The $1500 Dell XPS 15 vs. the $1500 MacBook Pro 13

[Onkel Neal]

I have the XPS 15, and it is amazing. It's like the power of a desktop, but in a light thin laptop. It's good for games and work.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/30610...ok-pro-13.html

The fans have spoken. It wasn’t enough last year for me to compare Microsoft’s Surface Book to Apple’s MacBook Pro 13. Silly me, I figured a dual-core 13-inch laptop should go up against a dual-core 13-inch laptop. But nooooo, fans cried: For this to be a “fair fight,” I should have pitted the Surface Book against a MacBook Pro 15.

Normally, comparing the 4.5-pound, 15-inch, quad-core MacBook Pro 15 to the 3.3-pound, 13-inch, dual-core Surface Book would be just the sort of Apple-to-orange mismatch I’d never consider. But the fans argued the price was the thing—comparing a loaded-up, $2,699 Surface Book to a top-of-the-line, $2,700 MacBook Pro 15 was “truly fair.”

Well OK then, fans: You want it, you got it. Let’s ignore form factor and focus on price and performance, and see what happens.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a current MacBook Pro 15 to put up against a Surface Book, so I decided to do the next best thing: Put a $1,500 Dell XPS 15 (config here in Dell’s store) up against a $1,500 MacBook Pro 13 (here’s the config in the Apple store).

Same price. Same everything? Hardly. Read on to see just what you get for the money.