basile

      • Douglas Black

        August 27, 2019 at 8:46 pm

        I need to know your use cases to answer that question :)

      • basile

        August 27, 2019 at 9:01 pm

        Of course: that would mostly be for photo editing and occasional gaming (and more than anything, I wish to see my laptop last for long). Unfortunately the ThinkPad X1/P1 is out of budget for me in France.

        Since the specs of the CPU and GPU don't seem to change that much for from one to the other, I would go for the 9570 given the current price difference.
        However, the throttling issue as well as the other numerous issues I can read of on your website regarding the 9570 (which ones are solved as today, which ones aren't?) make me doubt…
        Thanks !
        Basile

      • Douglas Black

        August 28, 2019 at 6:45 am

        For the GPU alone I would go for the 7590 because Dell never fixed it on the 9570. Maybe pick up an i7/FHD/97 whr model for the 7590? May not be too much more

      • basile

        August 28, 2019 at 8:49 am

        Yep, that's the specs I was looking for in either way.
        So I reckon that the bottom line is don't go for the 9570, even for a lower price 😊 Thanks Doug !

      • Douglas Black

        August 28, 2019 at 8:50 am

        You're very welcome!

      • Douglas Black

        August 28, 2019 at 9:12 am

        Welcome!

  19. xzhan

    August 17, 2019 at 8:39 pm

    I should really check your review before I purchased the new AERO 15 OLED (i7 and RTX2060). That display had severe banding issue which I discussed on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/gigabyte/comments/cg72jf/gigabyte_aero_15_oled_wa_wierd_sound_coming_from/
    The bands are very very obvious when displaying darker grey contents, like VS Code with OneDark theme, which makes it so unbearable to work with. I don't understand why other reviewers never talked about it…

    Currently, I have a Dell XPS15 7590 (i7) from Costco. NO OLED ofc! With proper color calibration, the display is stunningly beautiful. I am much happier with this model right now. No OLED for me in the foreseeable future.

    • Maurice

      August 18, 2019 at 2:50 pm

      Not a single YouTube review mentioned this unbearable issue, unbelievable.

      • xzhan

        August 19, 2019 at 12:37 am

        Cannot agree more…

    • jj77

      October 29, 2019 at 3:58 pm

      @xzhan, what display do you have on your XPS15 – FHD or UHD?

  20. Basile

    September 25, 2019 at 11:07 am

    Hi Douglas,
    You seem to say in your updated review that the throttling issue is solved by the BIOS update. Do you believe the CPU should still be undervolted and repasted to improve performance though ? Or is this advice obsolete ?
    Thanks for the answer !
    Basile

  21. Perry

    January 30, 2020 at 12:24 am

    Hi, and thanks for a great review!
    I currently own the OLED, and I'm not satisfied at all. Bought mainly for photo editing, but the banding is quite noticeable. I contacted support, and the tech guy said that "the screen is produced this way, so changing it wouldn't make a difference". This is something I find very strange, and I cannot believe that is truly accurate. Alternatively, I'm beginning to think that Dell's got so many complaints over this, that this is now their answer to this. Was thankfully offered a full refund, and I'm considering getting the 4K IPS LCD instead. I have no use for the touch function really, but I appreciate the power of the XPS 7590.
    Any insights on chosing screen type? Any other high performance laptop, Windows based, with colour accurate screen, you would recommend is this segment?
    Thanks for any and all input :)

    • Douglas Black

      January 30, 2020 at 1:19 am

      Hi Perry!

      I would suggest the 4K IPS touch or the IPS FHD, if you'd like to save yourself a few hundred bucks. The touch is great to have and watching media on it is a treat.

      At the moment, no other laptop I'd recommend from the power/screen angle. For audio, the Lenovo X1 Extreme or P1 for sure, but not for anything visual.

      • Perry

        January 30, 2020 at 1:34 am

        Thanks for your answer.
        As mentioned several places, the OLED would be great in several aspects, but I have the feeling as well that the technology is not quite there yet. Trying to find tests online putting OLED and IPS side by side in depth, but findings are scarce. OLED highly praised, but feeling the picture painted is too one sided.
        I believe I saw something about the IPS touch version having a kind of glare from the "touch layer" of the screen being noticeable? After my OLED escapades at least, IPS LCD seems more tempting at the moment.

      • Douglas Black

        January 30, 2020 at 1:58 am

        The glare is very similar between the two. I don't believe I could say which was which had more glare. If you want to avoid glare, you will definitely like the FHD!

      • Perry

        January 30, 2020 at 10:22 am

        I can't say that I've been put off by any glare on the OLED, so it the two are similar, glare is not what puts me off. As megapixels are ever increasing etc, I guess the UHD 4K IPS, not just in pure resolution, but other attributes as well, beats the FHD screen when it comes to photo editing, or am I wrong?

      • Douglas Black

        January 30, 2020 at 8:38 pm

        It's better in every way, though the FHD is still a really nice panel. The main reason not to get the 4K is the terrible scaling issues windows has. So I run it in 1080p.

  22. L. Lam

    March 16, 2020 at 4:12 am

    Hi,

    I've been considering the XPS 15 to replace my XPS 13 (2017). However, I have been looking at the LG Gram 17, as the screen size, as well as resolution and battery life are major points. I'm not looking to get 4K resolution onto a 15" screen tbh…

    I've had quite a few Dells, and their batteries always seem to lose capacity, consistently, so hoping that LG are using better battery cells (thinking ThinkPad standards…!).

    Do you have any opinion on this model or LGs in general, there're also difficult to get in the UK and the 2020 model doesn't seem to be available at all.

    Thanks.

    • Douglas Black

      March 16, 2020 at 4:23 am

      I think LG will probably have better QC than Dell since they are likely sourced from Korea rather than China (though I can't be sure). To be fair though, my XPS 15 has had no battery wear in the last 6 months since I got it. I think if you don't mind having more flimsy build quality, you'll like the screen size on the gram.

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