Dell XPS 13 (9310) review. (2023)

The newest Dell XPS 13 is one of the firstultraportable laptopscome with Intel's latest 11th generation "Tiger Lake" CPU, which provides fast, efficient computing performance and long battery life. This 2.8-pound laptop also has a great 13.4-inch screen and a beautiful frame, which combine to make it our Editors' Choice for top Windows ultraportables. The price is a bit high, from $999.99 to $1,649 as tested, but it's worth it for fans of high-end performance and style.

The XPS 13's shining moment

If you were tempted to buy the XPS 13 earlier this year after its major redesign (model9300) but he didn't pull the trigger, thank God he waited. Now you can get everything we love about a new laptop with the added bonus of Intel's latest silicon.

The CPU increase is essentially the only change from the 9300 to the current 9310, but it's important if you plan to keep your machine for five or more years. Dell releases new XPS 13 models at an incredible rate, sometimes several times a year. Still, a brand new processor and a physical redesign that's not even a year old make the 9310 a safe buy for people who don't want their expensive investment eclipsed by something much better in a few months.

The XPS 13 is extremely thin and feels reasonably solid, if not particularly light. It measures 0.58 by 11.6 by 7.8 inches (HWD) and weighs 2.8 pounds in the touchscreen configuration we reviewed here. The non-touchscreen versions weigh slightly less, at 2.64kg, as they lack the Gorilla Glass 6 coating on the screen of the touchscreen version. Either of these weight measures compares favorably with Dell's main rival, theApple MacBook Pro 13, which weighs 3.1 lbs. But the XPS 13 is still significantly heavier than the lightest models on the market, like the 1.96-pound Acer.quickly 7flagship.

The added weight of the XPS 13 is supported by high-quality materials and a sleek design. The density of the build is visible as soon as you take the system out of its sleek white box and run your fingers over the aluminum cover and edges. Dell says the edges are double anodized to prevent scratch damage from repeatedly turning the peripherals on and off. Opening the lid results in even greater visibility. Two color options include Platinum Silver with a Carbon Black palm rest or Frost White with an Alpine White composite palm rest. Our review unit uses the latest design and is beautiful. The palm rest is particularly stylish and features a UV and stain resistant coating to prevent yellowing and discoloration.

If you like the style of the XPS 13, you'll be interested to know that Dell has extended it to the entire lineup, which includes the latest versions of the larger ones.XPS 15GXPS 17portable computers. This is a unique approach similar to what Apple takes with stylingMacBook airboth MacBook Pro sizes. Whether you're looking for an ultraportable for frequent travel or a machine with a big screen and serious computing power, there's an XPS for you. There's even a 2-in-1 version of the XPS 13, which features a 360-degree hinge that lets you turn the laptop into a tablet.

Great screen, even without 4K

The XPS 13 display is available in three versions, all of which have an unusual 16:10 aspect ratio instead of the more familiar 16:9 ratio. First, it results in extra vertical space, which is useful when scrolling through web pages or updating large documents.

Our control unit has a 1920 x 1200 pixel touchscreen. Thanks to the aspect ratio, the resolution is slightly higher than Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels), but significantly lower than the Retina display on the MacBook Pro or the PixelSense display onMicrosoft Surface Portable 3. However, the XPS 13 can be configured with a 3840 x 2400 pixel panel that exceeds not only those two laptops, but also the dimensions of standard 4K widescreens (3840 x 2160 pixels).

After using a 4K screen, it's hard to go back to Full HD, with the occasional visible pixels and slightly grainy text. Maybe that's why Apple and Microsoft don't offer Full HD versions of the MacBook Pro or Surface Laptop 3. But I don't really care about the screen resolution of the XPS 13. Images look especially vivid, which I attribute in part to the higher ratio dimensions resulting in slightly more pixels than a 1080p display and partially supporting Dell's 100% sRGB and 90% DCI-P3 gamut. I also appreciate the excellent maximum brightness of 500 nits, which means the XPS 13 can be viewed comfortably outdoors (though not in direct sunlight) if you crank up the brightness settings.

