You know who has an easy job today? Dell’s XPS 15 designer. That’s because the popular 15.6-inch laptop gets the upgrade it deserves with Intel’s 8th-gen 6-core Core i7 chip. Dell also tucked in a GPU upgrade to make what is ultimately the fastest XPS 15 we’ve seen yet.

Dell XPS 15 features and specs

The Dell XPS 15 comes in many flavors, but the specs of our 9570 review unit are as follows:

• CPU: 8th-gen Intel Core i7-8750H CPU
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Max-Q
• RAM: 16GB DDR4/2,666MHz
• Display: 15.6-inch 1920×1080 IPS non-touch screen with anti-reflective coating
• Storage: 256GB Toshiba NVMe drive
• Battery: 97 Watt-hour

XPS 15 Design: Keeping the good parts

Dell hasn’t changed much on the outside of the XPS 15  since we first reviewed it in 2016. It has to be mentioned, that it hasn’t changed much since the 2017 iteration either. In fact, you can go back and read those reviews to see what we think of the keyboard, build quality, trackpad, and aesthetics, because for the most part, it hasn’t changed from what we can tell.

That is, for the most part, a good thing. Other companies have mostly gone where Dell led, starting with its superthin “InfinityEdge” bezels around the 15.6-inch screen. The lid and bottom are aluminum, and the keyboard deck is wrapped in a slightly rubberized carbon-fiber material.

The body itself is 9.3 inches deep, 14 inches wide, and from 0.45 to .066 inches tall. Dell rates the laptop alone at four pounds. The model we reviewed, with a larger battery, came in at 4.25 pounds. If you opt for the version with a 4K touchscreen display, the weight bumps up to 4.5 pounds.

If you look close enough, you’ll find one change that’s long overdue: A fingerprint reader, integrated into the power button in this iteration. It’s a modern-day, full-pad reader, unlike those ancient and flaky swipe-style readers. But still no infra-red camera, in case you’re wondering.

Ports

Like elsewhere, ports haven’t changed much from the 2017 XPS 15 9560, and they remain generous. While newer designs are trimming away your ports, the XPS 15 still offers such great things as a full-size HDMI port, and two square USB-A’s. There’s also a full-size SD card reader

The left side, more importantly, features an update to the single Thunderbolt 3 port that people have complained about since this model was introduced: performance. The previous two XPS 15’s (the XPS 15 9550 and XPS 15 9560) featured Thunderbolt 3, but using only two lanes of PCIe. With the XPS 15 9570, Dell finally gives you a faster Thunderbolt 3 implementation using four lanes of PCIe.

This basically means external PCIe storage and graphics performance should get a bump.