Dell's redesign of the XPS 13 is the new gold standard for 13-inch Windows 10 laptops. Here's why.
What follows is a quick, first-take review (not comprehensive).
Where do I begin? The XPS 13 -- introduced back in 2012 -- was the first Windows laptop to make a hard run at the MacBook Air. And Dell's flagship ultrabook has just gotten better and better over the years.
I've been using the "alpine" white XPS 13 9370 since it arrived earlier this week (officially it's called "Rose Gold with Alpine White woven glass fiber palmrest").
Dell has done something remarkable (imo). It's made subtle yet substantive changes to the XPS. Things like:
- Better fiber material in the palmrest
- Better keyboard with more tactile feedback
- Fingerprint scanner now embedded into the power button
- New side-mounted speakers
- New GORE thermal insulation -- and chassis is noticeably cooler to the touch
- Faster Windows Hello facial recognition
- Even smaller and lighter
- Even thinner display bezels
- Higher resolution 4K display than previous 4K display
And on a personal note, the 2018 XPS 13 addressed one of my biggest/longstanding pet peeves about the XPS line (which, frankly, used to drive me crazy on some days): the new glass fiber, along with the coating, used in the palmrest now does a much better job of not showing body oil and fingerprints. Ditto on the trackpad. That, combined with the bright white color, pretty much eliminates that problem for me.
And Dell focused a lot on the new materials in the palmrest, and other areas, for the redesign.
"We spent over a year. Testing a lot of materials. So it could withstand heat and insulate properly. Could easily be cleaned. It was a lot of work and that's where a lot of the engineering into this product went," Frank Azor, co-founder of Alienware and VP General Manager of Alienware, Gaming and XPS at Dell, told me in an interview.
The config I have is:
- 13.3-inch 4K Ultra HD (3,840-by-2,160) InfinityEdge touch display
- 8th Generation Intel Core i7-8550U quad-core processor (8M Cache, up to 4.0 GHz)
- 512GB PCIe solid state drive
- 16GB RAM
- Intel UHD Graphics 620.
- 2.68 pounds
- Price: $2,099
Design: I had my doubts about the redesign of the XPS 13 because, barring a complete chassis makeover, I couldn't see how Dell could make its iconic 13-inch laptop really different. But Dell successfully focused on a host of small improvements combined with bigger -- but not-readily-observable -- internal and materials upgrades.
Yes, the basic chassis design has stayed more or less the same but the white color combined with the new materials does give the XPS 13 a whole new look and feel. It's pretty dramatic, imo.
Early-2018 XPS 13 9370 (right) and the late-2017 XPS 13 9360 (left).
Credit: Brooke CrothersPerformance: Here's another remarkable thing. The new XPS, despite being smaller/lighter than the late-2017 version, is as fast in day-to-day tasks as my mid-2017 MacBook Pro 15. Both are quad core. The MBP's (Intel 7th Gen) 45-watt quad-core (QC) is technically faster in most benchmarks than the 15-watt (8th Gen) QC in the XPS 13, but it doesn't feel that way.
Here's what Laptop Mag said about the new XPS 13's performance.
Thanks to Dell's new cooling system, [the 2018 XPS 13 was] capable of delivering better sustained performance on long tasks, such as compressing a 4K video...Because it uses a new thermal setup with dual fans, dual heat pipes and special thermal insulation, the XPS 13 9370 is able to prevent its processor from throttling as aggressively as many other laptops.
Laptop Mag, Dell XPS 13 9370 (2018) Review
At the risk of stating the obvious, no it's not a gaming laptop (though it can be connected to an external "eGPU") and it can't match the graphics oomph in my MBP 15 but it's still really fast for a 0.46-inch (thickest point) laptop.
Battery life: the battery has been downsized a bit (to 52WHr on the newer 9370 from 60WHr on the older 9360) to accommodate the redesign but I haven't noticed (so far) a hit to battery life based on my usage scenarios. So, you could see between 7 and 8 up to 10 hours*, and possibly more, on the 4K version if you keep a lid on things like screen brightness and CPU-intensive tasks. (And longer battery life on the FHD 1,920-by-1,080 version -- 10-12 hours of more.) That's pretty damn good for a quad-core 13-inch laptop with a 4K display.
Display: Dell probably didn't need to increase the resolution on its 4K display but it did. It's now 3,840-by-2,160 (compared to 3,200-by-1,800 on the previous XPS 13). And it increased the brightness too (compared to the 9360). The brightness boost (now 400 nits) is noticeable -- and welcome.
Ports: the slimmer redesign means no more USB Type A ports, like on the 9360. You get two Type-C Thunderbolt 3 and one USB Type-C on the 9370. There's also a microSD card slot.
But wait...the XPS 13 9370 Thunderbolt 3 ports (with data transfers up to 40Gbps) can be used with external GPUs (eGPUs). Gamers take note!
Chassis/heat: I've noticed already how cool it runs compared to the late-2017 XPS 13 9360. That's a big difference for a lot of users. And the vent design on the bottom is noticeably different (see image below).
Keyboard: Dell's XPS 13 keyboard had always been one of its most unremarkable features. That's been fixed. It feels more like a laptop keyboard in 2018 should feel, with better tactile feedback.
One thing that takes getting used to is the PgUp and PgDn keys in the lower right-hand corner of the keyboard and how those keys are clustered close together with other frequently used keys.
Verdict: Dell nailed it. Like I said, it's the new gold standard for 13-inch laptops.
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*Battery life: I've been using the XPS 13 9370 almost exclusively on battery during the last few days and been seeing better battery life than I expected. So I've revised the estimate to "up to 10 hours" for the config I'm using with the 4K display.
