I rarely take the time to write reviews, but this is a big ticket item for most people.

I have nothing bad to say regarding the particular XPS 9500 unit I received with a couple of caveats…

The Bad:
Similar to other reviewers, I suspect this product is not “NEW” as described but rather returned and/or refurbished. It came in a rather torn up box which was simply sealed with regular packing tape. It was shipped to Amazon from a company that appears to be an authorized reseller/or refurbishing center as far as I could tell from a quick Google search. The box had certainly been around the block a time or two, LOL.

Given the price point and specs, I’m not surprised if it is a “refurb, open box, return, etc.” I’m only surprised that Amazon sells them at a steep discount but describes as “NEW”. I could be way off base here, and perhaps Dell ships most of their products in beat up boxes, and I’m just unaware of it.

The Good:
I know the above sounded very critical, but bear with me. Once I opened the outer box, the inner Dell box was pristine. Everything was nicely packaged and appeared brand new. The usual protective plastic peel off, unwrap, etc. stuff was all there on everything. There wasn’t a fingerprint or speck of dust to be found. Even smelled “like new”. So…I figured I’d give it a go. Set it up and everything seemed fine, so I opened it up and upgraded memory to 64gb. Everything internally looked new to my untrained eye as well. I’ve been using it for several days with no issues. Overall, I personally am happy for the price, but if these aren’t truly “new”, I think description should reflect that.

Considerations:
My laptop before this one was an XPS 15 2012 or 2013 model. It originally had Windows 8 on it FWIW. I had upgraded to SSD, switched to Win10, maxed out RAM, and replaced battery over the years…Just so you know my basis for comparison.

Other reviews on both Amazon and online mention crackling speakers and faulty trackpads with this model. My experience has been that speakers sound as good as any laptop I’ve ever heard, and trackpad is slightly less sensitive in top corners but otherwise fine (I never would have noticed trackpad thing except for online reviews had me looking for faults.) I personally find the speakers and trackpad perfectly fine. Another criticism has been loud fan noise when laptop is trying to cool. It doesn’t bother me because my old XPS sounds like a turbo spooling up when it’s under a load too! Maybe other brands are quieter, IDK. Fan noise wasn’t a big concern of mine.

Perhaps mine was a return/refurb that had faults addressed, I just got lucky and got a good unit, or the faults aren’t as bad as they are made out to be with this model. I can’t say for certain, but that’s my experience thus far and honest review.

This laptop is fantastic, and overall I am very satisfied with this purchase. But let’s talk about the elephant in the room that a few reviewers have already pointed out: “Is this a new product?”. Given the $2000 price tag, it’s only natural to be concerned about the integrity of the product you are receiving. I understand that entirely as I was very concerned myself.

For me, the laptop itself was inside its original packaging and showed no signs of being opened before. With that said, the box was a little banged up upon arrival. The laptop itself was wrapped around plastic, and everything inside seemed in place.

Now, there is a shipping label on the original packaging box from “Dell Returns” located in Lebanon, Tennessee. So I did some quick investigating. I read that most returns for Dell products will get shipped to this Return Center in Lebanon, Tennessee. These returns include order cancellations and unopened returns. Dell Outlet, in turn, sells these “new unused” products at a cheaper price tag. So yes, I believe this product is “NEW”, but it is new under the Dell Outlet standards. This is just my assumption but is the most logical reason I can think of.

For me, I have no problem receiving a Dell Outlet product, but it should at least be advertised as such on Amazon. Now, considering all of these factors and even if this is a Dell Outlet product, getting a Dell XPS 15 (2020 model) at this price (~$2000) is a STEAL! You are getting Dell’s UHD+ touchscreen infinity display, latest i7 CPU, 1 TB of SSD storage, and Windows 10 Pro. If you were buying this same laptop configuration off of Dell’s official website, it run you close to ~$2500. On top of the cheaper price tag on Amazon, there is a 10% back for customers who purchase this laptop on a Amazon Prime Visa card (~$200 back).

The laptop itself has solid specs and is built very solidly. The aluminum casing and carbon fiber finish gives this laptop a premium feel. The display is gorgeous and crisp. The touchscreen is super responsive. The track pad is honestly the best I have experienced on any Windows laptop. I personally have NOT had the wobbly track pad issue some users were having.

Some issues I do have with the laptop is that it does heat up quite a bit, and you can hear the fans spinning pretty hard at times. Dell has a weird adaptive brightness feature, but you can easily turn this off in the settings. Battery life is less than impressive when you are doing more intensive tasks. I hear the pre-installed McAfee software plays a role in draining the battery, so you could disable it and use the built-in Windows Defender. And while I love the carbon fiber finish (because it gives it an even more premium feel), it is definitely a fingerprint magnet lol.

All in all, this laptop is absolutely stunning. The amount of features you receive for the price that you buy this laptop at outweighs the minor issues that I have pointed out.