Dell XPS 17 vs Razer Blade 17

The 17-inch laptop is a special breed of machine. It offers the largest mainstream display you can buy without going the exotic route, and its larger chassis favors better performance over better thermal designs. Two of the best 17-inch machines are the Dell XPS 17 and the Razer Blade 17, both updated with Intel’s 12th-gen CPUs.

In some ways, they are similar laptops, while in others, they are quite different. The XPS 17 is intended for a mainstream producer audience that wants a large display to work with and enough performance to drive creative works. The Blade 17 is a gaming laptop and can be configured accordingly. They are both excellent options, but which one is right for you?

Glasses

design

Mark Koppock/Digital Trends

The XPS 17 enjoys the now-iconic XPS design, with a silver aluminum lid and black carbon fiber on the bottom chassis and keyboard deck. The aesthetic is streamlined and modern, with the tiny display bezels giving the impression that the display is floating in air. It is one of the best looking laptops in the market today without being ostentatious. It’s incredibly well built, there’s no tilting, flexing, or twisting in the lid, keyboard deck, or chassis, and the hinge is smooth while holding the display firmly in place. Dell paid attention to small details in designing the XPS 17, and it shows.

The Blade 17 is also an incredibly strong laptop, made of all aluminum and just as rigid as the XPS 17. It also enjoys a streamlined design with an all-black chassis that looks like a darker version of the MacBook Pro. Other than the green Razer logo on the lid, the Blade 17 doesn’t look like a gaming laptop and can be used in a professional environment. It doesn’t enjoy the same small display bezel as the XPS 17, and so, in that respect, it’s not quite as modern.

The XPS 17’s keyboard is completely commercial, with plenty of key spacing and large keycaps. The switch mechanism is lightweight but fast, providing precise bottoming action with great response. This is an excellent keyboard for long typing sessions. The Blade 17’s keyboard is also nicely sized and features comfortable switches and per-key RGB lighting that fits the gaming ethos. Neither laptop has a strong advantage here.

The touchpad is a different story. The XPS 17’s version is bigger and works perfectly with excellent palm rejection despite the larger size and smooth tracking. The Blade 17’s version is even bigger, but we found the palm rejection to be poor, with frustrating instances of inadvertent clicks and cursor jerks. The XPS 17’s touchpad is much better.

The XPS 17 has just four USB-C ports, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a full-size SD card reader with Thunderbolt 4 support. 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 full-size SD card reader. Both the laptops have 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 CPU. The Blade 17 we reviewed used the Core i7-12800H, a slightly faster version of the same chip, with a maximum turbo frequency of 4.8GHz versus 4.7GHz. The XPS 17 can be upgraded to the overclockable Core i9-12900HK, while the Blade 17 can be upgraded to the non-overclockable Core i9-12900H.

According to our benchmarks, these two machines were evenly matched in CPU-intensive tasks. The XPS 17 was faster in Geekbench 5 multi-core but slower in single-core, while the Cinebench R23 had the opposite. The laptop completed our Handbrake test which encodes a 420MB video as H.265 within a second of a second. Both laptops have thin chassis and exhibit some thermal throttling, which accounts for the similarity in their performance on these benchmarks despite the different CPUs.

In the Pugetbench Premiere Pro benchmark running the live version of Adobe Premiere Pro, the Blade 17 benefited from its much faster Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti versus the XPS 17’s RTX 3060. Premiere Pro makes heavy use of the GPU for rendering and other tasks, and it’s no surprise that the Blade 17 was the leader here. I’ll note that the XPS 17’s score jumps to 853 in its Performance mode, which is excellent considering the disparity.

As you might expect, the Blade 17 is the better 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 medium graphics, but your best bet will be to stick with 1080p and then crank up the graphics.

The bottom line is that the XPS 17 and Blade 17 are equally well matched if your workflow consists of mostly CPU-intensive tasks. If you’re a gamer or use GPU-dependent apps, the Blade 17 has an advantage.

show

Mark Koppock/Digital Trends

We tested the XPS 17’s UHD+ IPS display, which is 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 an unprecedented accuracy of DeltaE of 0.58 (1.0 or less is considered excellent). It also achieved a contrast ratio of 1,870:1, which is one of the best scores we’ve seen on an IPS display. Our review Blade 17 has a QHD display running at a superfast 240Hz. That makes it great for gaming, but its general display metrics were well below the XPS 17. Its colors were reasonably wide and very accurate, but its brightness was average, and its contrast is below average for a premium laptop (we like to see at least 1,000:1).

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

portability

The XPS 17 is narrower and shallower than the Blade 17, thanks to its smaller display and smaller bezel. It’s almost equally thin at 0.77 inches versus 0.78 inches, and it’s significantly lighter at 5.34 pounds versus 6.06 pounds. These laptops are big and heavy and would be a chore to have around, but the XPS 17 has a meaningful advantage in size and weight.

Another XPS 17 advantage lies in its battery life. It fell short of average in our web browsing test that cycles through some popular and complex websites, but more than doubled the Blade 17’s performance at 7.5 hours in this test. In our video test that loops to a local Full HD avengers Trailer, the XPS 17 was three times more efficient, staying strong for 13 hours.

The XPS 17 can’t quite make it through a full day of productivity work, but it will last significantly longer than the Blade 17. Overall, it’s a more portable powerhouse.

Dell XPS 17 is the better mainstream laptop

The XPS 17 starts at $1,812 for a Core i5-12500H CPU, 8GB of DDR5 RAM, 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 Blade 17 entry-level is $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 the Core i9-12900H, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, RTX 3080 Ti, and 17.3 UHD 144Hz display. The XPS 17 isn’t a cheap laptop, but the Blade 17 is even more expensive.

For most buyers and the most demanding of creators, the Dell XPS 17 is the better all-around laptop. It performs as well as the Razer Blade 17 in CPU-intensive tasks and is fast enough to handle typical creative workflows. It also has much better battery life. However, if you’re a gamer or a very demanding manufacturer, the more expensive Blade 17 offers more GPU power at the higher end.

Editors’ Recommendations