XPS 9440 14 General user experience

After giving up with trying to figure out how to write a review on the product page and support seeming unsure as well (big surprise, they also genuinely didn't care to help me) I've decided to vent my frustrations with the device here.

The troubles begin on day one, unboxing. No paper manuals included but you really don't need any, it's just open it and go through setup. I first noticed the lid is difficult to open because it's a flat edge all the way around, no divot on the palm rest to help you grip the lid and open it. When will companies learn that form over function isn't appreciated? It's stupid, but whatever, small pet peeve.

The next issue is the rubber feet strips on the bottom casing; they don't work. My old Inspiron won't move an inch if you push it sitting on a table, but this thing? Like a deer on ice. It will slide off even the slightest tilted desk. I had to order rubber feet and stick them on the bottom to get an acceptable surface grip and to keep it from sliding off to its inevitable doom.

Next up is the touchpad. Oh my it's invisible. Who at design department thought it would be a wonderful idea to make it hard to locate the edges? While it seems like a sleek design at first, it quickly becomes a nuisance as it's unclear where the touchpad ends and the palm rest begins. I rest the edge of my hand on the touchpad and prevents me from clicking anything, it's super frustrating. It would have been nice to put a thin line or marking on each side of the touchpad to make it more obvious.

Typing. The keyboard is okay but the spacing between each key is uncommon and I find myself making very frequent typos. The backlight doesn't turn on sometimes and isn't very bright, some keys are only half-illuminated. The touch buttons above the keyboard are a neat idea but some are dimmer than others, leaving a less-than-premium look.

So you know how everything's switching to USB-C? Great, that's a good thing. But please stop limiting ports on the latest laptops to USB-C, we're still in an age where 80% of peripherals still utilize USB-A (especially flash drives) and the need to buy a USB hub becomes necessary if you want any sort of practicality. I'm unsure which of the USB-C ports seem to provide power delivery, but the two on the left do, but a charging indicator LED is lacking and will be missed. Headphone jack is a surprising port for laptops to still be holding onto, but that's great, please never take away the headphone jack.

Screen is colorful and bright, never gives me any problems, but I imagine it'd be pretty expensive to replace since the camera and microphones appear to be part of the display panel. I hate the fact you can only open the lid to about 135 degrees before it is stopped, simply annoying but at least the hinges feel firm and hopefully don't give problems a few years down the line (*cough cough*, inspiron.)

If you ever need to service it, look forward to some stupidly shaped screw heads. This is the first time I've seen Dell use non-standard screws on their laptops and I hope it backfires. The memory and storage are on-board so no room for expansion or replacement. Dell is doing a great job killing off right to repair or ability to modify their devices.

The speakers are upward facing. Finally, they figured out people's ears aren't on their thighs. This should be a standard mounting location for laptop speakers. They sound... not bad, but they're laptop speakers, what do you expect? 

Since I've taken delivery of the device and deleted McAfee shortly after as any sane person would do, The thing has frozen a handful of times for a minute or two, completely random, all of which during low-intensity tasks such as just browsing the web. It will stop responding, the screen will go black, audio will glitch and it will do this for about 30 seconds before it realizes it's pooping its pants and restabilizes. Why it has this issue I'm not certain.

In all, this laptop feels more like $500 instead of $1500 and I dislike the direction Dell is headed in. The build quality isn't bad but doesn't instill much confidence. Design is too focused on being sleek and stylish, gives off less business-oriented professional laptop vibes and more high-end wannabe consumer device vibes. This device will be a college laptop and won't see much work outside of PDF editing, video conferencing, web surfing and occasional streaming, so I don't expect it to be good at much else. This will likely be the last time I purchase a Dell device. It really stinks I have to post my experiences with a device on a forum page but their incompetent customer support doesn't know how to use their own website either so what can I say? You might ask why I don't just return it for a refund and get something else, but I picked it out and I'm going to make it work, adaptations will have to be made. I will also likely post a 1-year follow up or if anything goes wrong.