- Hey, everybody.
This is Robert Blake of robertoblake.com,
geeking out with you today over some awesome gear.
So today, we're geeking out over the Dell XPS 13
with the Skylake processor.
And as many of you know, I've been using this
for quite a while now.
I've been using this for over a month.
It's been my traveling companion.
It's gone on three different trips with me now,
and I'm calling it.
This is the best travel laptop of 2016.
So this laptop is amazing.
I do want to thank Dell for sending this for me to review.
They are not paying me in any way, shape, or form
to do reviews around this laptop.
I've been experiencing it.
I've thrown everything I can think of at it.
I've thrown my graphic design work at it.
I've thrown photography at it.
I've thrown video editing in Premier Pro at this thing.
And it's been practical for all of it.
It's performed admirably, and none of you have
noticed the difference of this being my primary
work horse lately versus my iMac or even
my 15-inch Asus laptop.
And that's because it's that good.
My version is a little bit more robust.
You can get a scaled-down version.
I'm using the 4K version with gorilla glass,
16 gigs of RAM and a 1 terabyte SSD hard drive,
which is also a Samsung hard drive.
It does have the i7 Skylake processor
with two physical cords and four logical cords,
and yes, I'm tired of you nerds in the comments
whining about the argument of what quad core is.
We'll do a video about it at some point.
But this is a baller.
This is a boss.
This is one of the most robust machines that I've
ever used in terms of a laptop.
It's been my overall best laptop experience.
And by the way, guys, I've used
all of the Mac laptops now.
I actually spent a lot of time recently on some
of these trips, going to Apple stores and also collaborating
and working with a bunch of friends of mine,
and I've been using all of the new stuff.
I'm gonna have some videos coming up about
my first impressions.
I've used everything from the iPad Pro,
the Microsoft Surface Book,
the Microsoft Surface Pro 4,
and I have some great things to say about a lot of these,
but at the end of the day,
when I look at the best travel laptops in the market
and I look at everybody in my community who uses
the 11-inch MacBook Air, everybody uses the
13-inch MacBook Pro.
As far as a practical travel laptop, the Dell XPS 13
leaves all of them in the dust.
With an 11-inch form factor, a 13-inch infinity display,
which means very little to the rest of you,
it's just that it's a borderless, beautiful 4K display.
If you decide to go there, or at least near 4K,
this is a great laptop.
I do have some minor gripes about it.
The awkward placing of the camera does bother me.
But I just use the Logic C920 webcam, anyway,
but if you're trying to travel very light,
it's a usable camera.
I just don't like the viewing angle because it's
awkwardly placed in the bottom left-hand corner.
So that bothers me.
I've never been a fan of track pads.
That's why I have the wireless Logitech Master Mouse.
The MX Master Mouse is great.
There is a scaled-down version for travel, and so
I prefer to use a mouse over a track pad,
and this track pad is a primary example of why.
But to be honest, I don't feel that the Apple
track pads I've used in the past have been
really any better.
Comparatively for the price point, some of the features
you get that you don't get on the MacBook 13-inch or
the MacBook Air models is you get touch screen.
This is something we've wanted for a long time.
Even iJustine, who's like the biggest Apple fan
on the planet as far as I'm concerned, has brought up
how nice and convenient it is to have
a touch screen on a laptop when you want one.
And Apple has really been lagging on this,
and I think it's just because they don't wanna
cannibalize the iPad line or they believe wrongfully
that would cannibalize the iPad line.
I've wanted touch screen on this iMac forever.
And I think that would make the iMac the penultimate
computer experience if it has touchscreen.
So come on, Apple.
Give us what we want.
In terms of performance, power, and battery life,
this is huge.
I've been able to get, on average, for the way that
I use it, six, eight, or even nine hours on this,
just depending on what I'm doing.
If I'm doing video editing, yes, it's gonna take up
more juice and it's not gonna last as long.
But if I'm doing web browsing or writing my articles
for things like How Design or Creative Pro
or Print Magazine, then this is gonna be more than fine.
And while I'm traveling, a lot of times I'm not
doing that heavy lifting, anyway.
A lot of times, I like to do basic things,
focus on what I'm doing in the moment,
check email, surf the web, stay up to date on social media,
and this allows me to do that.
But in the event that I need to edit my photos,
just like that, in the event that I need to slap an
SD card in there and grab some video content
off of this camera.
It's letting me do that.
It's letting me work super fast and produce
great results.
The render time on this was great for editing
one of these YouTube videos.
It was able to crank one out in about maybe
somewhere between eight minutes for a five-minute video
and I think a 12 or 10-minute video was around 15.
Did it get hot and did it get noisier
while it was rendering that?
Absolutely.
Doesn't matter.
It got it done, and any laptop I used was going to
have those particular issues.
So i really feel like this is a great travel laptop
if you're working on the go.
If you are using the non 4K version
and you're using the HD model that doesn't have
the gorilla glass or the touchscreen,
then you will get longer battery life.
You can get somewhere between 12 and 15 hours
of battery life and so compared to some of the
Apple models, I think that that's gonna really help you
if power and productivity is your game.
The caveat here for those of you who are creatives
is you have to live with the Windows operating system,
and some of you are gonna be bothered by that.
UI scaling's gonna bother you.
And that's more a function of the software than
the performance of this in terms of hardware.
So in terms of visuals, in terms of graphics,
in terms of resolution and great display,
and this is all aces in terms of productivity.
In terms of beautiful and robust, durable
hardware, it's gold.
So I highly recommend this.
This has been great for me.
I love having the option of the Thunderbolt 3
or the USB 3.0 capabilities.
I love that it has an LED indicator for the power so
that I can see that.
I really wish that other laptops had something like this.
And the one other thing that I would say
is the only real thing that bothers me about this laptop
is that I need two use who hands when opening it
because of the way the hinge is.
But other than that, I think that this is one of the
best laptop experiences I've ever had
out of any laptop product that I've ever used.
And I've used a lot of them.
I've literally, even in the past month,
probably ran through 20 different mobile devices
that I'm gonna have to talk to you about.
It's about on this channel at some point.
I've got a lot of B-roll footage.
I've got notes from first impressions.
It's gonna be amazing.
I've even used the big brother to this,
the Dell SPX 15, and I have to tell you
that I really think that if you can live with the
Windows operating system, then that
is a MacPro killer.
So I definitely have some good things to say about that.
You'll have to stay tuned for that video coming up.
In any case, I have a ton of laptop recommendations
for you guys in the description below.
So make sure you're checking that out.
Maybe it'll help you in your buying decision.
I wanna thank our friends over at Dell
for sending this over.
This is the field commander of the army of awesome.
This has helped in getting all of this done,
and again, this is one of the best laptop experiences
that I've ever had, and I really feel that for travel,
if you're someone like me who's flying all over the
place, taking buses and trains,
that if you need something lightweight, robust,
great resolution and a lot of battery life,
the Dell XPS 13 is probably the best you could ask for.
Anyway, like this video if you like it.
Don't forget to subscribe.
Check out the other awesome content on the channel.
Let me know if there's other gear that you guys
think I should be reviewing here.
I want you to tell me that in the comments.
As always, you guys, thanks so much for watching
and geeking out with me
over the Dell XPS 13,
the best Ultrabook of 2016 as far as I'm concerned.