The Dell 16 Premium is not a gaming laptop, though it does have a discrete Nvidia RTX 5070 Laptop GPU on board. This is mostly to use the Dell 16 Premium for some light content creation and design tasks, but it's a gaming class GPU. So you can game on it if you want, and I'm exactly the kind of laptop user who wants to be able to work, game, and edit my travel photos all on the same device.

While I didn't evaluate the Dell 16 Premium on its gaming prowess while reviewing the laptop, I did do some general GPU testing. While the RTX 5070 on the Dell 16 Premium isn't operating at its absolute best due to the thermal constraints of the old XPS chassis, you do get a lot of graphics power. Which meant it was time to try spending a week using the Dell 16 Premium in place of my battered old GTX 1060 gaming laptop.

Expectations vs. Reality

I didn't expect gaming laptop level performance.

I made sure to keep my expectations low, but even then I was still impressed by the Dell. The Dell 16 Premium chassis is designed for its sleek aesthetic and portability, so the GPU is more thermally constrained than you'd see in most gaming laptops. That said, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 is still a pretty powerful GPU, and the Dell 16 can leverage a decent amount of its graphics power thanks to its Intel Core Ultra 7 255H processor.

While the graphics capabilities of the Dell are ideal for some photo editing, video editing, or design work, the RTX 5070 is still a pretty solid mid-range graphics card, particularly on the mobile side. The desktop RTX 5070 is a disappointment compared to other GPUs this generation, but there's less competition on the mobile side, which helps the RTX 5070 find a good niche. But still, always best to manage expectations with a mobile GPU in a non-gaming chassis, so I expected the RTX 5070 to get about 60fps on high settings at 1080p in most games without any DLSS or frame-gen support.

Dell 16 Premium: Game testing

Better than expected.

I did test the Dell 16 Premium's gaming performance using 3DMark during my initial testing, but for the sake of this gaming experiment, I broke out some actual games to test. While I did debate downloading Monster Hunter Wilds to watch the Dell 16 Premium struggle, it's not the sort of game I would be playing on the Dell, so I stuck to games I would be more likely to play on a non-gaming laptop, like my MMORPG of choice, Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail alongside Baldur's Gate III and Avowed.

I'll play FF14 on a potato clock if I can find a way to do it, and I've been trying to finish my Baldur's Gate III and Avowed saves for quite some time. So I tend to play all three even when I'm on the road and away from my gaming PC.

Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail, even with its graphic overhaul in the latest expansion, is still a pretty easy game to run. It has to operate on the original PS4 after all. So I did expect the Dell 16 Premium to average at least 60fps on Laptop (Standard) settings, even at higher resolutions like the Dell's 4K native res. By default, FF14 enables AMD FSR, so the Dell 16 Premium was able to meet my 60fps average expectations, staying at about 62-64fps even when running around the massive Occult Crescent instance area.

Baldur's Gate III is also pretty well optimized, and isn't the most graphically demanding, so I also expected the Dell to get smooth framerates regardless of resolution. With BG3 set to an Ultra graphics preset, the Dell 16 Premium was averaging well over 60fps, peaking at about 95-102 fps. As for 4K gameplay, I was still able to run around Baldur's Gate with a solid 40fps even at the Dell's full native resolution. This was without any DLSS or FSR boosting, which can smooth out the Dell's performance in 4K gameplay to over 60fps.

Avowed was the stress-test. The game is both poorly optimized, and requires a lot of heavy lifting from the GPU. So I was expecting closer to about 60fps at Medium settings and 1080p. Which, is about exactly where the game landed in terms of frame-rates. Unforunately, Avowed can be tricky to run on a laptop at 1080p, as it often only lets you downscale the resolution when in Windowed mode. So if I wanted to run the game smoothly at full-screen, I'd need to get it running well at 4K. Without any upscaling, Avowed was barely scraping past 30fps in 4K. But with DLSS and 4x frame generation, I was getting about 62fps on average.

It's still not a gaming laptop

But if you want to do some casual gaming, you're in good hands.

No amount of setting tweaks or measured expectations will make the Dell 16 Premium a gaming laptop. It's pricier than a budget gaming laptop with an RTX 5070, and it's more likely to thermal throttle or deal with a CPU bottleneck because of its Intel Core Ultra 200H processor (compared to the 200HX gaming variant of Intel CPU).

If you're looking for a good deal on a gaming laptop, or you want a portable gaming powerhouse, the Dell 16 Premium isn't a great option. It's expensive, and it won't ever compete with a high-end, desktop replacement gaming laptop.

But if you're the same kind of power user that I am, who wants a laptop that can do everything, the Dell 16 Premium is a pretty great option. It can game, it can run Gimp and Capcut, and it's pretty darn portable for a 16-inch laptop with a discrete GPU as it weighs just 4.65 pounds.

While I won't be using the Dell 16 Premium to replace my gaming desktop, it's a solid option to take with me on my next vacation.