Smartphone and TV manufacturers are following the trend of thinner, lighter and modern designs. Even laptop brands are in this race, proving to be formidable opponents. With the likes of HP Spectre, Lenovo Yoga and LG Gram series of laptops, even Dell’s XPS series of laptops are becoming the center of attraction. These latest offerings from Dell are known for their excellent build quality, high resolution displays and powerful features.
The 13-inch Dell XPS 13 9370 continues the tradition of excellence with its bold design and powerful performance. This new XPS 13 9730 Ultrabook is priced at Rs. 90,799*. Read our detailed review to know how well it performed.
Design and Build
The design of the XPS 13 is out there. Our review unit had the platinum silver chassis with a woven black carbon fibre texture inside. The texture can be felt and the construction is sturdy. There is also a rose gold variant with alpine white palm rest. It even has a stain resistant coating considering you might be using this laptop for a long time. While the silver variant is stylish and has a slightly traditional look to it, the rose gold and white alpine variant looks premium.
The Dell XPS 13 comes with a 13-inch screen with a thin 4mm edge. Dell calls this design the InfinityEdge display. Dell has positioned the webcam right below the screen and has four microphones on the base of the laptop, useful for giving commands to the laptop and for making Skype calls.
The keyboard on the newer Dell XPS 13 doesn’t look particularly different from the older XPS models. There is a backlit keyboard with keys with a 1.3mm travel. The real downside is the absence of the numeric keypad. There are four navigation keys that are too small and positioned too close to each other. It takes a bit, to align your fingers on them. Yet, the keys are firm enough to get a comfortable speed going for typing. Below the keyboard is a wide touchpad with integrated buttons. We were happy to see a wide touchpad since most compact laptops feature a small touchpad.
Talking about connectivity, Dell has ditched the standard USB ports and a card reader on the XPS 13. Instead, you get one Type C, two Thunderbolt 3 ports, headphone jack and a micro SD card reader. There are two small speaker grills on either sides.
This new Dell XPS 13 is lightweight at just 1.21kgs, measuring between 7.8mm and 11.6mm in thickness. This laptop can even fit in a 10 litre casual backpack easily and it doesn’t even feel like a lot while travelling.
Features
Here are some of the improvements in this year’s Dell XPS 13 that make it impressive. Our test unit was the base variant, which was powered by an 8th generation Intel Core i5 8250U processor in addition to 8GB of RAM and a 256GB solid state drive. This combination itself should be enough to make the laptop zoom through software effortlessly.
The XPS 13 doesn’t come with a dedicated graphics card, but there is Intel’s UHD Graphics 620 on-board. Honestly, it would not be great at handling heavy graphic tasks but it should perform well for basic graphics applications.
The screen on the Dell XPS 13 sports a full HD (1920 x 1080) resolution. The display is bright enough and has good viewing angles because of the anti-reflective screen. The connectivity ports on the Dell XPS 13 is a sort-of compromise for many. There is no USB-A port on the laptop, instead you get two Thunderbolt 3 multi-use Type-C port, which can be used for charging the laptop as well as also for connecting multiple devices. The rest of the connectivity includes Bluetooth and HD webcam that can record videos at 720p. There is also a Killer 1535 Wireless-AC Wi-Fi 802.11ac for seamless wireless connectivity. This network chip automatically detects and sets the network traffic on priority for ensuring smoother streaming, online gaming, etc.
Dell offers personalized ways to unlock the XPS 13. There is a secure face unlock technology as well as fingerprint reader integrated right into the power button.
Performance
We were happy spending time on the Dell XPS 13. This small package is not sluggish by any standards. The hardware trio – CPU, RAM and SSD were able to beat all its peers in benchmark tests and also our productivity needs. We ran a couple of benchmarks and the got the scores as mentioned below.
Talking about the overall benchmarks scores, there wasn’t anything to get you startled. The Dell XPS 13 got a decent score (OpenGL - 45.17 fps, CPU - 612 cb) in the Cinebench test, whereas the read and write speeds in the CrystalDiskMark benchmark are shockingly impressive. The PCMark scores signify a good overall performance score of 3268. This benchmark performs different every-day tasks such as video conference, writing, photo and video editing, etc.
The screen on the XPS 13 is good to work and watch content on. We viewed several photos and videos on the laptop. The screen is really something. We could not stop scrolling through photos just because of the screen’s impressive vibrance and details. The 2W stereo speakers by Waves MaxxAudio Pro on the laptop didn’t perform well when cranked to full volume. The sound distorts and sounds a bit off. At low volumes though, things are much more pleasant.
We tried the fingerprint and the face unlocking feature. We were able to unlock the Dell XPS 13 in well under a second. Both, fingerprint and face unlock were fast in response. You only need to take care that your face is aligned properly with the webcam for it to work well.
Things get interesting when we tried the webcam on this laptop. The placement of the webcam is a little odd. Turning on the webcam while working on it, means it awkwardly focuses on your nose. Also, if you try typing something during a video chat, your fingers look like giant spider legs in front of the camera. We were able to capture HD quality photos as well as time-lapse shoots. In addition, the camera software on the laptop also supports HDR feature and auto focusing. Even if the videos are restricted to HD quality, the camera quality is decent.
While testing the laptop, we also had our one eye on the battery. The Dell XPS 13 comes with a non-removable 52 watts/hour battery capacity, which should stay on for a day on continues usage. The only downside is that the older XPS 13 9360 was juiced with 60 watt-hour battery.
Verdict
The Dell XPS 13 9370 certainly adds new fizz to the laptop market. The design of the laptop is impressive. It is compact, thin and lightweight, and it makes it a good choice for those who are looking for a compact yet stylish laptop.
Talking about the hardware configuration, the XPS 13 is powered with the latest possible hardware for seamless performance. With the edge-to-edge screen, Dell has taken a decision of placing the webcam below the screen which is a bit odd. Sound quality and the battery performance stills remains the area of improvement for Dell.
