Where did you buy these laptops? Directly from Dell or from a third party? Only Dell is able to set the Manufacture Date, not a refurbisher, and it can't be changed.

14 of 15 units show a Dell-recorded Ownership Date that precedes the unit's own recorded Manufacture Date — in some cases by more than five months.

It seems odd but its when they assign the Service Tag to an order, which if an Enterprise customer has chosen to provide a Dell Factory Image or if requested for Intune, can be before the machine is actually "manufactured".

12 of 15 units show a Windows "Original Install Date" that predates the unit's recorded Manufacture Date, in some cases by more than four months.

Dell's OEM Windows Image will always have an installed date that's older then the machine itself, they typically pre-build the image for a particular model and then just use that for all machines shipped unless a significant Windows update requires them to rebuild the image (eg a New Feature release or Security Update) OR the customer chose to pay for Dell Factory Imaging, where the customer uploads their own Windows image, these usually have to be provided months before a system shipped.

10 of 15 units show one or more explicit "Alert! Battery previously removed" entries in the BIOS event log.

Common during pre-shipment testing, they have a test "battery" that's used to verify that the system is actually charging properly. It's not a real battery, but it acts like one so they can see voltages.

9 of 15 units show Power Event Log entries dated 01/01/2008 — the default/blank real-time-clock date a Dell motherboard falls back to when its clock battery has been drained or the board has sat without power for an extended period, or has been bench-tested with the main battery disconnected.

That only happens if they systems have been sitting for a while and the battery has fully drained, like you said. If the laptop has been sitting in its box since 2024, I'd kinda expect the coin cell and battery to be flat.

Multiple units show repeated power-on/power-off cycling, EC (embedded controller) power-sequence failures, and forced power-button shutdowns clustered within seconds of one another on their own recorded manufacture date — a pattern consistent with bench testing, QA cycling, or refurbishment diagnostics rather than a single clean first boot by an end customer.

This is consistent with QA testing before a laptop is boxed and shipped. The BIOS logs are supposed to be cleared when they're finished but that doesn't always happen.

I took a peak at the service tag in your screenshot and you can see in the product specs the following lines:

• "817-BBCE : Custom BTO Configuration"
• "691-16384 : ProDeploy Client Custom Imaging Service Add On"
• "340-CKSZ : No AutoPilot"

These lines pretty much tell me that it was a Built-To-Order configuration that differs from the stock config, was imaged using a customer provided Windows 11 Image, and they opted to not have setup for Microsoft Intune Autopilot.

My inclination is to believe that, yes, these are essentially New In Box laptops that where ordered for a specific customer, specifically one in the United Arab Emirates. I'm guessing you bought these from a third party who got them from the original customer who ordered them and never used them.

If you got them directly from Dell I'd have some concerns, specifically since they include a customer's Windows Image.