So I don't recommend the 4K to Full HD display in this case. This is an added convenience for the budget-conscious, as the 4K version adds to the cost. On the other hand, I'd recommend staying away from Dell's home screen, which is identical to our review unit, except it lacks touch support. That's a shame, as many of the XPS 13's competitors offer standard touch support, with the MacBook Pro being a notable exception.

Miniature feats

In an impressive feat of downsizing, a 720p webcam with infrared sensors for facial recognition sits at the top of the screen. It offers average video quality for a laptop camera, which means indoor shots are a bit noisy and blurry compared to camera quality even on a mid-range phone. Dell says camera quality has improved with the addition of a new four-piece lens and temporary noise reduction, but if you're planning on having a Skype session in your living room at night, you'll probably want to use your phone. The main innovation of the camera is its tiny size: the XPS 13 screen occupies 91.5% of the space occupied by the body, which means that the frames surrounding it are very thin.

One of the consequences of a compact laptop is less space for ports. The XPS 13s is limited to two Thunderbolt 4-compatible USB Type-C ports, a headphone jack, and a microSD card reader. This means you'll need an adapter or dongle to connect an external display or USB Type-A peripherals. (Dell thoughtfully includes a USB adapter in the box.) This could be a drawback for people who work from home, who will likely be using the XPS 13 with an external display. While it's true that the XPS 13 simply follows the trend toward fewer and fewer ports, its selection is stingy even among its competitors. The MacBook Pro offers up to four USB-C ports, all of which are Thunderbolt 3 compatible.

The ultraportable offers the latest Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and Bluetooth 5 wireless standards, which is good for stable Internet connections and wireless keyboards and mice. But many users will be happy with the built-in trackpad and keyboard, which I find comfortable for short periods of typing and tapping. The large keys and wide keyboard surface are welcome improvements over the pared-down equivalents of some competitors, such asAsus ZenBook 13. The power button at the top right corner of the keyboard acts as a fingerprint reader to sign in to your Windows 10 account without a password.

The sound quality from the XPS 13's stereo speakers is excellent. Combined, they deliver up to 4 watts of output power and are balanced enough to give the laptop a much richer, more dimensional sound than you'd expect from such a compact package. Much of the sound comes from the grill on the bottom of the laptop, but vocal tracks and other high notes in some movie trailers I've ever watched didn't sound clear.

Dell backs the XPS 13 with a one-year hardware warranty and offers optional extensions of up to four years for an additional fee.

XPS 13 review: goodbye ice, hello tiger

The new XPS 13 ditches Intel's 10th generation 'Ice Lake' processors in favor of the latest Tiger Lake processors. There's not much difference between the two, but we did see some modest performance improvements in some of our benchmark tests compared to the 9300. Our test unit came with a Core i7-1165G7, a quad-core chip with Hyper-Threading at base frequency 2.8 GHz, compared to 1.3 GHz for the corresponding tenth-generation Core i7. A higher clock speed can improve performance on some tasks, although the total number of cores and threads remains the same. (See how we test laptops.)

While the XPS 13 has always relied on integrated graphics rather than a discrete GPU, this model features Intel's latest Iris Xe silicon, which replaces its predecessor's Iris Plus graphics. Our review unit also has 16GB of memory and a 512GB SSD, which should be enough for most users. Meanwhile, the entry-level configuration comes with a Core i3, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. That's a relatively small set of components compared to the MacBook Pro, whose base configuration includes a Core i5. But the entry-level MacBook Pro costs $300 more than the entry-level XPS 13.

Below is a list of specifications for the XPS 13 controller and several other comparable laptops we've tested recently, including the Apple MacBook Pro, Asus ZenBook 13,Razer Blade sigil 13and a Microsoft Surface 3 laptop.

Out of the bunch, Asus is the only other competitor with a Tiger Lake CPU.

Processor, media and storage tests

Our first look at overall performance comes from the Windows-only PCMark performance suite developed by benchmarking experts at UL (formerly Futuremark). Our PCMark 10 test simulates various real-world productivity and content creation workflows. We use it to evaluate overall system performance for office tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet manipulation, web browsing, and video conferencing. The XPS 13 performs very well, although it's essentially the same as the similarly equipped ZenBook 13.

