Dell XPS 13 review: An absolutely stunning laptop—until you lift the lid

Price When Reviewed

$1,149

Best Prices Today: Dell XPS 13 9315

$1149.00

$1224.87

The XPS 13 is a magnificence. Among midrange laptops, it boasts the sleekest, most compact design, packing a 13.4-inch 16:10 show into an enclosure that appears hardly any bigger than an 11-inch Chromebook. But that is no Chromebook. Made from machined aluminum in an alluring blue hue and solely a half an inch thick, the XPS 13 has premium-grade seems to be. For common journeys and each day commutes, the XPS 13 is a simple journey mate. 

Despite its luxurious seems to be, the XPS 13 is a midrange ultraportable. It begins at $749 with Dell’s present low cost and our take a look at system’s upgrades nonetheless hold the worth at an inexpensive $1,149. Our take a look at system options the baseline CPU, a 12th-gen Core i5, that gives acceptable software efficiency however nonetheless trails that of different midrange laptops that dial again the design touches and put extra of their price range towards extra succesful Core i7 elements. It additionally lacks an OLED panel and 1080p webcam, two options which are turning into extra frequent on midrange laptops. And we discovered it annoyingly tough to open the laptop computer’s lid, a seemingly small problem that grew to become a terrific nuisance in fast order.

Dell XPS 13 9315 specs

Our Dell XPS 13 take a look at system is promoting for $1,149 at its present low cost from Dell and options the next specs: 

• Display: 13.4 FHD+ (1920 x 1200) contact panel with 500-nit ranking
• Processor: Intel Core i5-1230U
• Graphics: Iris Xe Graphics
• Memory: 16GB
• Storage: 512GB SSD
• Ports: 2 Thunderbolt 4 (3.5mm dongle and USB-A to USB-C dongle included)
• Camera: 720p with Windows Hello assist
• Battery: 51 Whr
• Wireless: WiFi 6 (802.11ax), Bluetooth 5.1
• Operating system: Windows 11 Home
• Dimensions: 11.63 x 7.85 x 0.55 inches
• Weight: 2.57 kilos
• Price: Starts at $749 / $1,149 as examined

The XPS 13 begins at $999, however Dell provides continually revolving reductions on its website and the baseline mannequin is at the moment discounted to $749. It includes a Core i5-1230U, 8GB of RAM. a 512GB SSD, and a non-touch 13.4-inch show. While it’s good to see a 512GB SSD supplied because the default storage possibility as an alternative of an undersized 256GB unit, we want Dell skipped previous the meager 8GB of RAM and supplied 16GB at minimal. Our take a look at mannequin options the 16GB reminiscence improve, which provides a hefty $150 to the invoice. Adding contact assist to the show provides one other $100, which feels steep because it doesn’t include a bump in decision or, higher but, an OLED panel.

Tough nut to crack

The XPS 13 is a imaginative and prescient in metallic blue. The refined shade of blue permits it to face out from the ocean of brushed aluminum laptops in silver. The lid, backside panel and keyboard deck are tinted aluminum in a blue hue that Dell calls “Sky.” There can also be an “Umber” possibility that’s a purplish brown. The keyboard is made to match. The keys on our Sky take a look at system are an icy blue and, appropriately sufficient, look actually cool.

IDG / Matthew Elliott

Opening the lid to get to the keyboard, nonetheless, is a activity harder than it ever needs to be. Most laptops have a notch on the entrance edge that provides you the wanted area in your fingertip to seek out buy to lift the lid. The XPS 13 is totally devoid of such useful notching. The entrance fringe of the lid is angled and overhangs from the keyboard deck, however it isn’t huge sufficient so that you can raise the lid with out additionally lifting all the laptop computer. I discovered I wanted to make use of my fingernail to pry open the lid. In quick order, opening the XPS 13 felt like making an attempt to get to the nut inside a pistachio shell that has solely the smallest sliver of a gap.

