Tag: Dell XPS 13

When it comes to Windows-based laptops, the XPS series from Dell has always been the top-of-the-line offering. A laptop that is considered creme de la creme by users and critics all over. Dell recently unveiled the newest edition of the XPS 13 and as expected it packs in premium features and looks. Starting at a price of Rs 1.44 lakh, the Dell XPS 13 aims to add more credence to Dell’s premium range of laptops. We used the Dell XPS 13 for sometime and here’s our review of the laptop:

Dell XPS 13 (2020) review: Design and display

At first glance, you might not feel that Dell has made too many tweaks to the design of the XPS 13. However, there are some much-needed improvements to an already attractive laptop. At 1.27 kg pounds, the XPS remains as sleek as ever and is really thin (0.58 inch edges). The Dell XPS 13 is almost as thin as Apple MacBook Air. The aluminium exterior blends nicely with the white interior and looks really classy. The hinge is sturdy and makes it easier to open the laptop easily with one hand.

The ports often become a casualty in thin and sleek laptops and the Dell XPS 13 is no different in that sense. It has two Thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports, which can be used for charging. There’s a microSD card reader along with a 3.5mm headphone jack. Dell has done a huge favour to buyers by adding a USB-C to USB-A dongle in the box, which comes in really handy and not many brands offer it. Having said that, if you are looking for a plethora of connectivity options then you won’t find them in the XPS 13. A dongle or two may just be a necessity with the XPS 13.

Dell has done a fine a job with the revamped keyboard on the XPS 13. The dedicated page keys have been removed and if you have to do page up or page down, then one has to use the Function key and the up and down arrows. Frankly, we never use the page up and page down buttons so the new layout is a welcome change for us. The keys remain backlit but the contrast ratio is perhaps a bit low in an extremely dark room. Dell has made the keys slightly larger and there’s ample travel time between them. The touchpad size has also been increased and it was extremely responsive.

The display is the real star here as Dell has managed to squeeze in a 16:10 aspect ratio by knocking off the bezels from the top as well as the bottom. Dell claims that it has managed to incorporate a 13.4-inch display in a laptop that has a form factor of 11-inch machine. The Dell XPS 13 has an Infinity Edge display that offers 91.5% screen-to-body ratio and offers an immersive experience. The blacks are deep and colours remain sharp as ever on the Dell XPS 13. Watching multimedia content on the XPS 13 is a delightful experience.

Dell XPS 13 (2020) review: Performance

The new Dell XPS 13 comes in a variety of configurations and you can get any depending on how much you want to spend. All the variants are powered by Intel’s 10th-gen processors and offer up to 16GB of RAM, 512 GB SSB on board. Our review unit had i7 core processor and was really smooth. There were no lags or stutters of any kind and multitasking was a breeze. At any given point of time we had multiple Chrome tabs open with a bunch of other programs running in the background and the Dell XPS 13 handled it without breaking a sweat. We didn’t encounter any heating issues or throttling even once during our time with the Dell XPS 13. The fans on the laptop are also relatively quiet.

This isn’t a laptop, however, that is designed for gaming. Sure, you can indulge in casual gaming but heavy duty gaming isn’t meant for the XPS 13. There is the Iris Plus graphics which can handle casual gaming very well but does show its limitations on graphic intensive games.

The speakers are good but not great. They deliver really solid output while watching movies or during video calls but that’s about it. If you want to enjoy music on the laptop then our advice would be to pair a nice pair of headphones with it.

The battery on the laptop easily lasts about 10 hours at a stretch, which is really good. You don’t have to worry about carrying your charger with you if you are — that is in current circumstances — stepping out for meetings with the XPS 13 in tow.

Dell XPS 13 review: Verdict

At Rs 1.44 lakh, the XPS 13 is a premium offering from Dell and will click with those who want the best of the best in their laptops. It has a sleek design, an impressive display and solid performance on all counts. The keyboard has been improved as has been the trackpad and there’s very little room for complaints with the Dell XPS 13. For a Windows user, the XPS 13 is one of the best laptops available in the market. Sure, the price might seem steep but if you are looking for quality then don’t look beyond the Dell XPS 13. It’s compact, powerful and does everything you want a laptop to do at seriously impressive levels.

