
Dell’s again with the newest iteration to its XPS 13 line. While Dell additionally launched a radically new design this 12 months with the XPS 13 Plus, it’s additionally providing a tamer redesign to the road up with its new non-”Plus” XPS 13 fashions. These are the bottom of the household, they usually’ve obtained the configurations and options to suit that position. The snazzier shows, extra highly effective internals, and options like devoted graphics are reserved for various XPS fashions additional up the product stack. What you get from the brand new XPS 13 is an easy, refined ultrabook.
Fewer configuration choices than normal
The Dell XPS 13 comes with a handful of configuration choices earlier than forcing you to improve to what Dell has dubbed the XPS 13 Plus, a brand new higher-end mannequin with a totally redesigned keyboard and trackpad deck alongside additional show improve choices.
The lowest finish mannequin begins at $899 and comes fitted with an Intel Core i5-1230U processor paired with 8GB of soldered-on LPDDR5 reminiscence, 512GB of PCIe-based storage, and a 13.4-inch show. That base mannequin comes with Ubuntu as a substitute of Windows. Adding on a Windows 11 Home license bumps the worth as much as $999. The mannequin Dell despatched us for testing comes simply above that mannequin, with an additional 8GB of reminiscence and a touchscreen improve, elevating the worth to $1249.
At peak configuration, the laptop computer prices $1,699. That’ll get you an Intel Core i7-1250U (largely just like our take a look at unit however clocked increased), 32GB of reminiscence, 1 TB of storage, and the touchscreen show. There’s nonetheless room for upgrades for skilled customers, with a Windows 11 Pro license nudging the worth as much as $1,759. It’s a tough promote at that increased finish, as one other $100 would nab you the Dell XPS 13 Plus, which has higher-performance P-series Intel processors and a quicker SSD.
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The acquainted XPS design with out the carbon fiber
From the skin, it is a traditional Dell XPS laptop computer. It’s obtained an all aluminum body with the Dell emblem slapped onto the again, and is as compact and neatly designed as XPS machines all the time are. Upon opening it up, the dearth of the longstanding carbon fiber keyboard deck will throw off anybody conversant in the XPS household, although. The XPS 13 now options an aluminum deck to match the remainder of the laptop computer’s construct.
That’s not all Dell’s scrapped. 2021’s mannequin included a headphone port and a microSD card reader. Those are gone now, leaving only a single USB-C Thunderbolt 4 port on all sides. That mannequin was 0.6 inches thick although, whereas this mannequin is 0.55 inches thick. While the headphone jack could have been a limiting issue, the microSD card slot appears much less prone to have been a obligatory sacrifice, given it’s slimmer than a USB-C port. The XPS 13 is available in at a svelte 2.59 kilos, making it very straightforward to tote round in a bag. It’s each thinner and lighter than Apple’s M1 MacBook Air, although the brand new M2 MacBook Air has shrunk down to only 0.44 inches thick and manages to supply extra ports with the inclusion of its 3.5mm headphone jack and MagSafe charging port.
Unfortunately, similar to the Dell XPS 13 Plus, the exterior design of this mannequin has an nearly seamless transition from the underside part to the show part when closed, and there’s no lip on the show. This makes opening the laptop computer nearly all the time a two-handed job.
The XPS 13 has simply 0.1-inch bezels on the edges of the show, and regardless of solely going as much as 0.2-inches on the prime, Dell slot in a Windows Hello IR digital camera for facial recognition (however not an in any other case good webcam). There’s additionally a fingerprint reader tucked into the highest proper nook of the keyboard.
The backside of the laptop computer is sort of similar to the XPS 13 Plus. Two lengthy rubber strips assist the laptop computer sit secure and keep away from sliding round, whereas two units of vents at both aspect present an outlet for the audio system and will double as air intakes for the cooling followers. The cooling motion occurs close to the show hinge, pushing out a really skinny channel that’s partially obstructed by the hinge itself irrespective of the way you tilt the show.
