all right tech family i am not happy after my initial review of this laptop the dell xps 13 plus 9320 i decided to keep the i7 model for myself i really like the form factor the comfortable keyboard and of course the design plus the temperatures you feel while using it for non-demanding tasks are warm but they're acceptable to be honest i've really enjoyed using this laptop i really have i've enjoyed using it for non-demanding tasks like writing and researching scripts for this youtube channel however soon after i passed the return period i started hitting some
pretty serious issues and i'm super frustrated at dell's quality control so this is my follow up longest term review of the dell xps 13 plus 9320 and grab some popcorn as i'm about to go full josh the main issue i kept hitting with this laptop is regular freezing and massive drops in performance particularly evident when consuming media videos constantly freeze and stutter during playback netflix youtube you name it look closely at the tv show playing in the background as they try to open hardware info it's freezing and now frozen finally we get some playback now
let's try alt-tabbing out of a movie you can see i'm not able to switch to another application i'm pressing alt tab alt tab nothing and we're back to more stuttering and freezing you can clearly see that the movie is meant to be playing i only have an option of pausing that's because it's supposedly playing right now by the way the reason i'm trying to open hardware info is to help diagnose this issue the laptop felt very warm to the touch during this time and i was worried about hitting the infamous intel 400 megahertz throttle issue
which others are reporting on this laptop i've hit that exact issue before on my old surface book too what happens is the processor gets so hot that it has to be throttled down to a completely unusable 400 megahertz but as the processor cools there is a bug that never allows it to power back up to a usable clock speed but in this case you can see that the cpu cores do seem to be running at a reasonable frequency and aren't stuck at 400 megahertz when we look at cpu usage it's low there aren't any offending
applications and here is hardware infos reporting also seems fine even cpu temperatures are low but the tv show still won't play and yes for those who've noticed i am watching through cw's trashy arrow for a second time once again the show should be playing if i do stop and play at a different scene it's still frozen and this occurs with youtube videos too if you think it's a chrome issue think again here it is playing on microsoft's edge browser look how jolty the movement is on screen just in case you think my camera is the
culprit here is some movement to show you that that certainly isn't it so there is clearly something wrong here like really wrong and in case i didn't mention all drivers and software are the absolute latest that dell and windows provides i even tried updating the drivers directly from intel but the issues don't stop there we were in the middle of filming an audio test of this laptop for review that i'm doing comparing it to the macbook air m2 we had the speakers playing full volume and we started hearing popping sounds both myself and my assistant
could clearly hear it i'll play it for you but it may be hard to make out recorded by my mic and then played back via youtube so as usual i researched whether others had similar issues and no surprises many owners were reporting these issues across the net from reddit to best buy's review section even dell's own website was riddled with complaints from owners common issues included the two i mentioned plus the 400 megahertz throttle issue that i described earlier also for some the haptic track pad stopped working and another issue that used to happen on
my laptop was mentioned the speakers would occasionally just suddenly stop working requiring a full restart to come back on for the lols check out what happened to one lucky shopper in best buy and by the way this is mislabeled as the xps 15 it's actually the 13 plus 9320 best my habit correctly labeled on the display that issue hasn't happened to me and no one else i know has reported it i just thought it was a funny video several users did suggest fixes such as turning off turbo on their processor but you really shouldn't have
to do that these processes are meant to turbo up for short running tasks and if dell can't handle the heat by putting such a processor in this laptop guess what it shouldn't have been put here in the first place and marketed to you oh and i did try running throttle stop with the limit tab open to see if i could diagnose the issue i didn't see anything i recognized like bd proshot i was so beyond annoyed that i put out a general warning about buying this laptop then one of my discord server members came up
with a suggestion he suggested a full clean reinstall not a recovery of dell's pre-installed windows so i gave it a go please note reinstalling windows this way on this laptop has complexities you'll need to download the windows media creation tool use it to create a bootable usb drive then you must download the zip version of intel's rapid storage technology driver and unzip it onto that usb drive and importantly it must be the right version of that driver i'll place a link to the one i used in the description below then you need to load that
driver during the reinstallation otherwise you won't be able to see the storage drive after completely deleting all ssd partitions and performing the reinstall the wi-fi wasn't detected i had to plug the laptop into my router via an ethernet cable i used an anker one gigabit usbc adapter for that which i'll link below after windows updated the wi-fi worked and so did the laptop i did not download or install any software from dell neither their own software or drivers posted on their website after spending a ton more time testing this laptop both the video stuttering issue
and sound popping issue no longer seems to be occurring and none of the other issues i mentioned that others had seen like the 400 megahertz issue or the trackpad issue occurred either which is a relief by the way i have done clean reinstalls before on laptops of course but normally such basic things such as playing a movie works without one so now i'm going to rant del's quality control is seriously flawed there is no way that this laptop should have been released with the issues that i and many others have experienced i do not expect
a normal user who buys this laptop to go through the effort that i went to for that clean reinstall and you might be wondering am i being overly tough on dell versus other manufacturers don't all laptops have issues look i can only report on what i've personally experienced and if and when i experience issues with other laptops guess what i'll tell you about it but in my personal experience no manufacturer has had such a large amount of quality control issues rudimentary issues should i say that i personally experience with dell i literally couldn't consume media
on this laptop and as i said dell is renowned for having quality control issues remember the infamous xps 15 loose trackpad issue from several years ago that i and many others hit dell get it together anyway if you are considering buying this laptop please make sure you're subscribed because if these issues start reoccurring i'll let you know look to sum up my long-term thoughts on this laptop i do really enjoy using it i really do as i said i like the form factor it looks amazing the keyboard is very comfortable and the trackpad works surprisingly
well it's a very good laptop for casual use and travel with one additional major downside very poor battery life i normally get around four hours in real world use with my 4k screen model with the brightness down a couple of notches you'll most likely want to bring a charger with you when you travel oh and it annoys me that the laptop doesn't sit flat on a desk perhaps another quality control issue look i'm probably never going to get a review unit from dell after this video but someone had to stand up for you the consumer
well i'm done here if you like this video you know what to do smash that like button and get subscribed not only does it show your appreciation for the insane amount of effort that goes into making these videos but as i always say it makes my mother very proud if you'd like help picking a laptop or diagnosing an issue try checking out our discord channel linked below till next time go do something awesome with your day and i will catch you later
