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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Wineohe - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
I see reviews of laptops with decent IPS displays but then when I actually try to purchase them they don't seem to exist. They seem to offer them for a time, and then they don't. I used a small XPS and now a Lenovo X220, both with IPS for my photography work(amateur), but I've been starting to look for a replacement. The X220 is really toooo small for my aging eyes. This looks perfect and frankly I don't think the price is that bad. My last two were in the 2k range. However the inability to calibrate is a non starter with me. They have to sort that out.Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Can you add DOTA2 battery life. I'm guessing even this notebook would struggle to deliver 3 hours of DOTA/LOL but it would be nice to know for sure.Jeff7181 - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
After my experience with the XPS12 and Dell's support, I wouldn't touch this thing with a 10 foot pole. My XPS12 is just plain broken and Dell won't do anything for me except keep sending me a box to ship it to their depot, where they do nothing but reinstall the OS, verify it boots and send it back. Extremely disappointed.peterfares - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
If you've had it serviced multiple times and are still in warranty insist on having the unit replaced. I had a first gen XPS 12 that Dell replaced with a 2nd gen XPS 12 last year (and got upgraded from a 256GB SSD to 512GB)VengenceIsMineX - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
I'm very curious about the auto brightness issue. That is a Windows control in the detailed power settings not something that is usually manufacturer specific, did turning Display>Enable Adaptive Brightness off not work?Also, just for clarity, was this a version straight from Dell with their usual bloat or a clean software image like what Microsoft sells in their stores? Seeing some wildly varying reviews on battery life, for example the Verge ragged the battery as being 6 hours in normal usage which is obviously not what you are seeing and I'm curious about possible reasons.
Drumsticks - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
For starters the Verge places the brightness at like 70% during their battery tests, which is going to seriously penalize this display. Basically, their reviews aren't exactly scientific. (The reviewer even mentioned how like 30% brightness was enough for him).Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
"did turning Display>Enable Adaptive Brightness off not work?"Correct. It is not possible to turn off adaptive brightness at the moment.
Brett Howse - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
I'm not sure what other sites do for testing, but we try to be as consistent as possible. The laptops are put in power saving mode, the display is put at as close to 200 nits as possible, and we use IE to test for battery life. All of our tests are repeated multiple times. All I can say is that I checked this a couple of times, and with the asterisk that Dell has enabled adaptive brightness with no way to disable it, the results were consistent across the runs.VengenceIsMineX - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
If you really wanted a big SSD on the FHD model, it is pretty cheap to just buy it with the 128 gb hd and install your own 512GB even with it being m2. 512GB SATA 3 Transcend on Amazon is now just over $200, PCIe at roughly twice that. Given OEM's tendency to gouge on storage (at least not as bad as Apple which is just outrageous) it's the better way to go and even with drive copying and screwdriver work it's a 30 minute operation.repoman27 - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
If you're comparing the prices of the cheapest SSDs you can find on Amazon or Newegg to CTO options from a major OEM, there's obviously going to be a difference. What makes Apple's pricing "gouging"? 256 GB SSD options generally run $200 extra compared to 128 GB, or $500 extra for 512 GB. Do you have a cheaper source for Samsung XP951 based PCIe 2.0 x4 SSDs using MLC NAND?