it wasn't long ago that people thought laptops were going to go away because of
the introduction of tablets it's sort of gone the other way around and we've got
three of the best laptops that you can buy in 2019 and we're gonna compare them
this is the huawei mate book X Pro the Dell XPS 13 and the latest MacBook Air
so we're going to compare them in five different categories starting with the
price and although there's various different prices depending on which
models you buy and processors and SKUs and all that kind of jazz we're just
going to talk about the starting price because that keeps it simple so the X
Pro starts at one thousand five hundred and ninety-nine euros and we don't
really know what the UK and US prices are going to be but it is more than last
year's model and it's the most expensive out of these three laptops moving on to
the Dell XPS 13 this is actually cheaper for this year so this comes in at 939
pounds or even less in dollars so this is eight hundred and ninety nine dollars
and that's because Dell has introduced a basically a lower spec model so that's
why it's cheaper so this is the cheapest out of the three if you're on a tight
budget so moving on to the MacBook Air and this is more expensive than its
predecessor as you would imagine and comes in at 1199 pounds or dollars same
price in pounds or dollars so this is the middle of the pack on price so the
winner of round one the Dell XPS so round 2 is design and there's not a huge
amount in it but let's look at the details because when you're talking
flagship laptops it does come down to the details now the MacBook Air if we go
in reverse order from round one comes in at fifteen point six millimeters at its
thickest point one point two five kilograms now that is pretty thin and
light but the Dell XPS does beat that figure on both counts it comes in at
just eleven point six millimeters and just one point two three kilograms so
again it's not much but it does win and they're moving on to the X pro this
comes in sort of in the middle on thickness so
this is fourteen point six millimeters thick and it's the heaviest out of the
three at one point three three kilograms now there is a little bit of a bonus
round here because we're not going to talk about ports completely but because
they all have things at us PC and Thunderbolt but we do want to point out
that although that ex-pro is a bit thicker and heavier it does come with
the type-c USB port so that's pretty cool
so the winner of round two well the XPS takes it again so let's move on to Round
three and that's core specs now obviously that's a little bit difficult
to compare because it depends which model you buy and how much money you
want to spend but let's look at the base model so again with the X Pro obviously
this is the most expensive model so it's not surprising that you're going to get
the best specs this comes with at least a core i5 eight
gigabytes of RAM 512 gigabytes of storage and a dedicated graphics card in
the form of an nvidia geforce MX 250 whereas dell XPS starts at a core i3 but
you can spec up to a core i5 or Core i7 and it has at least four gigabytes of
RAM and 128 gigabytes of storage but that's going to be an integrated
graphics card so moving over to the MacBook this is the most restricted when
it comes to specs because it has to come with a core i5 now you can customize
things like the RAM and storage and it comes with at least eight gigabytes and
128 gigabytes of storage so it's sort of a joint winner here because the XPS has
the biggest range of specs available because you've got that core i3 if you
don't want to spend too much and you can go all the way up to an i7 with a couple
of terabytes of storage and loads of RAM if you need it but the X Pro is also the
winner in turn of it coming with the best specs of the
base price which is obviously more than the other laptops so the Dell and Huawei
are sort of joint winners here because the XPS 13 has the biggest range of
specs on offer but the X Pro does have the best at its base price even though
it's more expensive okay so is onto round 4 and probably an unusual one for
a laptop group test but we're going to talk about webcams now that's because
Dell has finally managed to put the webcam back in the top bezel after a
couple of years of it being below the screen because of in introducing the
infinity display they've managed to get it back up the top here where it should
be despite the bezel being really small now
the MacBook does also have it in the top bezel but as you can see it's no match
for the Dells bezel there so bit of a MIDI medium win there for the MacBook
and if we switch to the X Pro now this is quite a cool feature because the
webcam is hidden in the keyboard there in this little pop-up key which is also
handy for privacy because you know when it's down you're not going to be spied
on if that's something you worry about but it also means that when you are
using the webcam it's pointing upwards at your chin and this pretty poor angle
to actually have a web chat on now this might not mean anything to you because
you don't use a webcam but if you do something to bear in mind and again the
winner is the del Sol round 5 is battery life obviously you want your laptop to
last as long as possible so you don't end up with a dead laptop we test by
looping a video at the same screen brightness across all the laptops so
that it's a fair test obviously the spec has to be the model we've been sent in
for a review but that's just the way it goes and the MacBook Air in this test
got 10 hours and 45 minutes which is pretty solid the del got a little bit
more 11 hours and 19 minutes but the huawei mate Book Expo is the winner on
battery life with a whopping 14 hours and nine minutes now that is a little
bit lower than of the manufacturers say but especially
on the huawei in the Dell where they claim to be around the 20-hour mark so
it's not as good as they say but they still won in our test and good job X Pro
forgoing 14 hours so which one should you buy well in our test the Dell XPS is
the winner it's the cheapest it's got the widest
range of specs it's still got decent battery life it's called that webcam in
the bezel it's got a nice thin and light design it's basically the best
all-rounder out of these three but that doesn't mean it's necessarily the best
for you obviously we haven't talked about the fact that two of them have
windows and one of them has Mac so if it's an Apple product you're looking for
well the MacBook Airs the obvious choice if you want some different features that
the Huawei offers then that might be the right one for you but in this test the
Dell XPS 13 for 2019 is the winner