I recently received a Dell 16 Premium/XPS 16 laptop, not the newest generation but the one before it with the Blackwell GPU options. I noticed they were on sale (albeit still at a hefty price) and decided to splurge on the 5060 configuration to replace my old XPS 15 from early 2023. 

Now, I completely understand that the XPS series are not gaming laptops. However, I respect the XPS series' premium feel, and me and my family have been using XPS laptops from some time. Apart from the 9530, we also have two 9575s at home, all of them working well despite their age (although I will say those are used a lot less than my personal laptop). I wanted a laptop with a good balance of premium feel, not too loud, and from a brand I could (somewhat) trust.

I have been genuinely pleasantly surprised at the performance and thermal management of the Dell 16 Premium, particularly under sustained load like gaming. My old XPS 15 absolutely cooked itself at the sight of a combined load. The keyboard deck heated up so much that the top of the laptop felt like it could give me a burn. If left unchecked the CPU would rocket up to 100C instantly. Even though the 4050 GPU was rated at 50W, it never went above 40W and often throttled down to 30 or even 25W in CPU heavy games like CP2077 where it often settled in at 75-85C. There was also the confusing "super throttling" issue which I talked about before where I guessed that the VRM's inadequate cooling caused them to completely throttle the system and the GPU down to only 20W for prolonged periods of time.

The Dell 16 Premium, on the other hand, seems to actually have a great thermal management system. Unlike the XPS 15 which cooked itself no matter which way you looked at it, the Nvidia Dynamic Boost functionality seems to genuinely work here. In games with lower CPU overhead, the GPU can sustain prolonged boosts up to 50-55W, all while still keeping at a reasonable 67-69C. The CPU controls itself decently well and stays under 70C. 

All this means that gaming seems to actually feel downright pleasant on the machine. The 5060's power limit does mean it's quite limited compared to the full powered 5060 in gaming laptops. However, with some tricks like DLSS Upscaling and/or Frame Gen, I've been able to get what I'd call extremely pleasant gaming experiences. 

I tried Cyberpunk 2077, Stellar Blade, and Black Myth Wukong, all pretty demanding titles for current gen consoles. 

CP2077 requires a strong CPU alongside GPU and its performance completely fell apart on my old XPS 15 where it would consistently throttle down to the 40s at 1200p High and DLSS Quality due to both the CPU and GPU fighting over the limited power envelope. The 16 did pretty well here, keeping the CPU at around 25-30W and GPU at 45W. Not breathtaking performance, but enough to get a stable 50-70 fps at 1200p Ultra/DLSS Q + RT Reflections without Frame Gen, and 85-110 fps with Frame Gen. With FG and without RT on, it's pretty easy to more or less reach the 120hz cap of the display.

Stellar Blade is quite well optimized and the 16 Premium easily sustains 60-80 fps at 1200p Ultra, and 100-120 fps with Frame Gen, capping out the 120hz screen. However, VRAM saturation seems to be an issue and causes a lot of hitching. I switched to DLSS Quality Preset M which freed up a lot of VRAM thanks to the lower render res whilst looking very close to native, which allowed me to get a locked 120 fps with Frame Gen more or less.

Black Myth Wukong is quite a demanding title as it is built with UE5. Despite this, the game can sustain about 60-70fps with 1080p High with DLSS Quality. With Frame Gen, I could consistently get 95-120 fps which is an incredible experience for what is one of the most demanding games on the market right now.

So far, I think this machine actually feels pretty good as a hybrid work and play laptop. I was always frustrated by how anemic the XPS 15 cooling system was, and I'm very happy Dell finally created a laptop with the cooling necessary to actually drive their components. 

  


Pleasantly Surprised By Sustained/Gaming Performance on the Dell 16 Premium (DA16250)