The newest Dell XPS 13 is one of the first ultraportable laptops to come with Intel’s latest 11th Generation “Tiger Lake” CPUs, offering speedy, efficient computing performance and long battery life. This 2.8-pound laptop also has an exceptional 13.4-inch display and a gorgeous chassis, all of which combine to make it our Editors’ Choice pick among premium Windows ultraportables. The price is a bit high, starting at $999.99 and ringing up at $1,649 as tested, but it’s worth it for uncompromising fans of cutting-edge performance and style.
The XPS 13’s Moment to Shine
If you were tempted to buy an XPS 13 earlier this year following its significant redesign (model 9300) but didn’t pull the trigger, it’s a good thing you waited. Now you can get everything we like about the new laptop with the added bonus of the latest Intel silicon.
The CPU bump is essentially the only change from the 9300 to the current model 9310, but it’s an important one if you plan to keep your machine for five years or more. Dell does churn out new XPS 13 models at a prodigious rate, sometimes multiple times per year. Still, a brand-new processor and a physical redesign that’s not even a year old make the 9310 a safe buy for people who don’t want their expensive investment to be upstaged by something vastly better in a few months.
The XPS 13 is admirably thin and feels satisfyingly solid, if not particularly lightweight. It measures 0.58 by 11.6 by 7.8 inches (HWD) and weighs 2.8 pounds in the touch-screen configuration reviewed here. Versions without a touch screen weigh slightly less, at 2.64 pounds, since they lack the touch version’s Gorilla Glass 6 coating over the display. Either of those weight measurements compare favorably with the Dell’s archrival, the Apple MacBook Pro 13, which weighs 3.1 pounds. But the XPS 13 is still meaningfully heavier than the very lightest models on the market, such as Acer’s 1.96-pound Swift 7 flagship.
The XPS 13’s additional heft accommodates high-quality materials and a sleek design. The density of the build is apparent as soon as you slide the system out of its sleek white box and run your fingers over the aluminum lid and edges. Dell says the edges are anodized twice to prevent scratch damage from repeated plugging and unplugging of peripherals. Opening the lid results in even more to ogle. The two color options include Platinum Silver with a black carbon-fiber palm rest or Frost White with an Alpine White composite-fiber palm rest. Our review unit uses the latter scheme, and it’s gorgeous. The palm rest is especially snazzy, and it incorporates a UV- and stain-resistant coating to prevent yellowing and discoloration.
If you like the XPS 13’s styling, you’ll be interested to know Dell has expanded it across the range, which includes the latest versions of the larger XPS 15 and XPS 17 laptops. This is a similarly unified approach to the one Apple takes with the styling of the MacBook Air and the two sizes of the MacBook Pro. Whether you’re looking for an ultraportable for frequent travels or a large-screen machine with serious computing power, there’s an XPS for you. There’s even a 2-in-1 version of the XPS 13, which sports a 360-degree hinge that lets you convert the laptop into a tablet.
An Exceptional Display, Even Without 4K
The XPS 13’s display is available in three versions, all of which feature an unusual 16:10 aspect ratio instead of the more familiar 16:9. The former results in additional vertical space, which is handy for when you’re scrolling through websites or updating lengthy documents.
Our review unit has a 1,920-by-1,200-pixel touch panel. Thanks to the aspect ratio, the resolution is a bit higher than full HD (1,920 by 1,080 pixels), but considerably less than the Retina Display of the MacBook Pro or the PixelSense display of the Microsoft Surface Laptop 3. However, the XPS 13 can be configured with a 3,840-by-2,400-pixel panel that leapfrogs not only those two laptops, but also the dimensions of standard widescreen 4K displays (3,840 by 2,160 pixels).
Once you’ve used a 4K screen, it’s hard to go back to full HD, with its occasionally visible pixels and slightly grainy text. Perhaps that’s why Apple and Microsoft don’t offer full HD versions of the MacBook Pro or Surface Laptop 3. But I actually don’t mind the XPS 13’s screen resolution. Images appear especially vivid, which I attribute partly to the taller aspect ratio that results in slightly more pixels than a 1080p display and partly to the Dell’s 100% sRGB and 90% DCI-P3 gamut support. I also appreciate the extraordinary rated maximum of 500 nits of brightness, which means the XPS 13 can even be viewed comfortably outdoors (though not in direct sunlight) if you crank up the brightness setting.
