Dell XPS 17 vs. Razer Blade 17

The 17-inch laptop is a special breed of machine. It offers the biggest consumer screen you can buy without going the exotic route, and its large chassis tends to promote better performance thanks to improved thermal designs. Two of the best 17-inch machines are the Dell XPS 17 and the Razer Blade 17, both of which have been updated with Intel’s 12th Gen processors.

In some ways they’re similar laptops, while in others they’re quite different. The XPS 17 is aimed at a mainstream creative audience who wants to work on a big screen and enough performance to perform demanding creative tasks. The Blade 17 is a gaming laptop and can be configured accordingly. Both are great options, but which is right for you?

Specifications

Design

The XPS 17 benefits from the now iconic XPS design, with a silver aluminum lid and bottom frame and a black carbon fiber liner on the keyboard. The aesthetic is clean and modern, with tiny display bezels making the screen look like it’s floating in the air. It’s one of the best looking laptops on the market today without being ostentatious. It’s also incredibly well built, with no flexing, bending or twisting in the lid, keyboard or chassis, and the hinge is smooth while holding the screen firmly in place. Dell paid attention to small details when designing the XPS 17, and it shows.

The Blade 17 is also an incredibly sturdy laptop, built entirely from aluminum and just as rigid as the XPS 17. It also boasts a sleek design with an all-black chassis that looks like a darker version of a MacBook Pro. Other than the green Razer logo on the lid, the Blade 17 doesn’t look much like a gaming laptop and can be used in professional environments. It doesn’t benefit from the same small display bezels as the XPS 17, and so in that respect it’s not quite as modern.

The XPS 17’s keyboard is all-pro, with tons of key spacing and large keys. The switch mechanism is light but snappy, delivering precise bottom-end action with excellent response. It’s a great keyboard for long-term typing sessions. The Blade 17’s keyboard is also well-sized and has comfortable switches and per-key RGB lighting that matches the gaming ethos. Neither laptop has a clear advantage here.

Touchpads are another story. The XPS 17 version is large and works great, with excellent palm rejection despite the large size and smooth tracking. The Blade 17’s version is also great, but we found palm rejection to be poor, with frustrating instances of unintended clicks and cursor twitching. The XPS 17’s touchpad is much better.

The XPS 17 only has four USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4 support, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a full-size SD card reader. The Blade 17 includes two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports to go with a USB 3.2 Gen 2 port and two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4 support. There’s also a 3.5mm audio jack and a card reader Full size SD. Both laptops feature up-to-date wireless connectivity with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2.

Performance

We reviewed the XPS 17 with a 45-watt, 14-core (six performance and eight efficient) 20-thread Intel Core i7-12700H processor. The Blade 17 we reviewed used the Core i7-12800H, a slightly faster version of the same chip with a maximum Turbo frequency of 4.8 GHz versus 4.7 GHz. The XPS 17 can be upgraded to the overclockable Core i9-12900HK, while the Blade 17 upgrades to the non-overclockable Core i9-12900H.

According to our benchmarks, these two machines were on par in CPU-intensive tasks. The XPS 17 was faster in Geekbench 5 multi-core but slower in single-core, while that was reversed in Cinebench R23. The laptops completed our Handbrake test which encodes a 420MB video to H.265 at one-second intervals. Both laptops have a thin chassis and demonstrated some thermal throttling, which likely explains the similarity in performance on these benchmarks, despite the differences in processors.

In the Pugetbench Premiere Pro benchmark running in a live version of Adobe Premiere Pro, the Blade 17 benefited from its much faster Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti compared to the XPS 17’s RTX 3060. Premiere Pro heavily uses the GPU for rendering and other tasks, and it’s no surprise the Blade 17 is the front runner here. I’ll note that the XPS 17’s score increased to 853 in its performance mode, which is great considering the disparity.

As you’d expect, the Blade 17 is the best gaming laptop with its RTX 3080 Ti capable of 4K gaming at reasonable graphics settings. The XPS 17 can handle some titles at 1440p and average graphics, but your best bet will be to stick with 1080p and then up the graphics.

The bottom line is that the XPS 17 and Blade 17 are an equal match if your workflow primarily involves CPU-intensive tasks. If you’re a gamer or use GPU-dependent applications, then the Blade 17 has the edge.

Display

We tested the XPS 17’s UHD+ IPS display, one of the best IPS panels we’ve seen. It was incredibly bright at 543 nits, covered 100% of the AdobeRGB color gamut, and boasted phenomenal accuracy of a DeltaE of 0.58 (1.0 or less is considered excellent). It also achieved a contrast ratio of 1,870:1, one of the best scores we’ve seen on an IPS display. Our Blade 17 test had a QHD display running at blazing-fast 240Hz. This makes it ideal for gaming, but its general display measurements were well below the XPS 17. Its colors were reasonably wide and very accurate, but its brightness was just average and its contrast is below average for a computer. high-end laptop (we like to see at least 1000:1).

We haven’t tested the Blade 17’s other display options, but at least based on the panel we tested, the XPS 17 is by far the superior laptop for creators. In fact, the XPS 17 has the best display we’ve tested outside of OLED, QLED, and mini-LED, giving it a win in this category.

Portability

The XPS 17 is narrower and shallower than the Blade 17, thanks to its smaller screen and tiny bezels. It’s nearly as thin at 0.77 inches versus 0.78 inches, and it’s noticeably lighter at 5.34 pounds versus 6.06 pounds. These laptops are big and heavy and will be a chore to carry around, but the XPS 17 has a significant size and weight advantage.

Another advantage of the XPS 17 is its battery life. It’s below the average in our web browsing test that crawls through some popular and complex websites, but its 7.5 hours more than doubled the Blade 17’s performance in this test. In our video test that loops a local Full HD avengers trailer, the XPS 17 was more than three times more efficient and lasted 13 hours.

The XPS 17 might not get through a full day of productivity work, but it will last considerably longer on a charge than the Blade 17. Overall, it’s the most portable powerhouse.

The Dell XPS 17 is the best mainstream laptop

The XPS 17 starts at $1,812 for a Core i5-12500H processor, 8GB of DDR5 RAM, a 512GB PCIe 4.0 SSD, Intel UHD graphics, and a 17-inch Full HD+ display. It tops out at $3,625 when configured with a Core i9-12900HK, 64GB of DDR5 RAM, a 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, and a 17-inch UHD+ display.

The entry-level Blade 17 costs $2,700 for a Core i7-12800H, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, and a 17.3-inch QHD 165Hz display. At the high end, you’ll spend $4,300 for a Core i9-12900H, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, an RTX 3080 Ti, and a 17.3 UHD 144Hz display. The XPS 17n It’s not a cheap laptop, but the Blade 17 is even more expensive.

For most buyers and all but the most discerning creators, the Dell XPS 17 is the best all-around laptop. It performs as well as the Razer Blade 17 for CPU-intensive tasks and is fast enough to handle typical creative workflows. it also has significantly better battery life. However, if you’re a very demanding gamer or creator, the more expensive Blade 17 offers more GPU horsepower at the high end.

Editors’ Recommendations