XPS 15 9550 top configuration, is it a good choice according to my requirements?

Question

It's been 8 years since I last bought a laptop, so I'm very rusty. I would like a laptop which has:

1. a 15'' monitor
2. it's reliable (don't want to buy another one anytime soon!)
3. it's lightweight
4. it's a powerful computing enviroment: I like dabbling with machine learning and statistics (I use the open source language R). I have a powerful workstation at work, thus I don't have to do computationally intensive stuff at home too, but I sure would like to try it out now and then.
5. I haven't been playing for at least 10 years, but recently I've taken a liking to playing games on my smartphone (Samsung S6), so I was curious to come back to the gaming world and see how it is now.

I've been offered a Dell XPS 15 9550 laptop with high-end configuration: basically it's the 15'' Touch screen model (a touch screen on a laptop? sounds weird to me) with the 512 SSD hard disk (curious to see what difference this kind of HD makes with respect to the SATA I knew). It's nearly new (1 month), and I would pay it 1300 € (I live in a European country). Full warranty, etc. Since Dell site prices it at 2050$, it sounded like a good deal and I got a verbal agreement, but...an acquaintance told me that the graphics card is "crap" (his words) and that there are better options at the same price. He pointed me to this laptop. I apologize for the non-English link, but I couldn't find exactly the same laptop on the English HP site. This one seems the closest one, but note that it has an HD twice as big (!). Anyway, it's not necessary to focus on these two. I just want to know if the XPS 15 9550 Touch is a good laptop, given my requirements, and if not, which one would be a valid alternative.

Answer 1

I just want to know if the XPS 15 9550 Touch is a good laptop, given my requirements, and if not, which one would be a valid alternative.

This should be able to handle most things. The CPU is new enough to not be a bottleneck while compiling code, while the GPU is solid enough to push AAA titles to max/ultra settings in 1080p (some games might have to throttle to 30fps). Here is a point by point break down.

• This model comes in 15.6 and 17.3 inch models.
• This is name brand laptop, using a brand new CPU and GPU, it will last as long as it meets your needs. If upgrading is a concern, consider a desktop.
• The 15.6 inch model is 4.85 lbs.
• This laptop has a 6th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 processor, its one of the most powerful consumer grade CPU on the market today.
• The GPU will be able to play most games on Max/Ultra settings on 1080p. If there are any specific games you would like to know about google "NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 965M" and the game you're interested in.

Oh and by the way, the HDD to SSD jump is amazing. I went from an old 5400rpm boot drive to a m.2 ssd drive and it is like night and day.