So I’m not recommending the 4K screen over the full HD one in this case. That’s an added benefit to people watching their budgets, since the 4K version does add to the cost. On the other hand, I recommend staying away from Dell’s entry-level screen, which is the same as the one on our review unit except that it lacks touch support. That’s a shame, since many XPS 13 competitors offer touch support standard, with the notable exception of the MacBook Pro.
Feats of Miniaturization
In an impressive achievement in downsizing, a 720p webcam complete with IR face recognition sensors is located above the center of the display. It offers average video quality for a laptop camera, which is to say that indoor shots are slightly noisy and fuzzy compared with the quality from the cameras of even a midrange phone. Dell says it has improved the camera quality by adding a new four-piece lens and temporal noise reduction, but if you’re planning to hold a Skype session in your living room at night, you’ll still probably want to use your phone. The camera’s chief innovation is its minuscule size—the XPS 13’s screen occupies 91.5% of the footprint of the chassis, which means the bezels surrounding it are razor-thin.
One of the consequences of a compact laptop is less room for ports. The XPS 13’s are limited to two USB Type-C ports with Thunderbolt 4 support, a headphone jack, and a microSD card reader. This means you’ll need an adapter or dongle to plug in an external monitor or USB Type-A peripherals. (Dell thoughtfully includes a USB adapter in the box.) This could be a drawback for the work-from-home crowd, who will likely be using the XPS 13 with an external display. While it’s true that the XPS 13 is simply following the trend toward fewer and fewer ports, its selection is stingy even among its peers. The MacBook Pro offers as many as four USB-C ports, all of which support Thunderbolt 3.
The ultraportable offers the latest Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and Bluetooth 5 wireless connectivity standards, good for stable internet connections and wireless keyboards and mice. But many users will happily stick with the built-in touchpad and keyboard, both of which I find to be comfortable for short typing and tapping sessions. The large keycaps and extensive surface area of the pad are welcome improvements over the cramped equivalents on some competitors, including the Asus ZenBook 13. The power button in the upper right corner of the keyboard doubles as a fingerprint reader for password-free logins to your Windows 10 account.
Audio quality from the XPS 13’s stereo speakers is excellent. Combined, they deliver up to 4 watts of output, and they’re balanced enough to give the laptop far richer and more dimensional sound than you’d expect from such a compact package. Much of the audio emanates through a grille on the bottom of the laptop, but voice tracks and other treble notes in a few movie trailers that I watched never sounded muffled.
Dell supports the XPS 13 with a one-year hardware warranty, and offers optional extensions up to four years for an additional charge.
Testing the XPS 13: Goodbye Ice, Hello Tiger
The new XPS 13 ditches Intel’s 10th Generation “Ice Lake” processors in favor of the latest Tiger Lake CPUs. There’s not a huge difference between the two, but we did see some modest performance improvements on a few of our benchmark tests compared with the 9300 model. Our test unit comes with a Core i7-1165G7, a quad-core chip with Hyper-Threading that runs at a base frequency of 2.8GHz, up from 1.3GHz in the equivalent 10th Generation Core i7. The higher clock speed can improve performance on certain tasks, though the total number of cores and threads remains the same. (See how we test laptops.)
While the XPS 13 has always relied on integrated graphics rather than a discrete GPU, this model boasts Intel’s latest Iris Xe silicon, replacing the Iris Plus graphics of its predecessor. Our review unit also has 16GB of memory and a 512GB solid-state drive, which should be sufficient for most users. The entry-level configuration, meanwhile, comes with a Core i3, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. That’s a relatively skimpy set of components compared with the MacBook Pro, whose entry-level configuration includes a Core i5. But the entry-level MacBook Pro is $300 more than the base XPS 13.
