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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DanNeely - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Have Dell/Sharp ever explained what is so special about the new display to get the bezels that small? They hyped it up as a Dell exclusive when first announced; but looking at it the first thing to come to mind is "smartphones have had bezels that small for a while; what's so special about making a laptop size screen the same way."PS No web cam fail picture? The one from Ars Technica's review was great.
http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2015...
retrospooty - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
The question is, "why haven't other been doing this all along"... Or at least making an effort towards smaller bezels in general.jabber - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Just watch the flex as you open with a glass screen and bezels that thin."Ahh another fine morning, let's open up my lovely laptop and start work!"
'CRACK'
"Damn!"
retrospooty - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Its not going to crack when you open it... Dropping it may be a bigger worry than with other laptops, but not normal day to day usage.sorten - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
jabber, you're expending a lot of energy to warn people about cracked screens.jabber - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Yes cos I've had quite a few come into me to fix. Didn't happen before screens had a glass touch layer on them.Well fancy that!
Not as robust as you would think. I'll take the non-touch option thanks.
fokka - Saturday, February 21, 2015 - link
sure, phone screens also were more robust when they were made out of plastic. the good thing is a laptop is closed when transporting it and since you're not just holding your laptop in one hand, chances it is dropped are also much smaller.glass on the other hand feels much nicer on touchscreens, imho it's much easier to clean and it can even make the screen lid more rigid.
i think panicing over broken laptop screens is a slight over reaction, but to each their own.
asliarun - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
As I understand it, the bezel is where the control circuitry (among other things like edge lighting) exists. IGZO or Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide transistors are transparent compared to amorphous silicon. Plus, they have significantly more electron mobility. All this combined means that the control circuitry can be etched on the panel itself instead of the bezel. Plus, the transparency and increased electron mobility allows them to make really high res displays that also consume less power.They even have prototypes of non-rectangular IGZO displays (such as truly circular displays).
But all this is based on reading a few articles, so feel free to correct me if I got something wrong.
kyuu - Monday, February 23, 2015 - link
It's not the IGZO tech that allows for the reduced bezels. This is evidenced by the fact that the 1080p non-IGZO option has the same sized bezels.Darkstone - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
It isn't special. It's just that nobody bothered to do it yet.I have an E6520, the bezels are around thumb-wide. But when i disassembly the display there is really only 3-4mm of metal to the side of the display. The rest of the space is air, an cable, and the solid magnesium frame. This laptop contains an completely standard display, an format that hasn't changed since.. a long time.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSKZSjNuAr4 @ 4:00.
Of course that has it's advantages as well. If you drop your XPS 13 the display is progably more likely to break than a laptop with MBA-sized bezels. Mobile phones are more forgiving because there is less mass to begin with.