Dell Pro Max 16 Plus

Introduction

The Dell Pro Max 16 is one of the beefiest workstation laptops money can buy, with a hefty price tag to match.

The variant I have is one of the top-spec ones Dell makes, which is designed to replace the outgoing Latitude 7670 and 7680, coming with an Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX processor, Nvidia’s top-spec RTX Pro 5000 Blackwell workstation laptop GPU, a 1TB SSD and 128GB of CAMM2 RAM.

Combined with this, we’ve also got a 16-inch 4K resolution 120Hz OLED screen and a 96Whr battery to make this a monster choice for those who need one of the most mobile workstations on the go – as expected, this won’t come cheap, with this sample clocking in at £6450.58/$8291.22.

That makes the Pro Max 16 Plus the most expensive laptop I’ve tested, with its price tag in more modest configurations being rivalled by RTX 5090-powered gaming laptops such as the Medion Erazer Beast 16 X1 Ultimate (RTX 5090) and Alienware 18-Area 51, plus the creative-targeted Asus ProArt P16 (4K Lumina Pro OLED). I’ve been testing this powerhouse to see if it’s one of the best laptops we’ve tested.

 Design and Keyboard

• Thick, chunky chassis
• Enviable port selection
• Comfortable, but slightly awkward keyboard, and a smaller trackpad

The 16 Pro Max Plus’ chassis is big and thick, as you might expect from such a beefy workstation laptop. It’s surprisingly bigger than the old Latitude 7670 and 7680 models it replaces, tipping the scales at 2.84kg, and is larger because it packs in modular USB-C ports, different RAM and a GPU in Dell’s proprietary DGFF form factor.

As expected from a premium device, the build quality is very solid, and the thicker chassis gives this workstation laptop a more rugged feel. The grey colourway might not scream style, but it is corporate and made of a magnesium alloy for good durability.

The Pro Max 16 Plus’ port selection is one of the most complete I’ve seen on any laptop, with the left side housing a 2.5-gig Ethernet port, HDMI 2.1, a pair of modular Thunderbolt 5-capable USB-C ports for easier repairability, plus an SD card reader and a smart card reader. On the right, there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack, a Thunderbolt 4 USB-C port and two USB-A ports.

As much as this isn’t a convertible machine, the hinge for the display is a 180-degree one, so you can open up the laptop and lay the screen flat on a table for more collaborative work. It is also a responsive touchscreen panel.

Inside, you’ll find a full-size layout keyboard, complete with a number pad, arrow keys and a function row. It’s a generally responsive and tactile keypress, although it comes with the sacrifice of a much narrower Enter key that can be quite difficult to press at times – it can be quite easy to hit a number by accident.

The Pro Max 16 Plus’ trackpad is smooth and accurate, although given the size of the chassis, I would have perhaps expected a little more real estate for my fingers.

Display and Sound

• Gorgeous 4K OLED screen
• Lovely colours, black level and contrast
• Loud, but empty speakers

There are a couple of different variants of the display for the Pro Max 16 Plus, with two 1920×1200 resolution options – a 60Hz 300 nits choice, and a 500 nits 120Hz option. My top-spec sample takes things up a notch, though, being fitted with a 16-inch 3840×2400 resolution (or 4K with added vertical space) 120Hz OLED screen for sublime detail, motion, and definition.

We’ve got all the usual loveliness of an OLED panel, such as deep, inky blacks and immense contrast and dynamic range, with my colorimeter measuring 0.01 and 37280:1 for black level and contrast ratio, respectively. Its 6500K colour temperature is perfect, too.

510.4 nits of peak SDR brightness mean this screen isn’t quite as punchy as the 4K Lumina Pro tandem OLED screen on the updated Asus ProArt P16, but it still means displayed images will be especially vibrant.

The Pro Max 16 Plus’ colour accuracy is excellent, as you’d expect from an OLED panel, with 100% sRGB coverage proving it perfectly displays mainstream colours for productivity tasks, while the 98% DCI-P3 and 87% Adobe RGB results are well above the requisite level where I can recommend this screen for more colour-sensitive tasks.

For such an expensive laptop, the speakers here are quite underwhelming in some respects. The dual 2W units can get quite loud, although they sound hollow and tinny, lacking depth in the bass.

Performance

• Very powerful workstation components
• Surprisingly competent gaming performance
• Advanced RAM and storage combination

The version of the Pro Max 16 Plus I have is the beefiest one that Dell makes, pairing Intel’s top-of-the-line Arrow Lake HX processor, the Core Ultra 9 285HX, with Nvidia’s most powerful workstation-grade laptop GPU – the Nvidia RTX Pro 5000 Blackwell.

The Core Ultra 9 285HX is a slightly faster variant of the Core Ultra 9 275HX that I’ve tested in top-spec gaming laptops from Medion and Alienware. It has the same core count, with 24 cores (split between eight Performance cores and 16 Efficiency cores) and 24 threads. Both single and multi-threaded performance with this chip are some of the best you’ll find on any laptop, even if Intel decided to do away with hyperthreading on this chip.

