Late last year, Dell announced the relaunch of their XPS brand. Since the announcement, we’ve reviewed several XPS laptops that have impressed in various ways. The XPS 15 is a larger mainstream notebook with the option for a beautiful 1080p display upgrade with a moderate discrete GPU and awesome speakers. If you’d like something slimmer and lighter, the XPS 15z cuts the fat and still hits most of the important features. We liked both laptops enough that they garnered Editor’s Choice awards, and we were quite interested in seeing what Dell would do with their smaller 14” offering.

The XPS 14z takes over for the now-defunct XPS 14, but with more of the 15z design language as opposed to the larger XPS models. One of the most impressive aspects of the 14z is that it packs a 14” LCD into the same size chassis typically used with 13.3” LCDs. The 14z is reasonably thin and light, and at least on paper it looks like it could go up against Apple’s MacBook Pro 13. Read on to find out where it does well, and where it comes up short.

One of our favorite mainstream notebooks last year was Dell’s XPS 15—provided you purchased the upgraded 1080p LCD. It managed to hit the market before talk of Sandy Bridge completely eclipsed the outgoing Arrandale offerings, and it provided a good blend of performance, battery life, build quality, and most important price. There are other laptops with good LCDs floating around, but try finding a high-quality 1080p LCD in a laptop for under $1000. That’s what the original L501x provided; now Dell has upgraded the design with Sandy Bridge processors.

Outwardly, very little has changed, so if you liked (or disliked) the original then you’ll probably feel the same with the L502x. However, the CPU change brings quite a few other tweaks along for the ride. Previously, the XPS line had versions with dual-core Arrandale CPUs and an Optimus-enabled GPU, or you could upgrade to a quad-core Clarksfield processor and get a GPU upgrade as well, unfortunately losing out on Optimus in the process. Sandy Bridge CPUs come in both dual-core and quad-core varieties, and since all of them come with Intel’s latest IGP they all support Optimus. That’s the good news, but is there a downside? Read on for our full analysis.

The past week shook up the whole computer industry with Intel’s announcement that a potential flaw in their Cougar Point chipset required a respin to fix. In the ensuing chaos, we’ve had quite a few reviews put on hold or pulled altogether as we await the revised chipset. We also have a few other items to discuss in regards to the mobility sector, so if you’re debating purchasing a new laptop/notebook vs. waiting for “fixed” hardware, we hope to shed some light on the situation.

As we discussed a couple weeks back, Dell has relaunched their XPS brand for laptops, with a focus on quality and "mainstream performance". The latter means that unlike previous XPS laptops, you won't find the highest performing GPUs in the new models—Dell will continue to serve the needs of mobile gamers with the Alienware brand. The former is the more interesting aspect, as Dell's XPS laptops will have better build quality and improved LCD panels. Dell sent us their new L501x, the 15.6" chassis with NVIDIA's Optimus Technology and a new GeForce 420M GPU (our first look at the mainstream 400M parts!), and they included the upgraded 1080p B+GR LCD panel. Read on to find out just how good the new XPS is, and whether it's worth the price of admission.