Dell 16 Premium Review: New Name, Same Design, Slightly Better Performance

Dell’s 16-inch content-creation laptop underwent a radical redesign last year when the Dell XPS 16 9640 showed up with an invisible touchpad, a latticeless keyboard and a function row consisting of touch-sensitive icons. This year, Dell introduced a rebranding of its laptop lines, which brought about the end of the XPS name. 

At the top of the company’s consumer laptop lineup is the Dell Premium series. Dell may have made a bigger splash, I’d imagine, had it introduced the new name with the new design, but the timing didn’t work out that way. Staggering the rebranding and redesign might help enforce the idea that the new Premium series is an extension of the former XPS line.

Like the 16-inch XPS laptop before it, the Dell 16 Premium is a big-screen, high-powered laptop geared toward creative pros and well-heeled hobbyists. It’s based on a huge, 16.3-inch 4K OLED display that’s powered by the latest silicon from Intel and Nvidia. The Dell 16 Premium proved to be a step faster than last year’s XPS 9640, but its throttled RTX 5070 means it’s not an ideal choice for pulling double duty, say, for graphics work by day and 3D gaming at night. Its battery life isn’t nearly as lengthy as its predecessor’s.

I like the look and feel of the Dell 16 Premium, but the Asus ProArt P16 is the better choice for a 16-inch OLED content-creation machine. The Asus has a lower price, lighter weight, longer battery life and similar performance.

The Dell 16 Premium starts at $1,800 (on sale for $1,550) for a configuration with an Intel Core Ultra 7 255H, 16GB of RAM, integrated Intel graphics, a 512GB SSD and a non-touch 2K IPS display. Even at its discounted price, that’s too much to pay when you can get the Acer Aspire 16 AI for just $700.

Dell offers a lone CPU upgrade and three GPU upgrades for the 16 Premium. You can bump the CPU to a Core Ultra 9 285H and choose between RTX 5050, 5060 and 5070 graphics. You can increase the memory to 32GB or 64GB, and the storage up to a 4TB SSD. You can also upgrade the display to a 4K OLED panel with touch support, but in doing so, you sacrifice some in-screen brightness, going from a rated 500 nits to 400 nits.

My test system features the base Core Ultra 7 processor, but the highest GPU offered is the RTX 5070, along with 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and the 4K OLED display. It also features Windows 11 Pro, which adds to the bill. The total for my Dell 16 Premium test system is $3,260, discounted to $2,860 with Dell’s constant sale pricing.

The same two color choices from last year’s model are offered on the 16 Premium: a creamy silver that’s nearly ivory in color, which Dell calls platinum, or a matte black that Dell calls graphite. I received the former.

The Dell 16 Premium starts at £1,479 in the UK and AU$3,299 in Australia.

Dell 16 Premium: New in name only

When I first glanced at last year’s XPS 9640, I was skeptical about its minimalist design with a latticeless keyboard, borderless touchpad and row of touch-sensitive function keys. After using it, however, I found that I enjoyed typing on the keyboard and appreciated the lively haptics of the touchpad. And despite the lack of defined borders, I didn’t have trouble staying within the touchpad’s confines. So, I’m happy to see both the keyboard and touchpad return on the Dell 16 Premium, but I’d still trade some of the streamlined nature of the overall design for a function row of physical keys.

There are only two slight changes to this year’s model. The system weight has increased slightly, which is a move in the wrong direction, since last year’s XPS 9640 already tipped the scales at 5 pounds. This year’s Dell 16 Premium weighs 5.15 pounds. It’s a tank of a laptop. You aren’t likely to be traveling with a 16-inch laptop with regularity, but the 16 Premium is certainly a laptop you won’t want to take with you. Dell’s own Alienware 16X Aurora is even heavier at nearly 5.5 pounds, but the Asus ProArt P16 is more than a pound lighter, weighing just a hair more than 4 pounds.

The second change is the addition of a third Thunderbolt 4 port. Now, all three USB-C ports offer TB4 support. Still, there are no USB-A or HDMI ports. Dell sells a Dell USB-C to USB-A/HDMI adapter with the laptop but charges an outrageous $35 for it. If you aren’t giving me a USB-A or HDMI port, then the adapter should be included in the box for free.

One more gripe about the ports: The microSD card slot isn’t cutting it. For a massive laptop like the Dell 16 Premium that’s designed for graphics pros, there’s seemingly plenty of room for a full-size SD card slot that would be more useful for the laptop’s intended audience.

You can read more about my thoughts on the overall design in my review of the Dell XPS 9640. 

What hasn’t changed is the excellent 4K OLED display and quad-speaker array. The OLED display looked fantastic, with razor-sharp text and images, and the speakers emitted some of the best laptop audio I’ve heard. The OLED display nearly matched its 400-nit rating on my tests with a Spyder X Elite colorimeter. It reached a peak brightness of 395 nits while also demonstrating good color performance, covering 100% of sRGB, 88% of AdobeRGB and 99% of P3.

Actually, I have one small change to report regarding the display: It offers a variable refresh rate of up to 120Hz for buttery-smooth movement. Last year’s model could operate at 60Hz or 90Hz, but the rate wasn’t variable.  

Before you get ideas about using the 120Hz panel for gaming, I need to tell you that you aren’t getting a full-power RTX 5070 with the Dell 16 Premium. It’s running at 65 watts, and its 3D graphics performance trailed that of gaming systems with full 115-watt RTX 5060 GPUs, as well as the Asus ProArt P16 that has an RTX 5070 set to 105 watts. 

In our application benchmarks, the Dell 16 Premium achieved competitive scores, comparable to those of the Asus ProArt P16 and midrange gaming laptops with similar specifications. And it proved to be faster than last year’s XPS 9640 throughout testing.

One area where the Dell 16 Premium took a step backward is with battery life. It lasted less than 6 hours on our video streaming battery drain test, which isn’t unsurprising for a high-powered OLED laptop. Still, it’s more than 5 hours shorter than last year’s XPS unit. Since you are unlikely to lug the 16-inch, 5-pound Dell 16 Premium around with you very much, battery life is less important than it is with a smaller, more portable laptop.

Is the Dell 16 Premium a good laptop?

It’s a good pick for creatives looking for a big-screen OLED laptop, but the Asus ProArt P16 is a great laptop in this class. The Dell 16 Premium is more expensive and heavier than the ProArt P16 and has an RTX 5070 set to run at a lower wattage. Unless you absolutely love its unique look, you’re better off passing on the Dell 16 Premium and going with the Asus ProArt P16.