Dell XPS 13 Review
by Brett Howse on February 19, 2015 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Dell
- Ultrabook
- Broadwell-U
- XPS 13
Final Words
The XPS 13 is a bold move from Dell. High quality build materials, a good keyboard, a good trackpad, and the latest generation Intel Ultrabook processor all inside a chassis with a display that is two sizes too big stuffed into it. Combine that with a 1920x1080 IPS display on the base model, as well as solid state storage as the only option, and you would expect the starting price to be north of $1000. But it is not. The base price, with a Core i3, is just under $800.
The XPS 13 also carries with it amazing battery life, especially on the lower resolution base model. Broadwell-U is part of that, but the display is also a big part of that score, especially on the light battery life test, and Dell would have had to work on the entire package to achieve this kind of battery life result. Any one choice that was a power hog would have dragged the scores down.
Of course no device is perfect and the XPS 13 certainly has some niggling issues which will hopefully be resolved in revisions or updates. The auto-brightness issue is one that they will hopefully address soon. I have no issue with auto-brightness in most cases, but there needs to a way to disable it. Not only can it be frustrating at times when the display is constantly changing brightness, especially in a dim room, but it makes display calibration impossible. If the touch version also had the Yoga style display hinge, it would also increase the capabilities of this device, although that hinge style would be wasted on the non-touch model.
The display is really the one standout feature though. Finally, someone has reduced the bezel size on a laptop. If you are not a fan of smaller laptops, this may not be for you though, since really, it is closer to a typical 11.6 inch model than a 13.3 inch. It would be unbelievable if all laptops were to follow this design pattern, but for now we can hope that at least the premium devices will do so. Dell has opened the door and shown us what is possible, and it looks awesome. The one loser in this scenario is the webcam position, which at the lower left side of the screen is far from ideal. If you are a heavy user of the webcam, this could pose an issue.
Comparing the two models is difficult. On one hand, the FHD model starts at $800 and with the Core i5, bumps up to $900. That is a great starting price for a well-built device like this one, even though the base model has just 4GB of memory. Moving to 8GB means jumping up to $1000. However the move to the excellent high resolution display is yet another $300 on top of that, bringing the least expensive model with touch in at $1300. While I do love the display, and I prefer touch on notebooks, $1300 is getting pretty expensive compared to the original price, and you lose a lot of battery life as well.
Really, it is a great choice to have to make, because neither option is the wrong one. We often lament the lack of options on other laptops, but here Dell let's users decide what they value most: resolution and display quality, or battery life. The only real issue is that you can't get touch with FHD, and you can't get 512GB SSD with the FHD either.
The Dell XPS 13 ends up being responsive, small, light, and well built. Dell has crafted what I am sure most people were hoping for when the original Ultrabook specification was announced. On top of that, they have designed a laptop with class-leading battery life, and plenty of choice to let people buy as little or as much as they need. Considering the competition, this is clearly the Ultrabook of the Broadwell-U generation to beat, and from what we saw at CES it may very well go unchallenged for the remainder of the year.
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jospoortvliet - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link
Somebody bothered, years ago: Samsung series 9. Where they beat Dell to small bezels, they also announced the series 9 2015 model in December 2014: 12" screen, under 1 kg (2 lbs), passively cooled core M, high res screen and long battery life. Yeah, that is Apple's new MacBook, just three months earlier.Series 9 had been and continues to be ahead 😃
jospoortvliet - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link
Somebody bothered, years ago: Samsung series 9. Where they beat Dell to small bezels, they also announced the series 9 2015 model in December 2014: 12" screen, under 1 kg (2 lbs), passively cooled core M, high res screen and long battery life. Yeah, that is Apple's new MacBook, just three months earlier.Series 9 had been and continues to be ahead 😃
retrospooty - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Looks like some great specs and a great laptop... Hopefully it doesn't suffer from the odd glitches and high fail rates that some (not all) Dell products suffer from. Time will tell.programcsharp - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
I like this, but what I really want is a 15" version with a bit more oomph. The 13" ends up being cute but pricey.Do a 15" QHD+ version with an i7, 512gb ssd and 32 gb RAM and now we're talking.
esterhasz - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Not to forget: all you're saying, and in the footprint of a 13" machine!andrewaggb - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
agreed. A 15" (13" frame) machine would be great.jeffkibuule - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Quad core Broadwell chips still haven't shipped, which is why we probably haven't seen a new 15" laptop from any major OEM yet.I'm also not sure we will get 32GB in a mainstream laptop yet, seems 16GB is still the top for the high end. Maybe with DDR4?
UtilityMax - Wednesday, February 25, 2015 - link
The statement that a 15 inch laptop needs a quad-core CPU is a little perplexing. The only quad-core Intel CPUs for laptops are the high wattage versions of the Core i7 CPUs, and they represent a valuable but very small portion of the market. More and more high end laptops ship with the "U" series if Core i7 CPUs, which are dual core, even in machines that are meant to replace quad-core offerings. The value is multiple cores is seriously over-hyped as far as desktops are concerned. Lots of applications are still single threaded, or multithreaded where one core still bottlenecks the main thread. Two fast cores are plenty for most laptop and tablet users, specially if that saves battery life.extide - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Yeah, 8GB is just not going to do it for me these days. 16GB min, and 32GB preferred. Also I would like a 35w quad core, instead of a U-series. However I DO NOT want discrete graphics! It seems like pretty much all laptops with 35/45w quads have discreet graphics as well. I think Clevo makes a model (Haswell) that is like this, though. Although Clevo machines are great in the fact you can customize the crap out of them, their all-plastic build makes them a bit fragile. I have a P150EM (Ivy Bridge) and I am nearly afraid to take it around much, because I don't want it to get damaged, vs my work laptop which is a Latitude E6530 which is a straight up tank, I mean I can/have dropped it, kids walk on top of it, and no damage whatsoever. Any of that crap to my P150EM, and something will break!aryonoco - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
I would have bought this laptop (with i5, QHD display and 256GB SSD) in an instant if it had 16GB version.The way I use my computer, I've got a lot of applications and generally over 20 tabs open at any times, sometimes 50-60 when I'm in the middle of research. I just can't live with 8GB.
Pity, cause it's an excellent laptop otherwise. Maybe the Skylake update will bring a 16GB option.