The Dell XPS 13 is a premium thin and light laptop with some small but nice improvements
over previous generations. In this detailed review we’ll find out just why this machine
is so popular and help you decide if it’s a laptop you should consider.
Starting with the specs my unit has an 8th gen Intel Whiskey Lake i7-8565U quad core
CPU, 16gb of memory running in dual channel, a 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD, 13.3” 4K 60Hz touch
screen, but no discrete graphics, just the Intel UHD 620 graphics built into the CPU.
There are a few different configurations available, you can find examples along with updated prices
linked in the description.
For network connectivity it’s got 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 4.1, it’s too thin for
an ethernet port so you’ll have to use an adapter. I’ve only got a Type-A adapter
so I had to use the included Type-C to Type-A adapter, as the XPS 13 only has Type-C ports.
The starting weight is listed at 1.23kg or 2.7 pounds on Dell’s website, and I found
mine to be spot on with this, rising up to under 1.5kg with the power cables and 45 watt
brick for charging.
It’s quite a portable machine, at just 11.6mm thick, 30cm in width and 20cm in depth. This
small footprint gives us an extremely thin bezel around the screen with a 80% screen
to body ratio, but despite this Dell were able to get the 720p camera up the top this
time, so no more nose cam.
The camera doesn't look too terrible considering how small it is, and the microphone is alright,
here’s what it sounds like to type on the keyboard.
The chiclet keyboard has white backlighting which can be toggled between two brightness
levels by using the F10 key or turned off, and overall I liked typing with it. The lighting
looks a bit uneven if you’re looking closely though, some parts seemed dimmer than others.
It’s got 1.3mm of travel and I found the keys don’t press down far, but they still
have a subtle click feeling, here’s how typing sounds to give you an idea of what
to expect.
There’s a fingerprint reader in the power button, which is found near the top right
corner of the keyboard, and it worked very fast.
There was minimal keyboard flex while pushing down hard, the whole machine is made of a
single block of aluminium, or aluminum based on where you’re from, and the screen was
also quite sturdy even when trying hard to bend it, overall it felt very solid and well
built.
The glass touchpad has precision drivers, is extremely smooth to the touch and worked
great. It clicks down anywhere and has left and right buttons towards the bottom.
Back to the 4K touchscreen, simply put, it looks great. I’ve measured colour gamut
with the Spyder 5, and got 98% of sRGB, 68% of NTSC, and 73% of AdobeRGB. At 100% brightness
it was quite bright, I got over 400 nits in the center of the screen with a 1200:1 contrast
ratio, so great results.
Backlight bleed was looking pretty good, small imperfections down the bottom but I never
noticed these with my own eyes while viewing darker content, but results will vary between
laptops and panels. I’ve only tested the 4K panel here, expect different results with
the 1080p option.
On the left side from the back there’s a wedge lock slot, two USB Type-C Thunderbolt
3 ports with 4 lanes of PCIe, a button to show battery charge level, and left speaker
towards the front.
On the right from the front there’s the right speaker, MicroSD card reader, USB 3.1
Type-C port with DisplayPort 1.4 support, followed by 3.5mm audio combo jack. You can
charge the XPS 13 with any of the three Type-C ports using the included 45 watt power brick.
The speakers sound ok considering the size of the XPS 13, they sound clear at higher
volumes but there’s no bass. At maximum volume while playing music it was still quite
loud, but the Latencymon results didn’t look good.
There’s nothing on the back, the air exhausts are here but face down and can’t be seen
on this angle, while the front just has the microphones and a white light in the center.
I found the design a bit problematic, there’s no groove to get your finger into when opening
it up which made it harder than necessary to open. Once you do get a nail in, the machine
is so light there’s no chance of opening with one finger.
The top lid is a matte metal with the Dell logo in the center, and I’ve got the rose
gold colour here, but it’s also available in silver or frost white. The interior is
available in white or black, and it’s got a fiber texture which prevents all fingerprint
marks showing, especially on the white I’ve got here.
Underneath is pretty standard, just some air intake vents towards the back and rubber feet
which did a good job of preventing movement while in use. It’s easy to open up, just
remove the 8 screws with a TR5 screwdriver bit. Once inside we’ve got the battery which
takes up most of the space, cooling up the back, and the only upgradeable component,
the single M.2 drive. Memory is soldered to the board so make sure you pick the amount
you need when buying.
