It’s much nicer to look at than to use.
The Dell XPS 13 was once the best thin-and-light Windows laptop you could get, with amazing build quality, good battery life, and decent port selection (and eventually, a serviceable webcam). But it peaked in 2020 and itâs been slipping since. It got OLED screen options that tanked the battery life. Then there was a baffling redesign that made the keyboard, trackpad, and port selection worse, paired with power-hungry 12th Gen Intel chips, so it still had bad battery life, and it ran too hot.
The new Intel Lunar Lake model fixes some of those issues, but improved performance and a beautiful OLED screen canât make up for the flawed design. With a spongy keyboard, awkward function row, and paltry ports, this laptop is incredibly frustrating to use â a sad sendoff for the once-admired XPS name.
The Dell XPS 13 (model 9350), released in late 2024, is the x86 counterpart to the Snapdragon X Elite version we tested last summer. It starts at $1,399 for an Intel Core Ultra 7 256V CPU (Lunar Lake), 16GB of RAM, user-replaceable 512GB NVMe SSD, and a 13.4-inch non-touch 1920 x 1200 IPS display with up to 120Hz refresh rate. My $1,699 review unit has a 60Hz 4K tandem OLED touchscreen …
