My XPS 15 keyboard is fine but there are other quality issues. The power connector slips out all the time, and the battery swole up and pushed the trackpad up so that it's unusable.

Battery swelling on my XPS 15 is so bad that it completely detached the touchpad and made the keys at the center of the keyboard very hard to press

Getting customer support is damn near impossible for 2 reasons. 1. The serial number of my XPS comes up as Precision Tower in their systems 2. I moved continents since purchase and I'd have to transfer the ownership to myself here in NA, except turns out the owner, in Dell's database, is still the Amazon reseller I bought it from 3years ago

Terrible terrible experience with Dell. Switched to a Pixelbook which I love and handles my Sublime-based environment well enough

How many Dells have this problem? My Dell work laptop has had this happen multiple times already. Never had a problem on my Macbooks or another Windows laptop.

Besides that the coil whine drives me up a wall.

The coil whine drives me nuts too! I have an XPS 13

I have two XPS 15s, one 2017 model and one from 2019 - I've never had the power cable slip out and I use them both heavily in a variety of locations.

I'm genuinely surprised that manufacturers still make premium-priced laptops as ugly as the X1 Carbon. Its design looks like it was ripped from 2005. The latest XPS models are not bad, though.

You say ugly, I say minimalist and clean. I don't like aluminum chassis - too heavy and cold. The matte texture of the thinkpad feels much better for me. And the keyboard is far prettier, given that it actually has key travel.

Doesn't hurt that I get to "stand out" as a single, unlabeled black laptop among a sea of stickered silver macbooks.

XPS coil whine. This is a consistent problem. I notice it on my 9570 (2018), and I saw a review of this year's XPS 13 9380 (2019) mention the problem. Googling shows it has been a problem since at least the XPS 9530 (2013).

I also don't annoying that the fan speeds up for a few seconds every minute while the workload doesn't vary (needs a more analog variable speed control?)

Other than the noises, it's been a really good Linux laptop, and the only reasonable option with a fast i9 at the time I got it.