Dell is running into a real issue with the XPS 13, though in this case, it’s a good problem. Over the past couple of years, Dell has tweaked and refined its flagship 13-inch laptop to the point that we thought last year’s model was practically perfect. And now, Dell has released the new XPS 13 9300 with a more useful 16:10 screen, a larger touchpad and keycaps, slimmer bezels, and even better performance. At this point, the new XPS 13’s only significant shortcoming is that it has just two USB-C ports instead of three, though in return you do get a built-in microSD card reader. Pretty soon, Dell isn’t going to have anything left to improve, and even though this new XPS 13 isn’t completely flawless, there’s no doubt it’s the best ultraportable on the market.

In terms of design, the XPS 13 9300 is actually a tiny bit heavier and slightly smaller than the previous model, but the differences are so minute that even when holding both at the same time, it’s hard to tell. Around the edges of the laptop, Dell has opted for a shinier anodized finish that adds a bit of sparkle to the system without crossing the border into “Look at me!” territory.

You also get two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 3 (one on each side) for transferring data and power, along with a headphone jack on the right and a new microSD card slot on the left. Typically, I like when laptops makers add built SD card readers on laptops, though on something like the XPS 13 whose main duty probably won’t be editing photos and videos, I think most people would prefer a third USB-C port instead—especially considering one USB-C port will usually be reserved for charging.

Speaking of charging, I appreciate that Dell includes two different plugs for the XPS 13’s 45-watt power brick: one is a compact plug that you can jam right into the wall, while the other is a three-foot extension for when you need a little extra reach. However, with a battery life that lasted 9 hours and 59 minutes on our video rundown test, there’s a good chance you can make it through most or maybe all of your workday without actually needing to plug in. That time is half an hour better than what we got from the previous XPS 13 (9:26) and nearly three hours better than HP’s Envy 13.

Up top, Dell has also stepped up to a new 16:10 display (from the 16:9 panel it was previously using) which might not sound like much, but gives the XPS 13 a much-needed boost in vertical screen real estate. At the same time, Dell kept the XPS 13’s tiny webcams (which includes an IR camera for Windows Hello face login) while also decreasing the bezels around its 13.4-screen to the point that they are practically non-existent. Actual web cam image quality could be a tiny bit better, but it’ll more than suffice for all everyone stuck working from home right now.

For years, Dell has been talking about its Infinity Edge displays, but until now, there was always one side that was way fatter than the others which served as a strange disconnect between promise and reality. But for 2020, Dell has really delivered and the pay off is an extremely thin and sleek system with a screen that’s seven percent larger than before.

On our $1,750 review model sporting a Core i7-1065G7 CPU, 16GB of RAM and 512GB m.2 NVMeSSD, we also got a lovely 1920 x 1200 touch display (with a peak brightness of 429 nits), but depending on your budget you can go for a less expensive non-touch FHD+ display or a more premium 3840 x 2400 UHD+ panel. That said, I would probably stick with the FHD+ touch display, as the increase in resolution doesn’t have as big of an impact on a 13-inch display as it would on a larger 15-inch system.

And despite the 2020 XPS 13 having smaller dimensions than before, it also has a 17 percent larger touchpad and slightly larger keycaps that deliver excellent bounce and key travel. And in light of Apple recently switching back to scissor switches on its new MacBooks, Dell not messing with the typing experience is something I’ve come to appreciate even more. One small critique I have though—and I realize I may be reaching a bit— is that the backlighting on the XPS 13’s keyboard appears a bit uneven. Normally, something like that would barely even register as a complaint, but when there’s so little to nitpick and after seeing what a lot of gaming laptops makers are doing (including Alienware), I know there’s room for improvement.

For performance, the XPS 13 ain’t no slouch either, as pretty much across the board, the XPS 13 beat out its competitors on both benchmarks and real-world tests including WebXPRT 2015 for measuring browser performance, Handbrake for video editing, and Geekbench 4 for overall metrics. And even when you’re really pushing it, the XPS 13 generally delivers stable performance, with the fans only whining a bit under full load.