Meanwhile, PCMark 8 has a secondary storage test that we use to assess system boot speed. Like PCMark 10, it generates its own numerical score (higher numbers are better). Most of the latest SSD laptops do almost as well on this test as they do here.

Here's the Maxon Cinebench R15 CPU test, which has been fully stripped to take advantage of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench emphasizes the CPU instead of the GPU for complex image rendering. The result is a proprietary score that demonstrates a computer's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. The hierarchy in this test is clear: the Ice Lake-based Surface Laptop 3 and the Blade Stealth 13 are a step below the Tiger Lake XPS 13 and ZenBook 13. The MacBook Pro's Core i5 processor is an excellent performer.

Cinebench is often a good predictor in the Handbrake video editing test, another hard-hitting, convoluted exercise that's heavily CPU-dependent and scales well with cores and threads. In it, we set a timer on test systems while they transcode a standard 12-minute 4K video clip to a 1080p MP4 file. It is a timed test and lower scores are better. The XPS 13 is tied for first place with the MacBook Pro, with the Asus not far behind.

We also present a custom benchmark for image editing in Adobe Photoshop. Using the early 2018 Creative Cloud version of Photoshop for Windows and the latest version of Photoshop CC for macOS, we applied a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image. We measure the time of each operation and at the end we add up the total execution time. As with the parking brake, lower times are better here. The Photoshop test highlights the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM. The XPS 13 performs well, better than Apple's, but not as fast as the ZenBook 13.

Graphics and battery life tests

One of the main advantages of Intel's Tiger Lake platform is the transition from the old Iris Plus graphics to Iris Xe. This improvement actually has only a small impact on our graphics tests, which use the Windows-only 3DMark and Superposition game emulations to render highly detailed game-style 3D graphics sequences that emphasize particles and lighting.

We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike, that cater to different types of systems. Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suitable for laptops and mid-range PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and built for high-end PCs. Results are proprietary results.

Like 3DMark, the Overlay test renders and progresses through a detailed 3D scene and measures how well the system is performing. In this case, it appears in the Uniga company's eponymous engine, which offers a different 3D loading scenario than 3DMark for a second opinion on the machine's graphical power.

Iris Xe laptops show a slight advantage over their Iris Plus counterparts, but the difference is not noticeable. It's also a much smaller advantage than entry-level gaming GPUs like the Nvidia processor in the Blade Stealth 13. The bottom line with graphics output is that the XPS 13 will be able to handle just about anything you throw at it. except for 3D intensive games, which require a dedicated GPU to run smoothly. (For more Iris Xe performance analysis, seeour primer Iris Xeand in depthTiger Lake Quiz Feature.)

Equipped with a 52-watt-hour battery that lasted 15 hours in our video playback test, the XPS 13 should easily survive a full workday without an outlet...

This is a very good result, although it is "only" in line with what the competition offers and is actually quite a bit shorter than the 17.5 hours we saw in the previous 9300 model.

Hear Me Roar: The best high-end ultraportable today

The XPS 13 is an excellent ultraportable whose core strengths are its premium computing components in a beautifully designed and extremely well-built chassis. These are rare achievements, even in the crowded field of ultraportable high-end laptops. Operating system differences aside, the XPS 13 is probably a better choice than the MacBook Pro for most people right now, as Apple's laptop uses older-generation processors that are facing imminent replacement.

one of the few reasonsYesthe XPS 13 is the choice if you're looking for a powerful side-by-side gaming experience. Intel's Iris Xe silicon is pretty good if you're willing to shake things up (that isYesintegrated graphics a year or two ago), but even so, the Nvidia GeForce GTX-equipped Blade Stealth 13 is probably the wiser choice, at the expense of poorer battery life, a less polished case and a worse CPU than the previous generation . Otherwise, the XPS 13 is the cream of the crop, and it still holds the Editors' Choice award for best ultraportable high-end laptop of 2020.