The new
That's what happened to me two months ago. As wonderful as my 13.3-inch Retina MacBook Pro is, the XPS 13 one-ups it on design. Let me go a bit further and say that the XPS 13 design beats all of the MacBook Airs (whose physical design has not changed in a long time) I've used over the years.
(Editor's Note: Why bring the MacBook into the discussion when I'm talking about a Dell laptop? Two reasons. One, for better or worse, the MacBook has become the benchmark for laptop design. Two, I've been using MacBooks as my main computer for years: a series of Airs and now the Retina MacBook Pro 13. Also, see "notes" at bottom.)
Portability: Only 0.6-inches at its thickest point and 2.8 pounds, the touch version of the XPS 13 is as thin and light as you can get at 13.3 inches with an Intel "Broadwell" processor and a very-high-resolution touch screen. The XPS 13 makes my Retina MacBook Pro 13 seem downright onerous at 3.4 pounds. (Note that the less-expensive 1,920x1,080 non-touch XPS 13 weighs even less, at 2.6 pounds.)
Display: And about that screen. The XPS 13 I'm using has a QHD+ (3,200 x 1,800) touch screen from
Power consumption/battery life: So far, I've never gotten close to running down the battery so the best I can do is say that battery life hasn't been an issue. And that includes pretty long stints (3-4 hours) at
And I asked Dell about this. "The last-generation XPS 13 had a larger 55wH battery…we dropped that down to 52wH. We were able to increase battery life by 30 percent while reducing the overall [size] of the battery by 25 percent," said Donnie Oliphant, Director of XPS Product Marketing, in a phone interview. Though Oliphant was referring to the lower-resolution 1,920x1,080 non-touch model, the battery size reduction and battery life boost still applies to the 3,200 x 1,800 touch model. It's just that Dell cannot make a direct comparison to its previous-generation XPS 13 because it did not a have a 3,200 x 1,800 model at that time.
Performance: With low-power mobile Broadwell (aka, Intel 5th Generation Core "U" Processor) Intel is trying to deliver decent performance in sub-0.7-inch laptops. Many of those designs are a mere 0.6 inches thick, making it a challenge to approach the performance of more roomy laptops with multiple whirring fans. I've always found that gauging performance is highly subjective and dependent on so many factors (software being a big one, e.g., Windows 8.1 vs. OS X or how many -- and what kind of -- programs you keep running in the background) that I understand why most review sites tend to throw out a few objective benchmarks and leave it at that. Suffice to say, objectively speaking, the XPS 13's Core i5-5200U-based performance is in the same league as the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (3rd generation) or Core i5-based Surface Pro 3. That is to say, it's not slow but not a gaming laptop.
My subjective experience (after almost two months of constant use) is that its performance is on par with (not faster than) the 13-inch MacBook Pro Retina, which is packing a 2.4GHz Core i5 Haswell processor, a generation before Broadwell. One asterisk to that statement, however. My XPS 13 came preloaded with the dreaded McAfee Antivirus (Live Safe Internet Security to be specific.) So far, I haven't removed it (I could switch to Windows Defender but I haven't for reasons I won't go into here). But the clock is ticking because McAfee has a bad habit of putting the kibosh on performance. And that's been my experience too.
And I should add that my XPS 13 model comes with a 256GB Samsung solid-state drive -- not a LiteOn SSD, which a number of vendors have been using. I would prefer the Samsung because I have another laptop with a LiteOn SSD. The LiteOn has apparently failed (according to all the tests I have run) rendering the laptop inoperable after only about six months. Maybe it's just bad luck. To be fair, I have (yet) another laptop that also has a LiteOn SSD: so far that laptop hasn't had any problems.
Keyboard: Despite the extremely thin design, the keyboard doesn't have the shallow, hard feel of the keyboard on the 12-inch MacBook (another extremely-thin design). For that reason alone, I would rate it as very good. Moreover, it feels as good or better than the keyboards I've used on larger, thicker laptops.
Build: In a word, amazing. I particularly like the carbon-fiber weave on the surface that surrounds the keyboard and touchpad. The bottom and back of the display is clad in aluminum.
Operating system: Windows 8.1 falls short of OS X in (at least) one critical area: the Windows 8.1 hybrid interface ("Modern" touch combined with traditional desktop) has never worked well for me. But once you get past that, it's fine. In short, Windows 8.1 is not a deal breaker, i.e., I can do everything on Windows that I can do on OS X. Bottom line: a design as good as the XPS 13 makes ditching (at least temporarily) OS X relatively painless.
Price: As configured with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB solid-state drive: $1,399. Non-touch models start at $799 with 4GB and a 128GB SSD.
Additional notes: I have had hands-on time with the new Retina 12-inch MacBook -- an amazing laptop in its own right. Shorthand for describing the XPS 13 might be: it is pretty close to what Apple would do if it came out with a 13.3-inch, higher-performance version of the gorgeous 12-inch MacBook.
