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This is a bit of a preliminary review until I’ve had it longer and see how it holds up and the battery life. Mostly I’m going to compare it to a Inspirion laptop from Dell as well. What I like about this over the other? Well, the touchscreen! This is my first touchscreen laptop and I think it’s pretty sweet instead of having to touch the pad and then more the curser with my finger. It is limited though, as there’s no way to click and hold or left click… at least not that I know of. I also like how you can plug the power source in from either side instead of being forced to have it on the right or left as you typically are with laptops.

What I don’t like as much: First off, this is hard to open. The bottom of it curves to the front and the top and bottom are flush together. Obviously, I don’t want to pry it open with my nails, so I have to take two hands and tilt it to open it… not just lift the lid. Second, the camera doesn’t have a slider, like the Inspirion does, to close it if you want to block the camera. While theoretically the camera might be off when you aren’t using it, I like the reassurance that it isn’t looking at me by having the slider. Third, to go along with the first issue I brought up, the roundedness of the bottom doesn’t prevent it from sliding off some laptop stands. I’d be careful until you know how well it is held by your stand. Fourth, this is considerably heavier than the Inspirion I have. The charger runs warmer as well. But so far it is running quieter than the Inspirion.

Overall, it seems like a nice laptop IF you don’t need to open it one handed AND you are okay IF the camera is always on. It looks good and feels comfortable.

The Dell XPS 17 9720 laptop is light for its screen size. You could call it the anti-gaming laptop in the best way possible. Gaming laptops are almost universally thick, heavy, bulky, and gawdy. The Dell XPS 17 is thin, light, sleek, and professional.

I’m coming from an HP Spectre at just under 14 inches. I needed something very light but the screen was too small for me to use the laptop without having to bring my face right up to the screen. The Dell XPS is an appropriate replacement with most of the same features, such as a touchscreen and a fingerprint sensor. The specs and sleek aesthetic also make the Dell XPS a solid alternative.

Mine came in a frighteningly roughed-up box with tears in places. I feared it wouldn’t turn on once I took it out. Thankfully, it’s doing good so far.

One of the things I absolutely love is that it comes with Windows 11 Professional. It’s a major reason I picked the Dell XPS. Although, I wish I could downgrade to Windows 10 Pro. Still, it’s what I need for my job and beats Windows 11 Home by a landslide, especially if you’re running a virtual machine.

I occasionally run my own MMORPG server, so having a professional edition of windows is a must.

My biggest complaint is that this laptop comes with an RTX 3050 graphics card. At this price point an RTX 3060 or even more so an RTX 3050 Ti would be more fitting. This is especially true because it would better match the solid performance tier of the Core i7-12700H CPU.