I don't doubt that some people have issues with it, but I wonder what percentage of people have issues with it, and how that percentage compares to other laptops.
The only issue I had was with the power adapter, it made a very high pitched noise (the laptop does not make a noise and does not have "coil whine"). Customer service replaced the power adapter without hassle and the new one is fine.
Mine came with a year of Pro Support which was free, I don't know if that made any difference on the ease of replacement.
- I'm through 2 swollen batteries (at least the touch pad coming up gives you a warning...). One the sent me for free after warranty though.
- blew a speaker in week 2
- bluetooth and wifi didn't work together (I now swapped the chip)
- fan blades are very brittle (broke one accidentally when de-dusting and then took out an opposite one so it's correctly weighted)
- these case screws... Super short and mounted at an angle. Easy to screw in in the wrong angle and without lock tight you might loose the before you notice one is coming out.
- gforce card played dead for a few weeks.
- do not use USB-C for power in. Even with a dell branded dock I get system freezes. It's only fine to charge over night or while watching a bit of youtube.
Other than that that it's my daily driver since a few years though and quite alright...
Had another 13" xps at work and the matte version had auto backlight dimming when the screen showed dark content. Super frustrating for dark themes. Had to patch in a leaked fix to remove it (risking a brick) because support wouldn't hand out one.
Running NixOS on it.
I didn't mind much but people next to me would notice in meetings.
Another very annoying thing is the fan, which is quite loud, and also on most of the time. I cannot even have a single tab open in a web browser, or watch a movie, without spinning up the fan.
Battery life is also nothing special, it's definitely worse than on comparable MBPs.
My wife and I both bought one: me a 9360 and later her a 9370.
Around a year into using my laptop, the power button started to occasionally get stuck behind the case and turn off the computer. After 3 years, it's gotten so bad that this happens any time I close, open, or adjust the angle of the laptop screen. The screws that hold the bottom of the case together tend to get loose, but the root cause of this problem is a crack in a metal part of the internals of the laptop that's probably been there since day 1. Currently, I'm using KDE Neon since Plasma gives a good warning when the power button is pressed.
Additionally, I had to replace the battery since after 2-3 years just outside of warranty, it went down from 10 hours to 45 minutes.
Dell Support refused to fix either of the issues.
You might think this is just a case of getting a lemon, but my wife's 9370 had problems too.
The computer came with several keyboard keys not working. Dell Support took over a month to ship a new one, and I spent forever on the phone with them figuring out why the repair was still "processing".
Now after 2 years, the battery has started to swell and has cracked the outside of the case a little. No luck from Dell Support getting this issue fixed.
Unless you buy a good support plan like many large companies do that have large amount of Dell Laptops for employees, I'd stay away from the brand.