A fuss-free interface
The Dell XPS 13 is a little more pure to make use of than the redesigned XPS 13 Plus. The trackpad is clearly delineated, affords a reasonably constant tactile response on the decrease half, and is sizable at simply over 11 sq. inches. It’s not a mammoth trackpad, although.
The keyboard has correct area between the keys, making it a bit simpler to navigate by contact with out having to look all the way down to reset again within the house place. That was extra of an issue on the XPS 13 Plus. With a while on this mannequin, I managed to get my typing as much as 116 phrases per minute with 97% accuracy, higher even than the pace and accuracy once I’m utilizing my private Zenbook 14 OLED. The keys have a pleasant little pop to them as soon as I put sufficient strain on them, they usually don’t have any main wobble.
Given how slim the bezels on the show are, there’s not quite a lot of area to work with on the decrease half of the chassis, so the laptop computer has a reasonably primary set of keys—no numpad or row of web page/line navigation keys. The keyboard additionally extends nearly all the best way to the outer edges, with no room for surface-mounted audio system. Instead, the audio system pipe out the underside of the laptop computer.
Though the floor of the laptop computer is tight on area, I haven’t run into any points with my palms activating the trackpad whereas I’m typing, so clearly Dell has that palm rejection on level. The mannequin we reviewed additionally included the elective touchscreen, which is responsive and correct to the place I faucet.
Not the show goals are product of
For a $1000+ laptop computer, I’d have hoped for a greater show. It will get a lot vivid, peaking out at 474 nits. That makes it appropriate to be used in most situations, barring direct daylight, although its anti-glare or anti-reflective coating choices ought to assist even then. It’s additionally fairly sharp, with a 1920 x 1200 decision on its 13.4-inch pane offering stable pixel density.
But it’s not an award winner. The ZenBook 14 OLED packs in a DisplayHDR 600 True Black panel that’s greater, sharper, quicker, and, after all, an OLED show. Notably, you additionally get it for lower than what Dell’s asking for its easy IPS ($750 for a beginning config with a Core i5, 8GB of RAM, and 256 GB of storage). However, if you happen to’re viewing the Dell XPS 13’s show as a piece centerpiece, it’s greater than adequate.
The show has one odd quirk, although. It seems to make use of a form of dynamic backlighting, nevertheless it’s not as quick appropriately. When I swap from a darker window to a vivid one, comparable to a phrase doc, it could actually take a second for the brightness ranges to raise up and lift the white background to its correct stage. Until it does, the textual content and background are the same shade and are laborious to distinguish.
Serviceable audio
The primary Dell XPS 13 options the identical audio system discovered within the Dell XPS 13 Plus. That’s not dangerous information, as a result of that system can pump up the amount to a powerful stage for such a small machine. The audio system are effectively fitted to listening to dialogue or spoken displays. Podcasts and YouTube movies? Check. Turning over to music, they usually’re not so distinctive. Despite their inclusion of woofers (I’m undecided what passes for woofers in a tool so small, although), they don’t push out quite a lot of bass. They additionally wrestle to current quite a lot of totally different sounds without delay. Just just like the Dell XPS 13 Plus, this laptop computer was merely disagreeable to take heed to the busier sections of songs like Yellow Ostrich’s Whale on (Whale has some chaotic percussion beneath a mellow guitar and layered vocals, making it a fantastic take a look at music). It’s not so dangerous for spaced out mixes, like a lot of Vulfpeck’s 1612, however the missing bass is tough to simply accept for bass-heavy bands like that.
Mundane energy
Naturally, because the lower-end mannequin, the Dell XPS 13 isn’t boasting as a lot pace because the XPS 13 Plus. The Intel Core i5-1230U lags effectively behind the upgraded Core i7-1280P, although it nonetheless has some single-core efficiency price noting.
