Powerful laptops with stunning OLED displays are here. Are they worth it?
Note: this is a short review that focuses mostly on the OLED displays.
tldr: AMOLEDs, which can generate radically different visuals compared to LCDs, set these laptops apart from the LCD pack. Aside from the AMOLED tech, the quad-core HP Spectre x360 15 delivers good battery life while the eight-core Dell XPS 15 7590 may be the fastest laptop I’ve ever tested.
AMOLED vs LCD: think dark mode
AMOLED displays — which grace both the HP Spectre x360 15 and Dell XPS 15 7590 — are a very different animal from LCDs. Colors pop, blacks are really black, contrast is astronomically higher, and AMOLEDs offer the potential for extending battery life* by turning off pixels in dark mode. All of the above is why the world’s best smartphones now sport AMOLED displays.
On both laptops, I use Windows 10 dark mode, which turns off the AMOLED pixels (and that’s why on AMOLEDs you get the blacker blacks). LCDs, on the other hand, don’t turn off in dark mode but just block the light.
Dark mode can extend battery life on AMOLED systems since, generally, the display is the single most power-hungry component.
HP Spectre x360 15 AMOLED (mid-2019):
—Display: truth be told, the AMOLED displays on the HP Spectre and Dell XPS are similar, if not almost identical hardware: both are 15.6-inch AMOLED displays supplied by Samsung, both are 100% DCI-P3, and both have extremely high contrast ratios (much higher than LCDs). The Spectre, however, does have a touch display, while the XPS does not.
—Processor / performance: The Spectre sports an Intel Core i7-8565U quad-core “Whiskey Lake” CPU. The system is fast for a low-power processor and mine posted Geekbench 4 scores of 5,349 (single core) and 16,761 (multi core) on par with some of the faster systems with the Core i7 8565U (see other i7 8565U scores). The Spectre’s performance is undoubtedly boosted by the generous helping of Intel Optane memory.
—Battery life: the Spectre x360 15 can go all day on a single charge. I use Windows 10 dark mode and set the background to black.
See more details on the HP Spectre x360 15.
Dell XPS 15 7590 AMOLED (mid-2019):
—Display: as explained above, Dell’s AMOLED display is pretty much the same as the Spectre’s, with the exception that Dell’s is not touch. Like HP, the Dell 15.6-inch AMOLED display is supplied by Samsung, has 100% DCI-P3, and an extremely high contrast ratio, way beyond LCDs.
—Processor / performance: very, very fast. Out of the box, everything seems to respond in real time with no perceptible lag. The XPS 15 7590 feels like the fastest laptop I’ve ever tested with its new Intel 8-core Core i9-9980HK “Coffee Lake” processor. Geekbench 4 CPU benchmarks tallied 5,581 on single core and a whopping 27,637 on multicore. That’s pretty much in the same ball park as the new top-of-the-line MacBook Pro 15 with the Core i9 9980HK. See these scores.
—Battery life: because of the all the horsepower, the XPS 15 falls short of the Spectre x360 15. Crank up the processor/graphics and battery life will drop off pretty quickly on the XPS 15. That said, if I’m not constantly pushing the envelope, I can stretch the battery life. In other words, if I use dark mode and keep the display brightness down and stick to everyday productivity and image-editing tasks, I can (almost) stretch it to all-day with intermittent use throughout the day.
See more details on Dell XPS 15 7590.
Other:
—The HP Spectre has better speakers than the XPS, though Dell has improved the sound system compared to last year’s XPS 15.
—I prefer the feel and tactility of Dell’s keyboard/trackpad to HP’s. Also, HP pushes the trackpad to the left (on the palm rest) to accommodate the number keys (aka, numeric keypad). I’m not a big fan of that.
Configurations:
HP Spectre x360 15 OLED config:
- 15.6-inch multitouch 4K 3,840-by-2160 AMOLED display
- Intel Core i7-8565U quad-core “Whiskey Lake” CPU (15 watts)
- Nvidia GeForce MX 150
- 1 TB NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD with Intel Optane
- 16 GB DDR4-2400 SDRAM / 32 GB Intel Optane memory
- Machined aluminum
- 4.79 pounds
- Price: about $1,790
Dell XPS 15 7590 OLED config:
- 15.6-inch 4K 3,840-by-2160 AMOLED display
- Intel Core i9-9980HK 8-core “Coffee Lake” CPU (45 watts)
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 mobile GPU
- 1TB Toshiba NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD
- 32GB DDR4-2666MHz
- Machined aluminum and carbon fiber palm rest
- 4.5 pounds
- Price: $2,649.99
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Notes:
*AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) can use more power when displaying non-black colors, however.
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