It’s the GPU of this specific variant that intrigued me most, with that Nvidia RTX Pro 5000 Blackwell, complete with 24GB of VRAM. It is, at its core, a workstation RTX 5090 – instead of prioritising outright gaming power, though, it’s designed more for long-term stability and consistency.

With this in mind, both its score in the 3DMark Time Spy test and in a suite of games, it managed some excellent performance that isn’t too far off the RTX 5090, and further ahead of a laptop-grade RTX 5080 than you may expect. At 1080p, it garnered 135.91fps in Cyberpunk 2077 and 156fps in Returnal, with Rainbow Six Extraction nearly hitting 300fps.

Going up to 1440p didn’t put much of a dent into its results, either. Both Cyberpunk 2077 and Returnal stayed above 100fps, with 109.12fps and 120fps, respectively, although Rainbow Six Extraction ran into trouble at this higher resolution, with it crashing on every run of the benchmark.

Running Cyberpunk 2077 at this laptop’s native 3840×2400 resolution saw it drop to 46.34fps on the Ultra preset, although DLSS Transformer pushed it up to 81.92fps. It also managed to take RT: Ultra Cyberpunk at native res from 20.82fps to 54.03fps, and from 71.39fps to 90.69fps at 1080p.

As much as the Pro Max 16 Plus is a mobile workstation, it still comes with the clever multi-frame-gen tech that Nvidia has put with its consumer gaming GPUs with the latest generation. This adds up to three ‘fake frames’ for every ‘real’ frame rendered to increase your FPS to play well with high-refresh-rate screens. The results are reliant upon there being a high enough base frame rate to prevent displayed images from being choppy or there being horrible latency.

With the maximum 4x multiplier applied, it took ray-traced Cyberpunk up to 156.47fps at native res and to 312.28fps at 1080p. In terms of the Ultra preset with no ray-tracing, it went up to 209.83fps at native res and to 466.98fps at 1080p.

It is possible to spec the Pro Max 16 Plus with an ungodly amount of RAM and PCIe Gen 5 SSD storage, with my sample coming with 128GB of CAMM2 RAM. CAMM2 has several benefits over the ubiquitous SO-DIMM RAM it seeks to replace, such as potentially faster speeds, modularity, and size to allow for thinner, more repairable laptops down the line. The reason for having such a large amount on a workstation laptop could be for a number of reasons, such as the RAM hog of running AI models, or for running a vast amount of virtual machines – there’s enough power on this Dell laptop to do so.

The RAM and SSD split in my sample is certainly weighted more towards the RAM side, as it comes with a 1TB SSD, in spite of an eye-watering price tag. It is possible to configure this Dell laptop with a lot more storage if you wish. Nonetheless, its 11492.17MB?/ read and 8490.46 MB/s write speeds firmly make it a brisk Gen 5 option.

Software

• Especially clean Windows 11 install
• Solid amount of Dell-specific software
• Copilot+ PC functionality is present

The Pro Max 16 Plus comes running Windows 11 Pro, and comes with very little additional software, be it from Dell itself or from a third party.

The most useful piece of Dell-specific software is Dell Optimizer, which is an app for checking on your system’s vitals and allowing for changing power modes and similar settings to get your machine running how you wish. There is also Dell Command, which is a system updater, plus Dell Pair, Dell Peripherals Manager, and Dell SupportAssist.

Otherwise, most of the other system apps come in the form of Microsoft’s AI features, as the Pro Max 16 Plus has enough AI horsepower (or TOPS) to be considered a Copilot+ PC. This gives you access to features such as the clever Windows Studio webcam effects for auto-framing and background blur, as well as generative AI capabilities in Photos and Microsoft Paint.

Battery Life

• Lasted for 2 hours 37 minutes in the battery test
• Capable of lasting for less than half a working day

The Pro Max 16 Plus comes with a suitably large battery, given the beefy workstation components inside this laptop, with a 96Whr cell. It doesn’t specify how long this laptop will last, although with the capacious battery and the powerful components inside, I didn’t have the highest hopes.

In the PCMark 10 Modern Office battery test with the brightness of the 4K OLED screen dialled back to 150 nits, this Dell laptop lasted just two hours and 37 minutes. That’s not brilliant, and is several hours less than the RTX 5090-powered Medion Erazer Beast 16 X1 Ultimate (RTX 5090). It is just a minute shy of the Alienware 18 Area-51, which was also bestowed with an RTX 5090 and a beefy Intel processor. 

Dell also bundled the Pro Max 16 Plus with a hefty 280W charging brick, although it wasn’t as quick to charge the laptop as I expected. It took 45 minutes for it to get back to 50 percent, while a full charge took 100 minutes.

Should you buy it?