IDG / Matthew Elliott

When the XPS 13 is closed it cuts a skinny profile. It’s a hair over a half an inch thick and with skinny bezels on all 4 sides of the show, it measures solely 11.63 inches huge and 7.85 inches deep. It’s about as skinny and compact as a 13.4-inch laptop computer will get. And it’s gentle, too, and roughly 2.5 kilos. It’s even lighter than the two.71-pound XPS 13 Plus, Dell’s upscale 13.4-inch mannequin.

As with the show, Dell wastes no area with the keyboard — it runs from edge to edge. The keyboard feels roomy and there are not any shortened keys to get accustomed to. The keys provide shallow journey and snappy suggestions for a pleasing and speedy typing expertise. There’s two-level backlighting for engaged on a redeye or an in any other case darkish setting. The energy button resides within the upper-right nook of the keyboard and doubles as a fingerprint reader for straightforward, safe logins.

IDG / Matthew Elliott

The compact design doesn’t depart a lot room for the touchpad, however Dell made it about as giant as may be given the restricted area between the underside of the keyboard and the underside fringe of the laptop computer. It provides easy gliding and an correct response, and the clicking mechanism is ideal with simply the correct amount of journey.

Disappointing webcam, sparse ports

The greatest two attributes of the XPS 13’s show are its brightness and tallness. It has a 16:10 facet ratio and is rated for 500 nits. At 16:10, the show is taller than a 16:9 display screen, and the added vertical area makes the show really feel bigger than its 13.4-inch measurement. The impact of getting a taller facet ratio grows in significance as the dimensions of the panel shrinks. A bigger, 15- or 16-inch display screen feels roomy at 16:10 or 16:9, however a smaller 13-inch display screen can really feel cramped at 16:9 when you’re continually scrolling by means of net pages and paperwork. The XPS 13’s 13.4-inch display screen actually isn’t the simplest on which to multitask, however the added peak the 16:10 ratio affords does mean you can see extra on the display screen with much less scrolling required. 

I measured the panel towards its 500-nit ranking and located it to hit roughly 425 nits at most brightness. While it’s disappointing the precise brightness wasn’t nearer to its ranking, the panel is lots shiny for each indoor setting we tried, from a sunny, south-facing breakfast nook to an workplace beneath ample synthetic lighting. 

IDG / Matthew Elliott

The show’s 1920×1200 decision is greater than adequate for the dimensions of the show. Dell set the show scaling to 150%, which resulted in giant textual content and icons that remained crisp and clear. I discovered that setting the scaling to 125% offered a bigger workspace whereas maintaining textual content at a font measurement that was nonetheless giant sufficient to be learn simply with out squinting.

While superior OLED panels have gotten extra frequent in midrange laptops, the XPS 13 seems simply out of attain of OLED-land. It includes a primary LCD panel with respectable distinction and colours however can’t match the standard of an OLED panel that we now have seen on fashions that price solely a bit greater than the XPS 9315. It’s a disgrace the contact panel possibility doesn’t additionally include an OLED improve.

The laptop computer’s stereo audio system produce higher sound than anticipated, though I’ll notice I’ve low expectations for any laptop computer with solely a pair of two-watt audio system. Especially on such a skinny and compact system, the XPS 13’s audio output is pretty dynamic with even a touch of bass. It has sufficient muscle to fill a small room, though the readability rapidly declines if you push the amount previous 70%. 

The webcam is a disappointment. While 1080p webcams have rapidly turn out to be the de facto possibility on all however the should price range of laptops, the XPS 9315 includes a 720p webcam that suffers from a grainy picture with over saturated colours. I’d anticipate to see a 720p digicam on a low-end mannequin from Dell’s mainstream Inspiron line, however each XPS laptop computer ought to come geared up with a 1080p digicam by now.

IDG / Matthew Elliott

IDG / Matthew Elliott

Dell provides a sparse port choice on the XPS 9315. The laptop computer options two Thunderbolt 4 ports — one on both sides of the system. That’s it. There’s not even a headphone jack. To complement the minimal ports, Dell consists of two adapters within the field. There’s one USB-C to 3.5mm jack dongle for connecting headphones and one other USB-C to USB-A dongle in your USB-A peripherals. You’re by yourself for adapting to an HDMI connection.

