The Dell XPS 13 (9300) Review: Return of the King
by Brett Howse on July 16, 2020 10:00 AM ESTFinal Words
Dell’s XPS lineup is one of the strongest in the PC industry. The InfinityEdge display was a revolution, allowing laptop sizes to shrink considerably, while providing the same display size. The new XPS 13 improves on an already excellent pedigree by moving to a 16:10 aspect ratio on the display which further reduces the bezel and keeps the new XPS 13 looking as fresh as ever.
The two color choices are both great, but the Arctic White, with its woven fiber keyboard deck, is really striking. Dell has tweaked this slightly from their original 2-in-1 design by moving back to black display borders, which can help hide the admittedly small bezels even further. The older soft-touch carbon fiber black color is still a great look as well. The refreshed XPS 13 is simply one of the nicest looking notebooks in its class.
The move to Ice Lake in the 2020 refresh is also a welcome addition, mostly thanks to the significantly improved integrated GPU performance, but also because it allows the laptop to support 32 GB of RAM. Coupled with the maximum 2 TB of SSD storage, and the XPS 13 offers plenty of performance for its size. There will be those that lament the lack of an AMD option, as AMD’s latest Renoir is a very potent platform, but the lead time on a notebook like this would preclude that option.
Dell’s decision to move to a 16:10 aspect ratio means that you get a bit more vertical space, which should be beneficial in most productivity scenarios. Of the two display options, unless the wider P3 gamut support of the 3840x2400 display is something critical for a specific workflow, the extended battery life of the 1920x1200 is likely the better option for most people. And, just so it is not forgotten, Dell’s anti-glare coatings are a shot in the arm for the PC industry, providing just 0.65% reflectivity, and when coupled with the very bright display, makes for a winner in almost any lighting condition.
Even the bottom of the XPS is well thought out. Torx screws surround the bottom which allow access inside if needed, and Dell continues to utilize rubber feet which span almost the entire width of the notebook, providing an incredibly solid footprint across a range of surfaces.
Open or closed, the XPS 13 is a fantastic looking device. It backs that up with excellent performance, and plenty of options to fit almost any budget. It is somewhat rare for a premium notebook to start at under $1000 USD, but Dell manages that, if only barely, but the base model now provides 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage, which is much better than some of the XPS 13’s of old, which started with half that RAM and storage for the same price. Dells options are also very reasonable priced, so upgrading from the base model does not instantly launch the price into the stratosphere.
It is great to see Dell update their XPS 13 clamshell notebook to the same internals and design of their previously released 2-in-1 version. It is also great that you can opt for either the clamshell XPS 13, or the convertible 2-in-1, depending on your needs. The convertible offers some increased functionality that you cannot get in a traditional notebook, but there is also a large market that prefers the simplicity of the traditional design. With the XPS lineup, it is your choice.
Finally, in a very rare move, Dell offers not only Windows, but also Linux, giving buyers their choice on what operating system they get. It goes without saying that this is an incredibly uncommon thing on a premium notebook, and very welcome to see. In the case a buyer does opt for Linux, then the the XPS 13 Developer Edition, as it's called, comes from the factory with Ubuntu 18.04LTS.
Overall there is a lot to like about the new XPS 13, and very little to detract from. Dell has yet another winner. With an updated 16:10 display, class-leading battery life, and a fantastic design, the XPS 13 is easily one of the best notebooks around.
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edved - Saturday, July 18, 2020 - link
I rec'd this Dell i7 with 16GB yesterday on the 16th and saw this review! Excellent write-up. Thanks for putting in the time & effort. Certainly reassures my purchase. It replaced a 5 yr old XPS 13.Pixelpusher6 - Sunday, July 19, 2020 - link
I've currently started looking for a new laptop. I'm leaning towards the Ryzen mobiles. One thing I've noticed though is the disappointing RAM options. For my use I need a minimum of 16GB. Using Win10 at work I'm averaging around 12-15GBs of usage, at home it is usually less around 7-10GB unless gaming. I don't understand why OEMs feel the need to solder RAM - do SODIMM slots really take up more space? The laptop I'm replacing is an older laptop that has a 24GB cache ssd soldered on which is failing, (in addition to a 512GB 860evo) and as a result Windows install hangs up, so I can only run Ubuntu. I love this laptop but I need to run Windows. What if you have soldered RAM and it fails outside of warranty?ajp_anton - Sunday, July 19, 2020 - link
I've had this laptop for 5 months and actually have lots of problems with it that Dell just refuses to fix. Their answer to all of the following is that it's "by design".- Custom charging. If you set the charging to stop at, say, 80% or 90% (to prolong the life of the battery), reach the desired level (so that it stops charging), and then stress the CPU, the charging will continuously start and stop at a 1-5 second interval. Because of this, the charging light at the front of the laptop will keep turning on and off, which is very annoying in a dark room.
- Every time the battery starts charging, the screen's backlight will flicker for one second, like there's some instability with switching from battery power to AC. This combined with the issue above makes the custom charging level pretty useless.
- When Panel Self Refresh is turn on (in Intel's settings), the screen will randomly insert black frames once or every 10mins to 10 hours. It's very random. Solution is to just turn off PSR.
- The fans will run when nothing in the laptop is above 60 degrees C. Once they turn on, they will keep spinning for a while even if everything cools down to under 50 degrees C. My experience with the laptop is that the fans just keep running almost all the time when just browsing the web. My cooling setting is set to "quiet".
- Mayor problems with sleep mode. The laptop occasionally wakes up and just loads up the CPU and overheats everything to 100 degrees C when inside my backpack. I've had to hack Windows to re-enable S3 sleep (instead of modern sleep). Since Dell can't handle "Modern standby" correctly, they could at least have a BIOS option to disable to altogether (in fact they have an option to disable S3), so the user wouldn't have to hack-enable it with Windows.
- Home and End button placement is horrible. I've asked to enable Fn+left and Fn+right in a BIOS update, as they used to be in older XPS laptops, and the technician thought it was a good idea, but there's nothing he could do because people higher-up didn't want this.
ajp_anton - Sunday, July 19, 2020 - link
Though in spite of all of these problems, I still like this laptop, and I don't know of a better one. The 16:10 screen alone makes this an obvious choice, and I just have to learn to live with (and work around) all the other issues.nfriedly - Sunday, July 19, 2020 - link
I love the idea controlling charging in software to extend the longevity of the battery!I'm not sure how you could feasibly report this, but I'd like to know how much difference it makes after a few years of use. Does Dell make any claims?
ajp_anton - Sunday, July 19, 2020 - link
There are problems with this particular laptop's custom charging. Read my comment above yours, the first two points.I've used this feature in an older XPS laptop (max charge at 80% except for long flights and such), the Skylake version, which is ~4 years old. It's been in pretty much constant use on-the-go, and battery wear is at 1%.
vermaden - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Just get Chuwi Aerobook 13 instead.Bigger and better keyboard (along with more keys) and also TWO USB A 3.x ports and USB C port.
... and it costs about $450 new.
This Dell XPS 13 looks lame to say the least with these only two USB-C ports ...
ajp_anton - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Um, what?A Skylake-Y CPU with max turbo at 2.2GHz? That's your alternative to a 4-core Ice Lake? And possibly the slowest iGPU in existence, compared to one of the fastest. 1920x1080 screen. The speakers are "bad, even by laptop standards". And despite the extremely slow and low-power CPU, battery life is also bad.
Yeah, totally comparable.
velanapontinha - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
If only this was bases on a Ryzen 4700u...Smell This - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Well ... Duh!
;- )
Down With The King, Dell