Dell XPS 27 (7760) All-In-One Desktop Review: 4K Touch And Wired For Sound
Dell XPS 27 7760 User Experience And Software
Dell does a nice job of keeping the operating system of the new XPS 27 lean and mean, with very little bloat and really only useful utilities. Yes, there's McAfee security on board, which we promptly uninstalled, but other than a 20GB free for a year Dropbox account, the rest is are all useful tools that enhance functionality and access to settings and controls.
Dell's Premier color app is an excellent tool for dialing in the 27-inch IPS panel's output to suit your liking. We tend to hit the Adobe RGB radio button setting right out of the shoot, to strive for color accuracy first. However, there are plenty of use cases where Cinema, Vibrant or Internet sRGB settings can come in handy.
The customized Waves MaxxAudio® Pro app, for the Jack Joseph Puig Signature Series sound system of the XPS 27 7760, has some nicely powerful controls including a full EQ and knobs for MaxxBass, Details and Width settings. Details and Width seem to work with spatialization and highs as well as openness, respectively. Dialing the Width knob gives you more midrange clarity and openness, which we really liked. Details seems to affect the sound stage a bit more and accentuate highs. Our favorite knob was MaxxBass, however. The system feels like it could use a bit more low end, which is to be expected for a device that can't house large woofer drivers. MaxxBass turns up the lower presence nicely and nearly fills the sound stage with enough bass for our liking, though admittedly we yearned for just a touch more. Your personal preference of course, may differ. All told, the sound system of the XPS 27 is simply impressive - easily the best audio we've ever heard from an all-in-one PC by a long shot.
Finally, the XPS 27's Windows Hello camera works flawlessly, so long as you are close enough to the screen and have the camera tilted up at you. We didn't have any issues getting the XPS 27 to recognize our mugs and Microsoft's facial recognition login feature seems refined and performs well after you train it. We would offer again that Dell's web cam placement is less than ideal here, giving you the same unflattering, upward-facing angle as Dell's XPS 13 and XPS 15 notebooks force you to deal with as well. However, in an all in one, a device where you're more apt to setup a high quality external web cam like a Logitech C920 or the like, the XPS 27's desktop usage model is perhaps less of an issue in this regard.
Dell XPS 27 7760 Acoustics And Thermal Performance
Though we didn't take time to measure power consumption of the new XPS 27, we can offer some insight with respect to its thermal performance and associated noise output (or lack of). In case you haven't noticed at this point, there is no external AC adapter required for the machine. You simply plug its AC power cord into the wall, as the power supply for the system is internal. What's impressive with this is that, even though its PSU is internal -- generating heat that must be expelled by the cooling system inside the machine -- the XPS 27 7660 is very quiet. We did here fans spin up a bit under heavy game testing but the sound output was a low, dull whir and absolutely subdued. The system vents warm air out the top of its chassis and it surprisingly, despite some of its higher-end components like a 4GHz quad-core Intel Skylake CPU, it's not a space heater as well.
Let's fire this thing up on the benchmark gauntlet, shall we?
Let's fire this thing up on the benchmark gauntlet, shall we?