Performance

Our Dell XPS 13 options the Intel Core i5-1230U CPU, 16GB of RAM, built-in Intel Iris Xe graphics, and a 512GB SSD. The Core i5-1230U is a chip from Intel’s 12th technology of Core processors with two efficiency cores and eight effectivity cores. It’s a member of the U-series of 9-watt chips that prioritizes effectivity over energy. 

To see the way it stacks as much as its ultrabook competitors, we checked out its efficiency towards that of the Acer Aspire 5 15 primarily based on the 15-watt Core i5-1235U. You’ll additionally see the Acer Swift 5 and Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 within the charts; every includes a Core i7-1260P, a chip from the P sequence that sits between Intel’s environment friendly U-series and high-powered H-series. We additionally included final yr’s Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 9310 that options an 11th-gen Core i7 half. Rounding out the charts are two compact ultraportables with AMD Ryzen 7 5800U within the HP Pavilion Aero 13 and Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon.

In anecdotal testing, the XPS 13 felt peppy throughout basic Windows use, together with multitasking eventualities. Apps opened and closed rapidly, and I used to be capable of juggle a number of apps and home windows with none lag. The laptop computer additionally operated in close to silence, which isn’t all the time a given on a skinny, compact system that may current thermal challenges.

Our first benchmark is PCMark 10, which measures efficiency on on a regular basis computing work together with workplace productiveness duties, net searching, and video chats. With solely two efficiency cores, the XPS 13 limped to a final place end on PCMark 10, trialing the opposite system that featured extra processing cores in addition to the Acer Aspire 5 15, whose Core i5-1235U has the identical variety of efficiency (2) and effectivity (8) cores because the XPS 13’s Core i5-1230U. The Aspire 5 15’s CPU, nonetheless, is a 15-watt chip in contrast with solely 9 watts for the XPS 13. That further wattage ends in better PCMark efficiency.

IDG / Matthew Elliott

Our HandBrake benchmark assessments how a laptop computer is ready to deal with crushing CPU masses over a prolonged interval—on this case, transcoding a 30GB MKV file to a format appropriate for Android tablets utilizing HandBrake, the free video encoding utility. The XPS 13 managed to complete forward of final yr’s Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 however took for much longer to finish the take a look at than the opposite methods with 12th-gen Intel processors and AMD Ryzen 7 5000-series chips.

IDG / Matthew Elliott

Next up is Cinebench, one other CPU-intensive take a look at however one which renders a fancy 2D scene over a brief time period. The XPS 13 completed useless final and properly off the tempo set by the laptops with CPUs that characteristic a better variety of processing cores.

IDG / Matthew Elliott

The XPS 13’s exhibiting in labs testing didn’t enhance with 3D graphics testing. On 3DMark’s Time Spy benchmark, it completed final among the many group. 

IDG / Matthew Elliott

To take a look at a laptop computer’s battery life, we loop a 4K video utilizing Windows 11’s Movies & TV app, with the laptop computer set to Airplane mode and earbuds plugged in. We set the display screen brightness at a comparatively shiny 250 nits to 260 nits, which is an effective brightness for watching a film in an workplace with the lights on. We had hoped that with its environment friendly Core i5 U-series chip, the XPS 13 would flip the script and end towards the highest of the chart for battery life. Sadly, it didn’t. It didn’t high the 10-hour mark on our battery drain take a look at, a threshold a lot of the ultrabooks right here had been capable of exceed.

Conclusion

At first blush, the Dell XPS 13 is a gorgeous ultraportable for its compact design, skinny profile, and distinctive tinted aluminum materials. As quickly as you try to lift the lid, nonetheless, the bloom is off the rose. It’s frustratingly tough to carry out the straightforward act of opening the laptop computer. In addition, competing ultrabooks provide higher efficiency and longer battery life than the XPS 13 and its 12th-gen Core i5 chip. Further, the 720p webcam is behind the instances and, with solely two ports, you’re compelled to maintain observe of two tiny adapters. For roughly the identical worth, the marginally bigger however nonetheless extremely moveable HP Pavilion 14 Plus provides higher efficiency together with an OLED show and 1080p webcam.