It’s got a 4 cell 52 watt hour battery, and with the screen brightness at 50%, keyboard
lighting off and background apps disabled, I was able to stream YouTube video for 5 hours
and 54 minutes, a pretty good result compared to the gaming laptops I typically test, especially
considering the size.
Thermal testing was completed with an ambient room temperature of 20 degrees Celsius. I
just ran the Aida64 stress test with the CPU and GPU options checked and left it going
for almost two hours, so this should represent a worst case. We can see that over time the
temperature would constantly rise and fall. What I found would happen is it would thermal
throttle at around 99 degrees Celsius, then it would lower the power limit, resulting
in the TDP and clock speed to drop. When this happened, the fan would get quieter as a result,
and it would be cooler for a while. Over time it would increase the TDP by 1 watt up and
up until it thermal throttled at around 99 degrees again and the process would repeat.
For comparison, after being idle for an hour the CPU was at 37 degrees.
Here’s what the fan noise sounded like while running these tests.
You can hear how quiet it gets under load once it lowers the CPU TDP, and even when
the fan is higher, or manually maxed out using Hardware Info it isn’t too loud, at least
compared to the gaming laptops I usually test. At idle the fan was silent, and I could just
hear some coil whine.
Here’s what we’re looking at in terms of external temperatures where you’ll actually
be touching. At idle it was quite cool, barely getting into the mid 20s. While under stress
test the palm rest area was still quite cool, while the keyboard got to the mid 40s in the
center towards the back. It didn’t feel hot to the touch, just a little warm.
Here’s what we’re looking at in terms of CPU performance for the older Cinebench
R15 and newer R20, the single core results in particular are quite good due to the 4.6GHz
single core boost.
As we’ve only got Intel UHD 620 graphics we’re not expecting killer gaming performance,
however I was able to run some less demanding titles at 720p without issue. I only tested
these games at the lowest setting levels, and I would consider them all playable. While
Overwatch had the lowest averages, the 1% low wasn’t too bad, at least compared to
Fortnite and CS:GO. Dota 2 on the other hand played perfectly fine, so while by no means
a gaming laptop, very light gaming was possible at 720p minimum settings.
I’m going to test the gaming performance with an external graphics enclosure in a future
video, so if you’re new to the channel you’ll want to get subscribed for that one.
I’ve used Crystal Disk Mark to test the storage, and the 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD was giving
nice reads and decent writes. Unfortunately I can’t test the MicroSD slot as I don’t
have a card that size.
For updated pricing check the links in the description, as prices will change over time.
At the time of recording in the US the entry level XPS 13 is going for $900 USD, while
the top end model I’ve got is around $1900 USD, though that one has half the storage.
Meanwhile here in Australia they start at $1800 AUD, while the specs I’ve got are
$3500 AUD.
So what did you guys think of the Dell XPS 13? Honestly, this would be an amazing laptop
if you’re travelling around a lot and need something very portable with excellent battery
life and don’t have a requirement for discrete graphics, though due to the price I’d probably
be looking for one of the lower to mid range options myself. It’s obviously not a gaming
laptop, but you can get away with low settings on less demanding titles at 720p. I’ll be
investigating performance with an external GPU enclosure in a future video, in theory
the Thunderbolt 3 support should allow us to use desktop graphics when docked at home.
The keyboard lighting is a bit uneven looking, it was sometimes harder to open up as there’s
no groove on the front for your finger, and the camera isn’t great, but at least they’ve
put it up the top now so no nose cam, I can’t really think of much else to complain about,
these things are pretty minor issues.
Otherwise the build quality is excellent and the screen was great, I can see why the XPS
line is considered to be quite premium, and why it does come at a higher cost over the
13 inch options from the competition. There’s not too many changes over the previous generation.
Removal of the nose cam, slightly better CPU and more battery life are the key takeaways,
so nice improvements if you’re buying new today, but not really worth the upgrade in
most cases if you’ve already got a recent XPS 13.
I did briefly see the new XPS 13 2-in-1 at Computex with Intel’s 10th gen CPU, let
me know in the comments if you’d be interested in a video on that one in the future, as well
as what you thought of this model here. If you’re new to the channel you’ll definitely
want to get subscribed for the upcoming game testing with the external graphics enclosure,
and for future tech videos like this.