Admittedly, there are a couple of more enterprisey options that you won’t find on the XPS 13 like the built-in privacy screen found on some Lenovo and HP laptops or optional vPro CPUs, but for everything else, the XPS 13 is simply the best 13-inch ultraportable laptop you can get right now. Yes, depending on the config it can be a bit pricey and I wish it had just one more USB-C port. But the XPS 13’s excellent build, iconic design, and strong performance is the result of years of polish, and now like its anodized aluminum sides, Dell’s 13-inch flagship laptop is really shining.

README

The XPS 13 supports both face and fingerprint login via Windows Hello (its power button doubles as a fingerprint reader).

Dell includes a handy USB-C to USB-A adapter in the box, along with two adapters for its power brick that allow you to adjust its length.

The XPS 13 9300 only has two USB-C ports (down from three on the previous model), but in exchange you get a built-in microSD card slot.

If you’re not down with the white fiberglass deck, the XPS 13 is still available in classic carbon fiber too.

For a long time, 13-inch thin and light laptops had dual-core processors. Then about a year or so ago, quad-core chips started showing up in these smaller computers. These processors brought a significant performance jump that was quite noticeable while you were both performing computer-intensive tasks and during everyday work.

Now Dell has introduced a six-core chip in its venerable XPS 13. The latest update to the XPS 13 has the same set of features and design as the model released earlier this year, but now you can have it with a 10th Gen Core i7-10710U “Comet Lake” chip inside, complete with six cores, twelve threads, and a peak turbo speed of 4.7GHz.

That’s a lot of chip for a computer that weighs less than three pounds and has one of the smallest footprints in the industry. But unlike the jump from two to four cores, the leap to six cores doesn’t make this the best, or even the fastest, 13-inch laptop for all tasks.

The design, keyboard, trackpad, and display of this XPS 13 is the same as the model we reviewed earlier this year, so you should head there for the nitty-gritty details. But I’ll just add that the new XPS 13 2-in-1 feels far more modern than the standard XPS 13, thanks to its sleeker design, bigger trackpad, larger (if more polarizing) keyboard, and more practical 16:10 display. Dell typically announces new designs at CES, so I suspect this six-core XPS 13 will be a bit of a swan song for a design that’s been chugging along for almost five years.

The real interesting stuff is all on the inside with this model, and everything is centered around that new chip. The Core i7-10710U is a 14-nanometer processor with six cores, hyper-threading (which provides 12 logical threads), a base speed of 1.1GHz, a max turbo speed of 4.7GHz, a power draw of 15W, and Intel’s UHD integrated graphics, which are the same as what was available on the 8th Gen four-core chips that preceded it.

This chip brings a lot of the processing power reserved for larger 15-inch laptops down to a smaller chassis, and the XPS 13 is the first computer on the market to utilize it. You’ll have to pony up at least $1,349.99 (before sales or incentives) to get an XPS 13 with this processor; the model I’ve been using, which is also equipped with 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a 4K touchscreen, tallies up to $1,799.99 before discounts.

But thanks to Intel’s extremely confusing 10th Gen chip lineup, it’s not as straightforward as saying “get this laptop if you want the fastest machine.” That’s because at the same time it released the six-core i7 chip, Intel also released its 10th Gen “Ice Lake” processor line. These chips have four cores, but a more efficient 10-nanometer die and a significantly upgraded integrated Iris Plus Graphics processor. These “Ice Lake” processors are available in a wide variety of thin and light laptops this fall, including Dell’s own XPS 13 2-in-1.

So to make the right decision, you really need to evaluate what you plan to use your laptop for and then choose which processor will get you the most performance. The six-core chip excels at number crunching and multithreaded processes (thanks to its two extra cores and four more threads), so it is going to be better suited for compiling code or running extremely complicated macros on Excel spreadsheets. It also charts higher on benchmark tools that measure multithreaded capabilities.

