Problems with XPS 13 2020 (9300)

Hi,

In my case:

• Plug the power in - screen goes black for around 2 secs, also if i remove the power plug.
  • Same for me however this is I believe by design.  My Lenovo does it too.  I can get around it by disabling Diplay Refresh Rate Switching on the Lenovo but can't see that option in the Dell.  Assuming it's the same thing (refresh rate switch), I'm fine with it.
• a lot of fan spinning and power drain (plain installed) battery holds up 3 hours not more
  • Mine took a number of hours to "calm down".  It was mainly the search indexer service causing it but it does calm down. That is not to say the fans are calm because they do spin up a lot more than my previous XPS 9370 did.  Even on a desk in an air conditioned office, a few apps and the fans spin up, keyboard area heats up.  I guess that is the price to pay for a thin / small factor
• a lot of micro lags, sometimes animations from win notifications a really slow (fade in in 3 secs) also bumpy
  • Nope none of this.
• the touchpad is also laggy, the mouse is not moving and then it jumps
  • Nope
• performance overall is realy bad had bevor the 2019 version and the 2020 is slow yet
  • So far for what I use all my laptops for (developing, sql server, browsing etc), I have not noticed a drop in performance.

I will say the first thing I did was wipe the laptop and install windows 10 from scratch.  This might be a good thing to do if Dell have any rubbish or a standardised image.

Drivers were from the Dell site for the laptop and where applicable, updated by windows update.

Re - Plug the power in, screen goes black for 2 sec probem.

Have the same issue and I called Dell on it.  They said could be motherboard issue and have to dispatch a technician to come and take a look.  But if multiple people are having problem, is there a batch defect on the hardware?  Ideally this could be solved with a bios/driver update.  

Will update again when I hear back from Dell.

And the problem just took a turn for worse.

Screen starts to randomly turns off.  Sometimes only after a few secs, sometimes lasts a min or so (before turning black/off again).  When turned back on, once the screen was just blank white.  The laptop is effectively useless at the moment. 

Contacted Dell again, they will send someone to take a look next week.

9300, 16gb ram, 1tb SSD, i7, 4k

I have noticed the same with the screen going off than back on and me thinks its a feature of this notebook.  Doesn't bother me much.  I don't have the other issues you are having so it might be your notebook. Haven't done a battery test yet but will do and report back to let you know if its wide spread or not. Touch pad is fine on my system, no lag and no jumps.

Edit:  I'm getting approx. 4 hours 13 minutes on battery with heavy usage of my 9300.  Downloading updates, Internet, Screen brightness set to high, YouTube, Windows Maintenance, setting up system from a clean wipe and reinstall of windows. After a few days will do another battery test with normal usage.

Dell technician came by and replaced the motherboard / LCD.  No more random screen shut down for now.

As for the plugging-in power-screen-turns-dark-then-back-on-issue, Dell came back with a fix:

"From my finding, the previous issue about the black screen is absolutely normal.
That's because the HDR is switching on/off, all other HDR device behave the same.
HDR is turned off by default when running on battery, so plug/unplug affect the HDR.
To eliminate this kind of experience, you will need to disable HDR: Settings - System - Display - Windows HD Color settings - Battery options - Turn HDR on for Battery Power"

Hi there,

I am seriously thinking about getting this new XPS 13 and am considering the 4K option. I am interested in hearing about battery life mostly, so if you have any updates on how long it lasts, I would be most grateful.

thanks

Did you ever find a way to fix these problems? I have all the same problems as you

Joshua0104,

Click the link here and download the laters bios to update your system.

Yeah, I actually discovered the HDR solution in real-time when I was on the phone with Dell support. The support rep was trying to think of solutions, and I randomly found that setting and it works.

The reason it works is because the HDR setting uses a higher refresh rate plugged in, switches to a lower refresh rate on battery.

@Joshua0104  if you were having all the same problems as the original poster, you probably have a bad piece of hardware. I have an i7/16GB/4k model. I haven't had any of those problems, really. I think the consensus from reviewers and testers, is that the 9300 indeed has some thermal management quirks that can probably be solved with software updates. The fans run more than I'd like, I guess, but not what I'd call excessive (and they're quiet, IMO). 

The screen turning black when you plug/un-plug isn't an issue. Just turn off the "Play HDR Games and Apps" in Settings. It's switching between refresh rates when you have HDR enabled.

Turning off "Play HDR Games and Apps" fixes the black screen. It's not an issue, it's a feature. When you have HDR on, it just changes the refresh rate on battery, so that's why the screen goes black. 

After a long discussion with the support over private message nothing helped. I think the hardware has a problem. Yesterday a have a really bad day on the laptop. Bootup normally takes 5-10 sek, this time over 2 min. After that all fans spinning really loud and i have not had any process how was consuming any power. 

The 2020 is garbage the i want to return to dell. We will see how they react. Also some youtube guys have the same issues. 

The most annoying part is that the everytime think we are the problem, we have made some errors. I can't understand dell in such cases. Is it so difficult to take an simulare notebook out of the stock and make here try and error?

Could you please provide the service tag? ^VA

1) I also have a lot of fan spinning.  Laptop gets VERY hot, just using internet nothing else.

2) My battery life is terrible, I get no more than 4 hours 38 minutes.  Most of the time its less.    I thought this was because it was still calibrating, but day 31 and its so bad I called dell to open a case.

3) WiFi is a major issue.  After some time, my Wifi speeds will drop down to dismally slow rates, (unusable) and I must reboot to fix the issue.   This seemingly happens when I move to battery power but not 100% sure.

I am so far not happy with the purchase given these major issues.   Everything listed above is totally a user experience with the laptop.   Right now, that is terrible.

I am having these same issues. I have the i7/16gb/(not the 4k monitor, the lesser one). Fan spins up loud just using internet with one tab open, during a zoom call, etc. Sometimes very slow boot times. CPU/memory usage bouncing all over the place. And relative to my 8 year old Macbook Pro the fans are very loud even on the "Quiet" mode within the Dell power settings.

Just spent over an hour on with a technician running all sorts of tests and they want me to send my brand new (one day old) computer back to factory to check it. So if a lot of people are having these issues, maybe it is an issue with the model?

Any troubleshooting suggestions? They updated all the drivers, the BIOS, etc. and nothing improved the issue.