- Striking design and solid build quality
- Strong overall performance
- Long battery life
- Big and beautiful OLED display
- Quad speakers produce great sound
The Dell XPS 16 9640 features a 16.3-inch display that feels every bit as spacious as the previous 17-inch XPS 17 9730‘s while saving you a bit of travel weight. A bigger departure is the minimalistic design that features a borderless touchpad, a nearly flat keyboard with little to no spacing between the keys and a Function row that consists not of physical keys but touch-sensitive icons.
The invisible touchpad is a cool trick, and thanks to its accurate and lively haptics, it’s as fun to use as it is to look at. I’m less sold on the touch-sensitive yet haptic-less Function row, but I must say the XPS 16 9640’s overall look is indeed unique and rather stunning. And I was pleased to see that Dell has an OLED display option, which wasn’t available for the XPS 17 9730. Add in strong overall performance and surprisingly robust battery life, and the Dell XPS 16 9640 checks a lot of boxes for creatives who are looking for a big-screen laptop and are willing to spend a pretty penny to get it.
Our Dell XPS 16 9640 test system includes significant upgrades that nearly double its price from the baseline $1,899 to a lofty $3,399. The base model features an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor, 16GB of RAM, Intel Arc graphics, a 512GB SSD and a 1,920×1,200-pixel IPS display. Our test model offers 32GB of RAM, RTX 4070 graphics, a 1TB SSD and a 4K OLED display. For the case, you can choose between a creamy silver that Dell calls platinum or a matte black the company dubs graphite.
There are a few other customization options not included on our test system: a Core Ultra 9 185H CPU, RTX 4050 and 4060 GPUs, and up to a 4TB SSD. You can also opt for vPro, which delivers remote-management features for IT departments in charge of a fleet of XPS 16 machines.
The Dell XPS 16 9640 starts at £1,849 in the UK and AU$2,798 in Australia.