Dell XPS 15 & 17 for 2021 get OLED, Core i9 and RTX 30

Dell has unveiled updated versions of its popular XPS 15 and XPS 17 laptops for 2021 with new displays along with the latest Intel chips and Nvidia graphics cards, including the RTX 3050 Ti.

Always a force to be reckoned with, the XPS range comes with various upgrades and Dell says they will arrive this summer in the US with prices starting at $1,249. They were announced along with the Alienware m15 R6, G15 and teased Alienware X-Series.

XPS 15 (2021)

Dell says the latest version of the XPS 15 (9510) is the “perfect balance of power and portability,” though the 15in size has somewhat fallen by the wayside recently with the rise of 14in and 16in displays.

While the laptop looks almost identical to its predecessor, the XPS 15 9500, the 2021 edition has a new 3.5K OLED screen option which provides improved contrast and colour with 100% of the DCI-P3 colour space.

Inside an 18mm chassis, Dell has fitted the latest 11th-gen Intel processors – now H-Series Tiger Lake chips – with up to a Core i9 available along with up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti making it one of the first laptops to offer the GPU.

Prices start at $1,249 which will get you a Core i5, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD and integrated graphics.

XPS 17 (2021)

Unsurprisingly, the XPS 17 (9710) is one of the most impressive large screen laptops you can buy, although with the 2021 model starting at $1449.99 it’s not the most affordable around.

It is one of the most powerful, though, with up to 11th-gen Intel Core i9 processor – also H-Series like the XPS 15 – along with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card. Dell says you can get up to 90W of power in an ‘impossibly thin’ design with the XPS 17 measuring just 19.5mm.

That’s not as thin as the latest LG gram 17, which is 17.8mm, but that doesn’t have components to rival the XPS. As well as being thin, the design features CNC machined aluminium, aerospace-inspired carbon fibre and Corning Gorilla Glass 6.

A “unique Dual Opposite Outlet fan increases fan airflow and drives cooling airflow in both directions” to keep everything cool.

Dell also says you’re getting a 17in 16:10 display in a chassis smaller than 14% of 15in laptops. The 4-sided InfinityEdge display allows for a 93.7% screen-to-body ratio and offers 100% of the AdobeRGB colour gamut. You can get the XPS 17 in either Full HD or 4K resolutions.

A thin design doesn’t have to mean poor audio with an up-firing quad array featuring Waves Nx 3D audio which have been tuned by multi-Grammy award-winning producer, Jack Joseph Puig.

Read our review of last year’s XPS 17 9700 to find out what we thought of Dell’s revival of the big-screen beast.