For years, Dell’s XPS line has introduced a number of the most compelling thin-and-light laptops in the marketplace. While these machines at all times got here on the larger finish of the value spectrum for his or her class, they provided distinctive design and construct high quality. The new Dell XPS 13 Plus takes design to a different stage with a largely reimagined aesthetic that makes it one of many extra eye-catching laptops on the market, if not probably the most sensible. While the Dell XPS 13 Plus goes for efficiency and elegance in equal measure, its radical new seems to be could have a tough time successful over new customers.

“Plus” means high-end configurations solely

The Dell XPS 13 Plus comes at a premium over the usual Dell XPS 13. That premium accounts for the redesign, the place the usual XPS 13 sticks nearer to earlier designs, and it components within the larger efficiency coming from Intel Alder Lake P-series CPUs as an alternative of the U-series chips which are in the usual fashions.

The unit Dell despatched over for our overview falls someplace in the course of the pack price-wise, touchdown at $1,799 for an Intel Core i7-1280P (the highest-end processor provided for this mannequin), 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM working at 5,200Mz, 512GB of PCIe 4.0 storage, and a 3,456 x 2,160 OLED contact show with a peak brightness of 400 nits.

Dell provides substantial customization choices for this mannequin, although. The base configuration working an Intel Core i5-1240P, 8GB of RAM, a 512GB PCIe 4.0 SSD, and a 1,920 x 1,200 non-touch show brings the value all the way down to $1,149. Maxing the configuration out with the identical processor we’re testing, 2TB of storage, the identical show (or a non-oled mannequin with a 500-nit peak brightness and 3840 x 2400 decision), 32GB of RAM and Windows 11 Pro (versus Windows 11 Home) tops the system out at $2,249. Dell additionally provides configurations with an Intel Core i7-1260p.

Dell’s normal XPS 13 fashions characteristic the extra conventional design and drop the value down as little as $849, however each configurations characteristic lower-powered U-series processors with fewer cores and threads, and there’s no possibility for a 4K OLED show. This is probably not a dealbreaker for individuals who don’t have as demanding processing wants, although.

A radical redesign with out radical new options

When the Dell XPS 13 Plus is shut, there’s virtually nothing about it that grabs the attention. It’s a quite simple slab of pale aluminum (or darkish aluminum for the Graphite coloured mannequin). “Dell” is printed on the lid and “XPS” is printed on the underside. Even the edges of the laptop computer aren’t eye-catching, with only a single USB-C (Thunderbolt 4) port on every. That’s it for ports, too—no USB-A to play good with older peripherals and never even a 3.5mm headphone jack to make do when Windows persists in making Bluetooth gadgets as unreliable as ever. A disgrace to see so few ports when the laptop computer’s 0.6-inch thickness and a pair of.77-pound weight aren’t breaking any data for ultrabooks and are literally up from the burden and thickness of the usual XPS 13 mannequin.

It’s while you open the laptop computer up that the design language modifications dramatically, although the shortage of a lip on the show portion of the laptop computer makes opening it a bit extra tedious.

Inside, Dell has highlighted type on the expense of practicality. The keyboard stretches throughout the width of the laptop computer with no gaps at both finish. The rectangular keycaps additionally go away virtually no house between each other. It’s visually beautiful, till you look nearer and may’t unsee the imperfect spacing between keys and uneven heights on the edges of them—those that recognize meticulous design will battle right here.

Below the keyboard, there’s no visible house given to the trackpad, but it surely’s there, seamlessly blended into the glass floor under the keys. Above the keyboard, Dell has opted for capacitive contact buttons instead of the standard perform row. This supplies a neat impact, as holding the perform button on the keyboard sees this row swap from displaying varied features to displaying F1-F12. The draw back to that is that the row is persistently backlit. The keyboard itself additionally supplies two ranges of white backlighting, which is useful in the dead of night and counterproductive within the day, given the white keys.

The laptop computer contains two biometric security measures, with a fingerprint reader constructed into the unlabeled energy button on the top-right nook of the keyboard and an IR digital camera system for Windows Hello above the show.

The show itself has remarkably skinny bezels, that are simply 0.1 inches on the sides and just a bit thicker (about 0.18 inches) on the high and backside. Dell vents warmth by way of the again of the laptop computer, sending it out just under the hinge of the show. Audio pipes out by way of two units of slots on both aspect of the underside of the chassis, which can additionally function air intakes.

In a means, the laptop computer calls to thoughts the scene in American Psycho the place all of the businessmen are evaluating enterprise playing cards, one-upping each other with ever extra elaborate designs and particulars, although the playing cards all in the end convey the identical data. This design actually does extra to be eye-catching than the unique Dell XPS 13 design, but it surely doesn’t meaningfully improve what the laptop computer provides. And truthfully, hanging because the design is, there’s no means it stays pleasing for lengthy. The exterior aluminum is blemish inclined, and the inside materials seems like the kind to discolor simply, although the latter already began out wanting like PC circumstances from the late Nineties.