Below is a list of specs for our XPS 13 tester and a few other comparable laptops we’ve tested recently, including the Apple MacBook Pro, the Asus ZenBook 13, the Razer Blade Stealth 13, and the Microsoft Surface Laptop 3.
Of the group, the Asus is the only other contender to sport a Tiger Lake CPU.
CPU, Media, and Storage Tests
Our first look at overall performance comes from the Windows-only PCMark performance suite developed by the benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet jockeying, web browsing, and videoconferencing. The XPS 13 performs very well, though essentially the same as the similarly equipped ZenBook 13.
PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the system’s boot drive. Like PCMark 10, it yields a proprietary numeric score (higher numbers are better). Most recent laptops with SSDs perform roughly equally well in this test, which is the case here.
Next is Maxon’s CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. The hierarchy on this test is clear: the Ice Lake-based Surface Laptop 3 and Blade Stealth 13 are a rung below the Tiger Lake XPS 13 and ZenBook 13. The MacBook Pro’s Core i5 processor is an overachiever.
Cinebench is often a good predictor of our Handbrake video-editing trial, another tough, threaded workout that’s highly CPU-dependent and scales well with cores and threads. In it, we put a stopwatch on test systems as they transcode a standard 12-minute clip of 4K video to a 1080p MP4 file. It’s a timed test, and lower results are better. The XPS 13 is locked in a surprising tie for first place with the MacBook Pro, with the Asus not far behind.
We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark. Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop for Windows and the latest Photoshop CC release for macOS, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image. We time each operation and, at the end, add up the total execution time. As with Handbrake, lower times are better here. The Photoshop test stresses the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM. The XPS 13 performs well—better than the Apple, but not quite as quick as the ZenBook 13.
Graphics and Battery Life Testing
One of the main benefits of Intel’s Tiger Lake platform is the switch from the older Iris Plus to Iris Xe graphics. This improvement actually has only a small impact in our graphics testing, which uses the Windows-only 3DMark and Superposition game simulations to render sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting.
We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike, which are suited to different types of systems. Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and made for high-end PCs to strut their stuff. The results are proprietary scores.
Like 3DMark, the Superposition test renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene and measures how the system copes. In this case, it’s rendered in the company’s eponymous Unigine engine, offering a different 3D workload scenario than 3DMark for a second opinion on the machine’s graphical prowess.
The Iris Xe laptops show a slight advantage over their Iris Plus counterparts, but the difference isn’t remarkable. It’s also much less of an advantage than what is offered by an entry-level gaming GPU like the Nvidia processor in the Blade Stealth 13. The bottom line for graphics output is that the XPS 13 will be able to handle pretty much anything you throw at it except for intensive 3D games, which require a dedicated GPU to run smoothly. (For more analysis of Iris Xe performance, check out our Iris Xe primer and in-depth Tiger Lake testing feature.)
Equipped with a 52-watt-hour battery that lasted for 15 hours in our video playback test, the XPS 13 should easily survive an entire workday away from a power outlet…
That’s a very good result, even though it’s “just” in line with what the competition offers and actually slightly shorter than the 17.5 hours we saw from the previous model 9300.
Hear Me Roar: Today’s Best High-End Ultraportable
The XPS 13 is an exceptional ultraportable whose key strengths are its cutting-edge computing components in a beautifully designed, exceptionally well-constructed chassis. These are rare achievements even in the crowded field of premium ultraportable laptops. Operating system differences aside, the XPS 13 is probably a better choice than the MacBook Pro for most people right now, since Apple’s notebook is using older-generation processors that face imminent replacement.
One of the few reasons not to choose the XPS 13 is if you’re seeking a robust gaming experience on the side. Intel’s Iris Xe silicon is pretty good if you are willing to dial things back (this is not the integrated graphics of a year or two ago), but even so, the Nvidia GeForce GTX-equipped Blade Stealth 13 is likely a more prudent choice, at the minor expense of shorter battery life, a not-quite-as-sleek chassis, and an older-generation CPU. Otherwise, the XPS 13 is the cream of the crop, and retains our Editors’ Choice award as 2020’s best high-end ultraportable laptop to date.