But due to its older and slower integrated graphics, the six-core chip is actually less capable than the four-core processor in the XPS 13 2-in-1 for doing creative tasks that leverage the GPU, such as working in Photoshop or Lightroom, or editing video in programs like Premiere Pro. That was borne out in my testing: the six-core XPS 13 took 24 minutes and 10 seconds to export a five-minute, 33-second 4K clip from Premiere Pro, while the XPS 13 2-in-1 with a four-core Ice Lake chip and Iris Plus Graphics did the job in 17 minutes and nine seconds.

The XPS 13’s processor was also unable to hit the full 4.7GHz speed during the export, peaking at 4GHz before settling to 3.5GHz after six minutes and dropping to as low as 1.8GHz over the course of the export. That could be due to the fact that Premiere attempts to offload as much as possible to the GPU during an export, but it’s also likely due to the fact that the XPS 13 is still a thin and light computer and doesn’t have the cooling capacity to maintain high speeds for long periods of time. There are good reasons why chips with this many cores have not yet made it into 13-inch laptops before now, and many of them are centered around the inability of such a thin chassis to keep them cool.

On the plus side, the extra processing power in the six-core i7 doesn’t impact battery life as much as you might expect. I averaged about six hours and 20 minutes between charges while using the machine for my everyday work of browsing the web, writing, email, Slack, and other productivity tools. That’s not especially great, but it’s also not far off from what I get with the quad-core chips found in many other 13-inch laptops.

The six-core XPS 13 is a strange computer. It feels like a holdover until something better is available in both design and internals. That first part probably isn’t too far off, since CES 2020 is just about a month away, but it’s hard to say how long it will be before Intel introduces Ice Lake chips that have six cores, a 10-nanometer die, and the improved Iris Plus Graphics. Once that happens, then we’ll have some real performance jumps in the thin and light category to celebrate.

Intel officially launched its 10nm Ice Lake-U family back in August, and there have been a handful of systems shipping with the power-sipping processors. Among the first OEMs to jump onboard was Dell with the XPS 13 2-in-1 (2019) we recently evaluated. When that refreshed convertible launched, it was available with one of three processors:

Intel Core i3-1005 G1 processor (2C/4T, 4MB cache, up to 3.4GHz)

Intel Quad Core i5-1035 G1 processor (4C/8T, 6MB cache, up to 3.6GHz)

Intel Quad Core i7-1065 G7 processor (4C/8T, 8MB cache, up to 3.9GHz)

Not long after those Ice Lake processors were announced, Intel launched its 10th generation Comet Lake-U processors. Dell has since given us access to a new SKU of the standard XPS 13 that is rocking one of those fresh Comet Lake-U processors. More specifically, it is making available the Core i7-10710U, which is a 6-core/12-thread processor. Although Comet Lake-U is based on aging 14nm++ process tech, it still packs quite a punch within its 15-watt TDP.

The Core i7-10710U has a base clock of 1.1GHz, a single-core turbo clock of 4.7GHz, and an all-core turbo clock of 3.9GHz. With this new laptop in hand, we decided to put it through a few benchmarks to show what you can expect with respect to performance gains over the existing Ice Lake-U based offerings.

First up is Geekbench, where the 6-core Core i7-10710U puts up a strong showing against the 2-in-1 version of the laptop with a Core i7-1065G7 (Ice Lake-U) in the single-core benchmark. However, the Core i7-10710U really flexes its muscles in the multi-core benchmarks, where its extra two cores come in handy against the quad-core Ice Lake-U.

Moving along, we again see the Core i7-10710U coming up a little short in the single-core benchmark for Cinebench R20. However, it more than makes up for it in the multicore benchmark with a roughly 33 percent uplift over the Core i7-1065G7.

Finally, we decided to fire up BrowserBench, which focuses on web application performance. Here’s the Core i7-1065G7 managed to edge the 6-core Core i7-10710U by roughly 8 percent. 

We should stress that this is just an early look at performance of these new Comet Lake-U parts in the Dell XPS 13 and we hope to have an extended look at performance and battery life in a future article very soon, so stay tuned.