Customer Ratings & Reviews

As with many things in life, laptop design ultimately is a study in trade-offs. Power of the hardware vs battery life, size of the screen vs portability and so on. This Dell XPS 13 uses the power and power efficiency of the new Snapdragon X Elite processor to achieve a balance that few other computers I've seen can match - and I've seen quite a few in over 20 years as an IT professional. It's not perfect and some of the choices are a bit perplexing, but it's the best ultra-portable laptop I've yet seen. Is it for you? Read on to find out! The first thing that strikes you about this laptop when you unbox it is the design. It's fairly minimalist, particularly in the dark gray color, but it's amazing how thing and compact it is - it can even make the Macbook Air look a bit chunky. It does have some heft to it, but it's still easy to carry around all day and fit in a bag or backpack. The materials throughout are very high-end and the laptop is very well-built. The inside is even better looking with the screen surrounded by only the tiniest of bezels and a fully integrated / no outline trackpad (which is exactly where you think it would be so I've had no trouble with my fingers "finding" it and the click action haptics are very good). The keyboard is the full width of the laptop and the keys are densely packed (not chiclet style) which does take a bit to get used to but I've found them generally comfortable to type on once you get used to them. The function keys are touch spots that change from controlling things like the brightness and volume to the standard "F" keys when you hold the function key - the light up labels on the touch sports ch accordingly. There is a shockingly good (at least for how small it is) webcam in the top bezel. Let's come back to that screen for a moment. There are multiple screen options here - I'm using the OLED at "3K" resolution and it's a glorious thing - it gets super bright with blacks so deep that you have to see it to believe it and vibrant colors at all brightness levels. This might be as close to perfection as a laptop display can get (though, this not being a gaming PC, it is limited to 60Hz, but with great response times). It is somewhat smaller at 13.4" but that contributes to this being a super portable form factor. The "guts" of the laptop are perhaps the most special thing, with the new Snapdragon X Elite processor as the star of the show. This chip, and it's "ARM64" architecture (vs the normal "x86" architecture in standard Intel and AMD chip) sets a new standard for power efficiency and performance. ARM chips have long been power sippers - they're what's in your phone and most tablets after all - but only in recent years have they also been powerful enough to drive solid full computing experiences. Paired with 16GB of FAST DDR5 RAM, the X Elite is plenty to power through work and play - I haven't seen any slow downs while performing normal office tasks, browsing the web, playing media (locally or streamed), writing / compiling code or even editing photos / videos. This isn't really a gaming laptop, but the onboard graphics are sufficient for many older/mid-tier games or emulation and some higher end games will work as well. The CPU has a built-in NPU or neural processing unit to enable onboard/offline AI as part of the "Copilot+" PC program. I've been working with the various Copilot+ features for a week now and while some are incredibly useful, others need a bit more work. The most helpful features turn out to be the Windows Studio Effects for the webcam, which can perform real-time blurring / background changes much better than any I've seen in conferencing software (there are other effects too that are pretty cool). The Cocreate / Image Generator is decidedly a work in progress, but it IS helpful to have a generative AI that is creating along with you. Though to some extent your own creativity (or in my case, the lack thereof) will limit the ultimate output....it's still far better than anything I could create on my own and likely will only improve over time. Some of the applications demonstrated during the Copilot launch (such as LiquidText and DaVinci Resolve) haven't yet fully enabled AI features in their production builds so I expect that the NPU will only become more useful over time. The 512GB SSD is quick - and is user replaceable if you remove the bottom of the laptop (there's only one slot, so you'll have to image the operating system and all over to the new drive - that slot can hold a 2230 or 2280 sized PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD though the included heat spreader will only fit 2230s, so a 2280 will go without it). The SSD is the only user upgradeable part as all other components are soldiered to the motherboard except the battery (which can be replaced but of course not really upgraded). I've included a picture of the interior of the laptop with the bottom panel removed. Given the power-sipping nature of the ARM64 CPU, battery life is incredible, and I'm regularly seeing over 12-13 hours of normal usage with the laptop before charging. Charging is also fast, using USB-C and either the included 60W charger or another USB-C charger of similar power you might already have. So all that is great - you might then be asking what are those trade-offs I mentioned? Well, there are a few... * The ARM64 "Architecture" - Having an ARM CPU onboard enables incredible battery life with strong performance, BUT it does so at the cost of some compatibility. Application have been built for decades to play nicely on x86 based systems (which this isn't) so you'll need to either find new versions of applications compiled for ARM64 (Chrome browser and many other applications have these versions available if you look for them) OR rely on the Prism translation layer built into Windows. Translated applications (or, more properly, emulated applications) aren't quite as fast or power efficient as native applications, but they do largely work. That said, demanding applications (i.e., games or high end engineering tools) or applications that directly access the hardware (backup applications and device/printer drivers) may not run at all if you can't find ARM64 specific versions. For example, my Canon printer/scanner driver won't load on ARM64, so I have to use the Windows default driver which is ok but loses some of the capabilities of the device. This is probably the biggest trade-off for most. * Only two ports - To enable the minimalist design and keep the laptop small and thin, you only get two ports total, USB 4 on both sides that support Thunderbolt as well. These are powerful type-C ports that support full speed charging, video out and high speed data in and out. But there are only two of them (one on each side) and that plus the lack of other specific ports like HDMI or a headphone jack means that you'll almost certainly need a dock or dongle(s) to connect to your ecosystem. * The screen vs battery life - The 3K OLED panel on this laptop might be spectacular to look at, but opting for that screen really cuts in your battery life. While I'm seeing 12-13 hours, users with the fullHD base screen are reporting thtat they're seeing 19-20+ hours of battery life. Sure, both are all day and on balance, I'd rather have the really nice screen than be able to go two days without charging..but some folks might reasonably disagree. * Style vs the keyboard design - While I can certainly say that the design of the keyboard deck is astounding and striking, it might not be the most functional with the "touch" spots for the hotkeys/function keys and the "cammoflaged" touchpad. The keyboard also prioritizes design over functionality. Overall, I do like the balance that Dell has selected here on each of those trade-offs, I think they came out with a stunning laptop with great performance, a tremendous screen and strong battery life. If that sounds good to you, give the Dell XPS 13 a try today!