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March 13th, 2025 07:36
Worst Laptop Experience ever
Hi dear Dell Community,
I am writing to express my regret for having bought a Dell device.
Previously, I was using an Asus Zenbook, which worked for more than 10 years without any major issues.
When looking for a new powerful device, the XPS series seemed rather attractive to me.
I spent 2500€ on an XPS 9510.
When it arrived, I already realized the terrible sound that the speakers would produce, an issue that many other users experienced as well.
Now, 3.5 years later, my battery lasts less than an hour. The fingerprint sensor does not work anymore and worst of all the wireless connections are broken - I don`t have WiFi or bluetooth anymore, which makes the device almost useless.
On top, the laptop freezes every now and then at the Dell boot logo - an issue that was also experienced my many other users, where no fix seems available.
I am very disappointed about Dell`s performance here, and I regret having bought this device. I hope this helps other users in their Laptop buying decision, but most importantly Dell to produce high quality devices when asking for this amount of money.
ejn63
10 Elder
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28.6K Posts
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March 13th, 2025 11:04
Batteries are consumable, designed for 2-3 years, so that's normal - you simply need a new battery.
The rest, including freezing is probably the need for a thorough internal cleaning, including replacement of the thermal pads. And it wouldn't be a bad idea to do a clean install of Windows, including the drivers for the network hardware at this point.
NikoXP
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March 13th, 2025 13:23
Thanks for your reply!
The battery is understandable to me, the rest does not seem accessible to me as a "normal non-expert" user.
When issues started appearing, I freshly installed Windows several times and checked all sorts of driver combinations, but it seems to be a hardware failure, which also other users reported.
Dell asked for 500€ to repair it, basically replacing the whole mainboard, which did not seem attractive to me.
ejn63
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28.6K Posts
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March 13th, 2025 15:06
I doubt it needs a mainboard unless you have a failure to boot showstopper -- more likely, the system needs a good round of maintenance first.
NikoXP
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March 13th, 2025 15:37
Well, the network module is soldered to the mainboard, so it cannot be replaced. This is probably why they said the whole mainboard needs to be replaced.
How could I give my system a good round of maintenance?
ejn63
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28.6K Posts
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March 13th, 2025 15:41
You can work around the network issue with a nano USB bluetooth/wifi adapter -- for under $30, it's a fraction of the cost of a mainboard.
The system should be opened up and cleared of all dust, debris and have the thermal pads that connect the heatsinks for the CPU/GPU/VRMs to the component on the board. Any local computer shop can handle the job for whatever about an hour's labor costs in your area if you don't want to do the job yourself.
NikoXP
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March 14th, 2025 07:37
Thanks again for your ideas, very appreciated!
The XPS 9510 has only USB-C ports - there are no USB C Wifi Adapters. Working around with a hub would work, but these USB adapters are very limited in speed (300 MB/s or less), so doesn`t really work for me.
To replace my SSD and upgrade my RAM, I opened the laptop several times and always cleaned it.
I doubt that removing dust will bring my fingerprint sensor back to life or prevent the booting from freezing :/