After some major screw ups with FedEx and the delivery of my XPS 15 2-in-1, I finally got it the early part of last week. Since it's not my primary computer, I've been taking my time getting it up and running. Initially, I thought of using PCMover or WinWin to transfer from my old laptop, but decided against that and am now goin through the laborious task of deactivating on the old/installing on the new all the software I usually run on my laptop (Adobe CC, Capture One, Photo Mechanic, and other -- biggest pain is all my plugins!).
A few observations first. The keyboard takes some getting used to. I'd read a number of reviews and it seems to be a love/hate kind of thing -- not unlike, apparently, the new Mac laptops. I'm not "naturally" a touch typist. I never really learned to touch type (I was always closed out of that course in school), and so type via a combo of hunt-and-peck and moderate touch (tactile memory as it were). So, my initial going has been a bit slow as I "relearn" the keyboard. The sensation isn't bad, but it's ironic that my iPad keyboard from Logitech as a bit more key travel! I thing I miss incredibly from my old Asus is the number pad. There's more than enough room to have installed that and wish that had been designed in. I do like the combo of traditional laptop and touch screen. I've used in in tablet mode a few times. Not bad. A MUCH bigger tablet than my iPad, heavier, but a nice experience. And speaking of weight, I'm somewhat surprised by the heft of the laptop. It's skinny but solid. The Dell is not that much heavier than my old Asus, which tipped the scales at around 5lbs.
The screen is pretty spectacular. I run it at about 75% brightness. I feel 100% is way to bright, and in a dim room I would be happy with 50%. Since much of my work goes to print, about 25-50% of the time, I end up working in CMYK. For proper pre-press, you traditionally don't work at super bright levels since it gives you an artificial sense of contrast not seen in print. My desktop is calibrated at at a level of 200, and this is way brighter than that. I have included screen shots of the calibration done with my Spyder5. As one can see, it isn't 100% AdobeRGB, but it damn close at 98%! My old notebook struggled to even get a full sRGB gamut. My NEC monitors on my desktop are also 98% aRGB gamut. The "out of the box" color and calibration are actually quite good -- I almost hesitated calibrating, but as it turned out, color was on the cool side, though not horrible (especially compared to some PCs I've seen. Part of me would still have loved the Pantone certified screen that will be in the 4K versions of the Gigabyte 15x v8 and the new Asus UX580GE.)
One weird thing that seems to go on, and I'm not sure what it's related to. A few times, using the laptop casually in the evening, low light levels, the screen would flicker a little, sometimes brighten, then go back to "normal levels". It's happened twice, so I'll have to see if that continues and, if so, under what conditions.
As I mentioned, I haven't done any major work with the laptop yet. I may use it to browse images I shot over the weekend. Maybe even experiment with retouching some of those images using the pen I bought.