Update: Dell's deal on the XPS 17 has gotten better since this article was first published. The XPS 17 is now discounted by up to $900. The piece has been updated to reflect the change.
Dell has a long history of making some of the best Windows laptops. My family has had Dell PCs for years, so I keep a close eye on deals from the company. Right now, you can get a Dell XPS 15 for $1,099, thanks to a $800 discount. That sale is on last year's model with a 12th Gen Intel Core i7 and NVIDIA RTX 3050 graphics.
I recently argued that at $650 off, last year's Dell XPS 15 was a better purchase than the new XPS 15. Now, that same model from last year is $800 off. That's an extra $150 of savings on what was already a good deal.
If you need a bigger laptop, the Dell XPS 17 from last year with similar specs is $900 off.
Obviously the new XPS 15 is better than its predecessor in several ways, so you have to place the price difference into perspective. But just to give you a gauge, the newer XPS 15 with a 13th Gen Intel Core i7 and an NVIDIA RTX 4050 is currently $1,899. There's also a version of the new XPS 15 with an Intel Arc A370M that costs $1,499, but that's only a 4GB graphics card.
Is it worth an extra $800 to bump up one generation of CPU and GPU? That depends on your workflow. Intel's 12th Gen chips and NVIDIA's RTX 30-series GPUs are still solid internals in 2023. The jump from Intel's 12th Gen to its 13th Gen isn't as large as we've seen between other generations.
Unless you need the latest and greatest processors in your laptop, picking up last year's XPS 15 is a great bargain.