The keyboard isn’t as unhealthy because it look, and the trackpad isn’t nearly as good because it seems to be

At first, I used to be involved by the keyboard and trackpad design. They don’t appear consumer pleasant. The keys don’t current as a lot margin for error as your normal design, and the trackpad’s ill-defined boundaries go away me guessing the place I’ll even have my inputs registered.

As baffling because the trackpad is, it appears to have stable palm rejection. Because it’s so extensive and has no tangible borders, it’s all however unimaginable to maintain my palms from resting on it someplace whereas typing. But my cursor sits completely nonetheless all of the whereas. It hardly ever errors my intentions between a traditional click on and a proper click on, the latter of which is barely registered once I click on someplace close to the underside proper aspect of the trackpad. Though it looks as if it might be huge, the trackpad isn’t truly all that enormous. The greatest downside is that I typically run off the aspect of it or attempt to use it too near the sting and get no on-screen suggestions,

The configuration I’m testing does embody a touchscreen, which supplies a method round having to make use of the trackpad for every thing. It’s pretty responsive and easy to the contact.

The keyboard is a novelty that proves surprisingly usable. I say surprisingly as a result of the elimination of just about all house between the keys makes it appear to be it could be a nightmare to make use of. Resting my fingertips on the keyboard, I do really feel an odd sense of uncertainty of their placement. But, as soon as I’m typing away, I’m nearly as quick and constant as I’m typing on my daily-driver Asus Zenbook laptop computer. I constantly hit simply over 100 words-per-minute typing with a 93-98% accuracy. I can attain over 110 WPM on my typical laptop computer, however the variance is sufficient to chalk as much as the Dell XPS 13 Plus simply being a brand new and unfamiliar keyboard I would like extra time to totally regulate to.

That typing expertise comes as soon as I’m in typing place with my fingers correctly floating over the house row. Once there, it’s straightforward to maintain going. But it takes a second to reset everytime I transfer away from the house row, similar to so as to add some further punctuation or pound in some numbers. This does decelerate the general use of the laptop computer.

Stunningly crisp, if not quick, show

Dell packed in an obscenely sharp show right here, boasting a decision of three,456 x 2,160. This makes for a pixel density only a hair over 300 ppi, as sharp as anybody ought to want.

As an OLED panel, the show has pitch darkish blacks, although Dell’s anti-glare end doesn’t seem as efficient as some others, which leaves these black areas of the show showing barely illuminated by exterior lights reflecting off of it. This could be much less of a difficulty in a darkish room. However, with content material enjoying on the show, the minor reflections within the black areas are much less of a distraction and the show’s substantial distinction and poppy peak brightness play out higher, particularly when viewing HDR content material, which lets highlights burst out. By default, I measured the show peaking at a passable 385 nits, however HDR let that peak brightness hit as much as 621 nits in highlights. That HDR expertise contains assist for Dolby Vision, making for some really hanging visuals.

Even with massive, principally white home windows open, I by no means observed any ABL (auto brightness limiting) motion kicking in to attempt to protect the lifetime of the OLED panel. It’s unclear if Dell doesn’t assume the laptop computer wants this sort of safety.

It’s considerably disappointing to solely see a 60 Hz refresh fee accessible on this laptop computer. Many high-end and even mid-range notebooks are bringing a contact of additional smoothness to the expertise with boosted refresh charges. Take the Microsoft Surface Pro 8 or Asus Zenbook 14 OLED, each of which might bump as much as 90 Hz. Granted, the configurations that may achieve this aren’t 4K, however even the 1080p variations of the XPS 13 Plus high out at 60 Hz.

Pump up the audio, however not the jams

The XPS 13 Plus packs spectacular audio system for its measurement. They can pump out a heavy dose of audio, although as soon as they’re cranking out louder sounds, they start to journey themselves up. Loud, busy music rapidly turns into muddled and unsightly to hearken to at excessive volumes. There’s a marked absence of bass. On this laptop computer, Yellow Ostrich’s tune Whale begins off with thumping drums that solely have a little bit life to them even with the audio system maxed out. Once the vocals begin layering on high, the higher registers rapidly turn into grating. As the music unravels into chaos towards the tip, it’s merely laborious to hearken to. Dipping to round 50% quantity helps reduce down on the grating high quality, however drains loads of the power as properly.

