That's what all the Dell XPS reviews said 2 or 3 years ago too. So I thought I would surprise my wife with a Dell XPS Signature Edition laptop for Christmas. Everything from the touchpad, to the display, to the flexing keyboard, to the cheap looking hinge was truly awful and no where near the quality of the equivalent Macbook of the time. A few months later she got a Macbook Air from her company and the XPS has been pretty much collecting dust ever since. I'm sure the quality has gone up in the last 2-3 years, but since that experience I'm much less trusting of the reviews online.
I switched from a Macbook Pro to a Dell XPS in mid 2012.
I was a long time MacBook Pro user I went though three MBP models from 2006 to 2012. I switched mostly because I was frustrated with short comings of OS X. I wanted to make sure I got a good Laptop with first class Linux support so went with XPS, which had the best specs on market at time.
Pretty happy with it. The Trackpad had issues. When I first bought Laptop I had to compile my own custom kernel to get two finger scrolling working(has long since been mainlined). But quality was comparable to Macbook's quality. I have had no issues with either the keyboard or the display certainly nothing like you have mentioned...
The fan is starting to die in it now but it has lasted 3 years of heavy use about on par with lifespan of my old Macs. I'll probably pick up a new laptop in post Christmas sales I'll likely go with Dell again.
Theoretically, yes. In practice there's been things like Dell having to issue 130W power adapters because the 95W ones weren't powerful enough. The XPS 16 runs too hot and can't use max GPU and CPU at the same time without sounding like a jet engine. The XPS 15 was nice but weighs a ton, and was also a funny shape to fit into a bag. Hinges fail regularly. Some sort of residue from the keyboard makes grid patterns on the screen if you leave it closed.
I'm now using an e7440 which is my favourite so far, but even that still has hopeless graphics (Intel HD 4400) that get the fan going crazy, and it also has the keyboard drawing patterns on the screen.
Dell XPS line-up is quite nice, and on par with any Apple laptop.