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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trane - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
This must deserve an Editor's Choice award?The only major drawback is the auto-brightness, which I'm sure will be fixed with an update soon. IINM, the original Acer S7 had a similar issue which they fixed with a firmware update. Once that is fixed, I don't think there's any real con! Yes, we would all love it to do Yoga style acrobatics, and have touch for $800, but let's be realistic. Even with the battery life hit the QHD+ option is still class leading! Dell can't fight the the current state of technology...
But the fact that these are brought up as shortcomings just tell us how great this laptop is. I mean, no one's complaining that the $1000 Macbook Air sports an archaic non-touch non-matte low-res TN panel.
Some other sites seem to be reporting much lower battery life versus Macbook Air. I wonder if that is because they are penalising the display for being brighter? Or using Chrome? Chrome has godawful efficiency right now with Hi DPI support, I'm surprised that this is not more commonly known! My laptop does 8 hours with IE, 5 with Chrome.
RT81 - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Believe me, PLENTY of people are complaining about the screen on the current Macbook Air. Nobody cares about touch on a Mac, but they certainly care about the TN and low-res part.repoman27 - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
"The FHD model (1920x1080) arrived with a single 4GB memory module and the QHD+ version came with 2x4GB, which gives us the chance to check the performance differences between the single-channel memory and dual-channel memory."These machines are memory down (soldered RAM) configurations. There are no modules, and Lenovo would be insane to not keep both channels populated and simply use different density packages for the different models. Are you sure they're shipping single channel setups?
repoman27 - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
D'oh! Dell, not Lenovo.Brett Howse - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Sorry I made a mistake there. It is in fact 2x2GB and the article has been updated.Hulk - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Is it possible that Dell sent the laptops without the ability to change auto brightness on purpose so that the battery life tests would be extraordinarily high? I'm sure they'll be good when the update to turn auto brightness off arrives but most people will remember the hype of the original amazing battery life tests. With all due respect to Anandtech I think they should not have posted battery life tests until they auto brightness can be turned off. It's not really an apples-to-apples (no pun intended) comparison.trane - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
To be fair, he did check the brightness from time to time. If there were any notable changes I'm sure they would have withheld the results.Hulk - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
You are right and I'm not in ANY way implying there was an bias on Anandtech's part. It's a tough call. Publish the battery life to get the results out there quickly for readers with the caveat of not being able to disable auto brightness or just write "the battery life results look to be very impressive but we are not going to publish them until we can disable auto brightness." I'm just saying I would have gone with the 2nd option for two reasons. First, if with auto brightness off the results are dramatically lower than Dell pulled one over. And second, to send a message to manufacturers that if they don't allow fair comparisons due to locked software not all testing results will be published.As I wrote above it's a tough call and I respect Anandtech's decision I just disagree with it.
andrewaggb - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
The battery results are fantastic, I wonder how much the auto-brightness plays into it. I wonder if you pointed a bright light at the light sensor if that would force the brightness to stay at maximum.JarredWalton - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
FWIW, I've run tests with laptops at 100 nits before just to see how much that would help. The difference between 100 and 200 nits is usually on the order of 30-60 minutes at most, and often less. However, to get 15 hours from a 42Wh battery means that the laptop is using around 2.74W in our Light workload. If the display adaptive brightness saves 1W, battery life would drop to 11.24 hours (give or take). Which is what happens with the QHD+ panel I should note, though how much of that is the display alone and how much is caused by a higher load on RAM and CPU/GPU to handle the higher resolution is difficult to say.