The audio system right here do the job for fundamental leisure and may ship a podcast or speech-heavy video compellingly, however separate audio system or headphones are a good suggestion for deeper leisure. Dell’s MaxxAudio Pro app supplies some sound tuning choices, however actually can’t create bass. Interestingly, it additionally provides Waves Nx 3D audio with wi-fi headphones through the use of the webcam to find out head place and alter the audio in response, however this looks as if a horribly intrusive and ineffective solution to supply positional audio.

Speeds inside expectations

The Dell XPS 13 Plus is kitted out to carry out whereas in workplace situations, and it does as a lot. With 16GB of RAM, it by no means acted like I’d blindsided it by attempting to renew utilizing a tab I had left idle for a few hours. Multitasking efficiency in shopping, spreadsheet administration, and phrase processing was a breeze.

In benchmarks, the efficiency advised a lot the identical story. The Intel Core i7-1280p proves succesful in single-core workloads and particularly potent in multi-core processes. It readily pulls out forward of its eleventh Gen brethren, particularly the place multi-core workloads are involved, and it comes out safely forward of the Ryzen 9 5900HX within the Asus ROG Strix G15 and Razer Blade 14 in our Geekbench 5 outcomes. It landed a 1,714 single-core and 9,947 multi-core rating in Geekbench 5, the place these two laptops couldn’t break 1,500 on single-core efficiency and hung across the mid-7,000s for multi-core.

Without some tweaks, the processor is probably not carrying as a lot weight because it might be, although. Next to the weaker Core i7-1260p within the Acer Swift 5 (2022)—which scored 1,690 single-core and 9,585 multi-core in Geekbench 5—the Dell XPS 13 Plus simply barely got here out forward. That was true for our Blender benchmark as properly, the place the XPS took 4:27 to finish the render on its CPU whereas the Swift 5 took simply 4:25. Dell even trailed Acer in our handbrake check, with a 9:35 encoding time subsequent to the Swift 5’s 8:56.

The Dell XPS 13 Plus runs heat, and may verge on scorching if it’s charging. It can see temps as excessive as 104 levels Fahrenheit on the underside throughout operation, although that drops to a extra comfy 88 levels on the keyboard. Dell has a set of tuning instruments within the My Dell app that permit for personalization to spice up cooling (on the expense of noise) or increase efficiency (on the expense of battery life). But at its defaults, the XPS 13 Plus is probably not benefiting from its internals.

Dell additionally has to take care of Apple, because the XPS line appears virtually uniquely positioned to rival the MacBook household. Up in opposition to the M1 Max-powered MacBook Pro 14, it’s not a reasonably struggle. The two are neck-in-neck in single-core efficiency (Apple main with 1,777 in Geekbench 5 and 1,530 in Cinebench R23, the place the XPS 13 Plus hit 1498), however Apple pulls far forward in multi-core benchmarks (hitting 12,663 in Geekbench 5 and 12,206 in Cinebench R23, the place the XPS 13 Plus solely hit 8,129) and positive aspects tons of additional floor when its GPU can come into play, virtually tripling the XPS 13 Plus’s rating of 21,109. Of course, that mannequin begins at $1100 greater than the XPS 13 Plus.

Not your all-day system

Battery life isn’t an enormous disappointment, however the Dell XPS 13 Plus isn’t fairly maintaining with a number of the longhaulers which have just lately come to market. Part of the issue is the 4K OLED show, which even Dell notes brings the laptop computer’s battery life all the way down to 7 hours from the 13 hours provided on the FullHD+ mannequin. My testing noticed the laptop computer get 7 hours in each day use, and it lasted streaming continuous video at 200 nits for six hours and 38 minutes earlier than it tapped out. With some power-saving measures, it may handle to final the complete workday, but it surely doesn’t maintain up subsequent to gadgets just like the Asus Zenbook S13 OLED at 11 hours and 21 minutes or M1 MacBook Pro at 18 hours.

Should I purchase the Dell XPS 13 Plus?

The Dell XPS 13 Plus has gotten itself in a bizarre spot. Though its design could converse to those that worth aesthetics over or on par with performance, it doesn’t stick the touchdown completely with its design decisions.

Then there’s the matter of how a lot it truly delivers for the value. It isn’t a weak machine by any measure, however Dell has it out-muscled by its personal $979 Inspiron 14 Plus, which packs an Intel Core i7-12700H with 16GB of DDR5 reminiscence. It could also be a bit heavier and have a extra fundamental show, however these targeted on efficiency could fear much less about these facets. For these whose concern is the visuals, there’s no scarcity of Asus Zenbook fashions with distinctive OLED shows and succesful internals at a fraction what Dell’s charging, to not point out the Acer Swift 5 that traded blows with the XPS 13 Plus on each entrance whereas costing much less (and packing in additional ports). And those that can stay with macOS simply in addition to Windows have virtually no cause to choose this laptop computer over its MacBook counterparts.