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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Brett Howse - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
Someone else had asked me that, so I set the 3200x1800 display to 1600x900, just to see if part of the battery life loss was due to rendering. My battery life test for this setting was almost identical to the 3200x1800 resolution.So it does not improve battery life because the main power draw of the higher resolution display is the increased requirements of the backlight to drive the same brightness level through a much more dense TFT. At least that was my findings on the XPS 13.
growl - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
Thanks very much, appreciate it! Torn on which one to buy, given that I am a frequent traveler, but also generally enjoy touch and have a pretty much unlimited budget.mazzy - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link
Hi Brett, Any Update on Auto Dynamic LCD brightness ?Brett Howse - Saturday, March 28, 2015 - link
Nothing yet sorry.mazzy - Tuesday, April 7, 2015 - link
I think that it'll never be fixed. It's April.. over 3 months from the launch...It's a pity, a great quality screen but with a glaring defect... no calibration possible... :(
FranC - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
I bought the 2015 Dell XPS 13 on the assumption that Dell would release a fix that would allow end users to calibrate the display. As mazzy said, it seems like Dell has no intention of fixing this, perhaps because it would reveal that battery life is highly dependent on Adaptive Brightness being enabled. Guess I'll wait to the last day to return it, and file this one away as being Duped-by-Dell.paul1508 - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
Does the standard Dell Wireless 1560 support Intel Wireless Display (WiDi) or do I have to opt in the Intel AC 7260? Does that matter at all because the Dell Wireless 1560 might support Miracast?technoway - Monday, April 27, 2015 - link
The battery life for the system:i7-5500U / 8GB-RAM / 512GB-SSD / 3200x1800 infinity touch
is listed to be only about 7.5 hours.
The Apple 13-inch Macbook gets 10 hours or more.
But, Dell doesn't offer the 512 GB SSD, which I need for space, without also having the power-sucking HD+ screen. That stops me from buying the latest XPS-13.
Dell could make simple changes and make a machine I'd buy, but for some reason they don't do this.
The core i7 processor is a must, because it consumes less power than the core i5, and a 512 GB SSD is also a must to compete with Apple machines, but the HD+ screen wastes too much power. An HD screen is just fine on a 13-inch machine.
Until I can get a i7-5500U / 8GB-RAM / 512GB-SSD, with just the HD display (I don't care whether it's touch or not), I won't buy this. With the HD display, that system would have great battery life - I'd estimate at least 10 hours, and probably more like 11 or 12, maybe more. Dell ruins the machine by not offering the best options for battery life.
I do have an older first-generation XPS 13, and I like it, but with a meager 128 GB, 70 GB taken by the OS and restore partition, it's got too little storage.
If Dell makes the machine I want, I'll buy one tomorrow. If they don't make that by Christmas, I'll probably purchase the Apple 13 inch model. It has the good battery life for an Ultrabook.
Oh, and Dell's suggested solution for the poorer battery life is to carry around a plug-in battery pack for extra power. That competely defeats the purpose of having an Ultrabook!
vaga13ond - Saturday, June 11, 2016 - link
You're comparing apples to oranges there. Trying to compare the XPS vs a Macbook isn't really targeting the same user. Macbook's come with Core m3 or m5 (below i-series) processors not the i7 processor that you consider a "must." No touch screen, no QHD, worse on board graphics, DDR3, single port, yada yada yada... And no, the Macbook does NOT get 17.5+ hours on a battery charge doing anything besides idling. The XPS is a VERY different machine than the Apple Macbook...rgin - Monday, October 12, 2015 - link
Would the performance of this beauty be affected if we ran linux on it?