Dell XPS 13 review

For the longest time, a good business laptop meant having a thin-and-light design, and powerful performance. But when most laptops became thin-and-light notebooks, the quintessential business laptop quickly needed to be something more. That is where features like biometric authentication, touch-enabled displays and futuristic designs came into play – and names like the Dell XPS, became go-to machines for the office.  

Today, the Dell XPS series has come a long way from there, and with the latest 2024 edition, the compact powerhouse now picks up an ARM-based Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chipset as well. Dell claims big performance gains, and even bigger battery life thanks to this chipset. Well, we tried the laptop out for ourselves to test these claims, and here’s our Dell XPS 13 review.  

Dell XPS 13 design

Perhaps the most noticeable aspect of the Dell XPS 13 is its design. Dell’s new, futuristic look from 2023 carries over, and we still have super-sleek edges all around, along with the new look on the inside.  

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This includes a borderless trackpad that might trick you into thinking the entire bottom portion is the trackpad (it’s not), squared-off keys with low travel, and a row of capacitive keys on the top that you can simply touch.  

My opinions on these elements are mixed. While I loved the look and feel of the trackpad and the actual keyboard, the capacitive keys up top didn’t serve any extra functionality except looking cool. While they will remind many of the TouchBar from the older MacBook Pros, these buttons don’t adapt to the app(s) on-screen. Instead, they take away all the feedback of pressing a key, and have you guessing the Fn keys, which can be a pain if you use them a lot.  

The outer design of the laptop is also not perfect, although it gets close. The lack of any small notch or gap between the keyboard and lid also make this laptop a little hard to open. However the overall compact design here makes up for it, and the laptop is really easy to carry around and use for long hours.  

My mixed feelings also extend to the ports onboard, which you get only two of. While these are USB Type-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, you will still need a USB hub for basic additions like USB Type-A accessories or plugging in an HDMI cable.  

Dell XPS 13 display

I really enjoyed the screen on the Dell XPS 13. While it is smaller than the 15-inch Dell Latitude I usually use, the touch capabilities and crisper OLED panel more than made up for it. Pretty much anything that’s not low resolution will look good on this display, so be it PDFs with tiny fonts or some Netflix movies, the screen doesn’t leave you wanting for more.   

Something to note here is that while we have the high-resolution 2800 x 1800 resolution panel version of the Dell XPS 13, the laptop also comes with a 1080p screen variant which will be more affordable if you don’t need the extra pixels. However, this will also mean losing out on the touch abilities, something only found on the high-res display variant.   

Dell XPS 13 performance

We used the Dell XPS 13 almost exclusively as our primary laptop over the past few days and boy we are glad. The Snapdragon X Elite-powered laptop is snappy in day-to-day use, and while I did notice a handful of stuttering instances in my time with the machine, no major performance concerns were observed. 

Applications I used daily included 10-20 tabs split across two browsers, as well as multiple Word and Excel windows and some other background tools like the Unified Remote server.  

Note: Since this is an ARM-based chipset powering the laptop, I recommend you use free resources like Windows on ARM to check if the programmes and apps you use are natively supported by laptops just yet.  

I also tried out the AI-performance of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite which kicks in when you use things like the new Windows Studio Effects which now has more options that look better than ever before. A real-time look at the Windows Task Manager shows how the XPS 13’s NPU kicks in during these effects, saving your CPU and GPU for other workloads. Something to note, however, is that Copilot responses (text and images) would trigger the GPU exclusively, and not the NPU.  

Other features like the speakers also worked great, and I can confirm that the speakers on the Dell XPS 13 are loud, and the sound output sounds fuller than what you’d expect. The fingerprint scanner (positioned next to the backspace key) was also quick, and the IR-based facial recognition on the laptop was also very snappy. I don’t think I’ve manually unlocked the laptop even once in my time using it.  

Dell XPS 13 battery life and charging

While I never really hit the 27-hour mark Dell claimed this laptop can reach, the Dell XPS 13 does offer phenomenal battery life, and is easily one of the longest lasting batteries on a laptop I have used. Through work and entertainment, getting the battery to die on this laptop was for me, more often a conscious effort than not.  

The bundled adapter also charges up the laptop quickly, and with it being a Type-C port that can go into either of the two ports on the laptop, you can comfortably charge the laptop from any side of most desks, which I didn’t realise was something I needed.  

Unboxed Take: Who should get the new Dell XPS?

The new Dell XPS 13 is a powerful machine wrapped in a mixed bag of design choices. While it is the ultimate show-off worthy office laptop for some, it can be a slight nuisance for others, so we recommend you try out one of these in person before you make the call.  

If the design choices are not an issue for you, the Dell XPS 13 is one of the best premium thin-and-light laptops you can buy right now and doesn’t really compromise on any of the areas a business laptop should take seriously.  

For these reasons, we rate the Dell XPS 13 4/5. Stay tuned to Unboxed by Croma for more reviews, and all things tech.