Dell XPS 8500 Pro Reviews

We may have liked the performance boost here, but we weren't thrilled with Dell's move to halve the standard warranty from the two years of onsite service that came with last year's XPS 8300 to a single year for the XPS 8500. (Also, note that Dell will deploy an onsite rep to fix your PC only if remote diagnostics doesn't first resolve it.) Upping the coverage to a two-year plan will set you back $199. Three-year ($299) and four-year ($399) warranty options are also available. The other moves Dell made from the XPS 8300 to the XPS 8500 resulted in evolutionary, not revolutionary, advances in performance. Still, the system offers more than competitive performance for the price, even topping the pricier HP Pavilion HPE h9-1120t Phoenix in numerous benchmarks. For designers and other creative pros who also want to play demanding games, the XPS 8500 is an excellent choice.

Overall, the Dell XPS 8500 is a great desktop machine for a family that has both serious and casual computing needs. It is multifunctional enough for the gamer, the artist and the movie buff. It will fit just about anywhere and looks so inconspicuous that it is bound to fade in the background of a living room, unlike the large glow-in-the-dark power machines. It's a near-perfect media machine and well worth considering.

The Dell XPS 8500 brings the company's top consumer desktop into the "Ivy Bridge" generation with fast graphics and SSD storage.

I appreciate that Dell is trying to add a less-than-common feature in the XPS 8500 with the mSATA solid-state drive. Unfortunately, Dell's inflexible configuration tool forces you to make a rather expensive commitment to the 256GB model. A more affordable version of that drive would offer similar speed benefits but at a price more befitting its vanilla performance. If fast file access is a top priority, you might be able to talk yourself into this XPS 8500 configuration. Otherwise you're better off shopping for products from other vendors that can offer more raw performance and better configuration flexibility.