In our battery of benchmarks, it mustered stable single-core efficiency in Geekbench 5 and Cinebench R23, averaging 1,552 factors and 1,195.5, respectively. That’s not terribly far behind the Dell XPS 13 Plus’s 1,714 factors and 1,498 factors on the identical assessments. That additionally retains it forward of the Ryzen 9 5900HX discovered within the likes of the Asus ROG Strix G15 and Razer Blade 14, even when its multi-core efficiency doesn’t sustain as effectively.
Where a number of cores are referred to as for, the XPS 13 solely scored about half in addition to the XPS 13 Plus. For Geekbench 5, that was 5,157.5 factors to the Plus’s 9,947. For Cinebench R23, that was 3,639 factors to the Plus’s 8,128.5. And in Blender, it was a 9:23 render time to the Plus’s 4:27. The XPS 13 Plus additionally will get approach out forward in GPU efficiency, greater than doubling the XPS 13’s 10,273 Geekbench 5 OpenCL rating and taking about half as a lot time to render our Blender take a look at scene on the GPU. It additionally took half as a lot time to compress a 4K video in Handbrake, which took the XPS 13 18:09. Against an Apple MacBook Pro 14 with an M1 Max, neither laptop computer retains up. Fortunately, the Dell XPS 13 has to contend extra with base M1 and M2 MacBook Air fashions. It typically lags behind each, with the M1 threading the center of the XPS 13 and 13 Plus and the M2 preserving a tidy lead forward of the XPS 13 Plus in most conditions.
Some of the downgrades from the XPS 13 Plus are hiding in plain sight. The SSD, for instance, isn’t having fun with a full 4 lanes of PCIe 4.0 to succeed in speeds in extra of 6,000MB/s. Rather, it seems to have simply two lanes accessible to it, and doesn’t handle to prime even 2,500MB/s in sequential learn and write.
Though the Dell XPS 13 clearly isn’t going to be effectively suited if you happen to’re in search of a workhorse, the benchmarks don’t paint an image of how snappy it is normally use. Opening functions, looking the net, modifying paperwork, and popping into conferences are all simply dealt with by the laptop computer. There are additionally some benefits to being a lower-power machine.
One of them is warmth. Though inner measurements coming from HWInfo64 present the CPU reaching as excessive as 91 levels Celsius below load, the laptop computer’s chassis distributes and expels that effectively, with the keyboard deck peaking round 90 levels Fahrenheit and the underside solely hitting 101.5 levels Fahrenheit. By distinction, the Dell XPS 13 Plus didn’t get so scorching internally however noticed the underside of the machine get as scorching as 104 levels Fahrenheit. Then there’s the advantages to battery life.
An all-day warrior
The trade-offs the Dell XPS 13 made in opposition to the brand new Plus mannequin include one massive achieve: battery life. In our battery rundown take a look at, the Dell XPS 13 was capable of stream a video from YouTube at 200 nits brightness for 12 hours and 20 minutes. It holds up fairly effectively in workplace use as effectively. I’d hope you don’t repeatedly must spend greater than 12 hours in your work laptop in a day.
This efficiency was practically double what I noticed on the Dell XPS 13 Plus with a 4K OLED show. However, Dell suggests the non-OLED XPS 13 Plus with a FullHD show ought to get similar battery life to what I obtained right here. This additionally beats the fairly aggressive Asus Zenbook S13 OLED, which scored a powerful 11 hours and 21 minutes. Apple nonetheless stays a risk, although, with a 14-hour runtime in the identical take a look at on its M2 MacBook Air.
Should I purchase the Dell XPS 13?
If dependable however unexceptional is what you’re after, the Dell XPS 13 will do the job. It’s not laborious to advocate, because it’s a modest performer that doesn’t appear to carry me again within the slightest throughout on a regular basis use, and its battery simply goes and goes all through the day. However, that is actually provided that you want a Windows machine. Apple’s obtained it beat on nearly each rely with equally priced MacBooks. There are additionally extra thrilling units coming from Asus and no scarcity of extra highly effective laptops that make some small sacrifices on portability, all costing lower than Dell’s base XPS 13 mannequin.
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