\n\nWith 300Hz panels, real-time ray tracing, and 8-core CPUs, gaming laptops today are leaps and bounds better than they were just five years ago\u2014except for one area: sound quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In fact, after working our way through gaming laptops from just about every PC vendor you can name, the only thing we can conclude is that gaming PC laptops just don\u2019t care about PC audio. Sure, they\u2019ll put a sticker on the laptop\u2019s body proclaiming, \u201cAudio by X,\u201d but our ears don\u2019t lie: They\u2019re almost all subpar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before we get too far down this blame game, we\u2019ll note that larger gaming laptops generally don\u2019t suffer this fate. But by larger laptop, we speak of Acer\u2019s brutal 10-pound. Predator Helios 700 or Alienware\u2019s 8-pound Area 51m. Both laptops are huge desktop replacement models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our beef is with 15.6-inch and 17.3-inch \u201cthin and light\u201d laptops\u2014the most popular segment of gaming notebooks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Laptop makers are basically racing to create the lightest, thinnest, and fastest laptops possible. That\u2019s already an impossible mission, but once you add in high-refresh panels, mechanical keyboards, long battery life, and ports galore, the to-do list of every gaming laptop maker in the world starts getting pruned. Sound, unfortunately, is the one feature almost everyone cuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sound more like the XPS 15, please
I didn\u2019t realize just how bad it had gotten until my ears heard the Dell XPS 15 9500\u2019s sublime sound. The XPS 15 9500\u2019s sound system features two top-firing speakers and two bottom-firing speakers. They\u2019re all tuned by Grammy-award winning sound producer Jack Joseph Puig and use fairly advanced Waves NX audio technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sure, you think that\u2019s just a bunch of marketing hooey we\u2019ve long been fed by manufacturers who believe seeing a sticker sells hardware (and it usually does). But the XPS 15 9500 really is a standout. I actually preferred to listen to music on the XPS 15 9500\u2019s speaker system, rather than using a portable Bluetooth speaker with my phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The laptop tracks your head
One XPS 15 9500 audio feature that I\u2019ll describe as interesting, but not quite all there, is the Waves Nx head tracking feature. The company touts it as transaural playback, which is a fancy way to say algorithms filter and shape positional audio over the speakers to trick your brain into thinking a sound is behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s different about the Waves Nx implementation in Dell\u2019s laptops is the spatialization algorithms, which are tied into the XPS 15\u2019s and XPS 17\u2019s webcams. When you play a sound that is supported by the Waves NX speakers and shift your head slightly, the audio tracks your head to keep the 3D effect sound focused on your head\u2019s actual position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Basically, the Dell XPS 15 and XPS 17 watch your head, then tries to move the sound with your head rather than have you move out of the sweet spot, which would spoil the surround-sound nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s the theory, anyway. While it does work sometimes, we found the laptop would lose our head position if we moved too far to the left or right, and it sometimes simply stopped tracking us. You know it\u2019s working because the laptop\u2019s webcam \u201cin use\u201d indicator is lit up, but unless you have the Waves Nx application open, you can\u2019t tell whether it\u2019s lost your head location. We also found that attempts to keep the sweet spot focused on our head would occasionally nudge the sound out of phase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other weakness of the Waves Nx Speaker head-tracking feature is that it doesn\u2019t work in all applications. The 3D tracking would work with Windows Media Player, but not Windows 10\u2019s default player, Groove Music. The reason? Apparently the Waves Nx head tracking feature doesn\u2019t work in UWP applications. We also had issues with the Chrome browser and head tracking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s clear the technology has promise, but it\u2019s not quite fully baked. Still, playing music or videos on the Dell XPS 15 9500 was a 95-percent improvement over the sound in basically every gaming laptop we\u2019ve seen in the last five months, even with the fancy head-tracking turned off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2019Gamers wear headphones\u2019 is no excuse
Listen, we understand that on every gamer\u2019s shopping list it\u2019s GPU, CPU, RAM, SSD, cooling, keyboard, and RGB LEDs. Speakers aren\u2019t top of mind. But gaming laptops sound so bad it\u2019s worse than an afterthought\u2014it\u2019s a detriment. All PC vendors have to say is that gamers use headsets, basically giving us a \u201cwhadda you want me to do about it?\u201d look<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s just too bad, because we\u2019re very much at a loss over how a thinner and lighter laptops easily outmaneuvers just about every gaming laptop we\u2019ve seen this year when it comes to sound. Get on the Dell XPS 15 9500\u2019s level, folks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n