Dell XPS 13 (2024) With Lunar Lake Review: Ultra Light and Extra

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The new version of the Dell XPS 13 is hovering on the edge of something better, or—at least—something truly unique. There’s an intrinsic factor at work beyond the number of ports and the sloped shape of the 2-year-old XPS 13 redesign, now with Intel Lunar Lake, that reminds me of the M1 MacBook Air. Something there would make me say, “Wow, things are going to change.” It has nothing to do with the old ARC vs. x86 debate. It’s the dream of the lightest possible laptop, still with a physical keyboard, that can do everything.

But the XPS 13 (9350) config doesn’t get there. It’s only close to it in terms of power and battery life, but the shell is still a poor design that needs to change. It’s interesting to look at. I might eventually enjoy the idea of an invisible touchpad, but not an invisible ESC key that disappears in direct sunlight.

Dell XPS 13 (9350)

It sports a radical design that makes it hard to use if you're hard of seeing or working in direct light. While it's powerful for its size, it isn't as zippy as you'd want a laptop for this price.

Pros

Super lightweight design
Trackpad takes some getting used to, but the feel is very nice
LCD is plenty bright

Cons

Space-less keyboard and touch function row hurt usability
Performance isn't all you want for this price
Sound and webcam quality aren't great

There are many of the same issues with Dell’s other XPS products, such as the XPS 14 and XPS 16. It doesn’t change with a new chip. Still, I’ve wanted to give the XPS 13 a try since Intel first announced its Lunar Lake chips and see what it meant for ultra-thin laptops like this one. My version of the XPS 13 comes with the Intel Core Ultra 7 256V and a non-touch LCD. Dell said you get one of these laptops with an Intel Core Ultra 9 288V, which sounds like it would be one hell of an interesting device, but you won’t find that config available on Dell’s site or anywhere else.

There are other versions of the XPS 13 with Ultra 7 258V, and just like I said with the Asus Zenbook S 14, I would look for the higher-end chip first despite the price difference. The 256V does well enough for basic productivity tasks, but when buying a new laptop for anything that requires a bit more juice, I promise it will be worth it. Now that the M4 MacBooks are out, we have a new, high bar for CPU performance across laptop chips, so I’d argue you should try to make sure your next laptop is as future-proof as possible.

See XPS 13 (9350) at Dell

Should that new laptop be the $1,400 MSRP XPS 13 (9350)? It has a fair display, and it sure looks unique. The battery life is incredible, so long as you’re not doing anything strenuous. It’s also an incredibly light laptop with such a smooth, sleek finish you’re handling a stone slate more than a computer. At the same time, it’s too perfunctory for its own good, especially at this price point.

Dell XPS 13 Review: Performance

My XPS 13 came with the Intel Core Ultra 7 256V CPU, which is on the lower end of the middle-weight Lunar Lake chips. The laptop packs 16 GB of DDR5x RAM and 512 GB of storage. All that’s to say, this is the lower-end rendition of the XPS 13 you can get, and its performance may not match your expectations for what you may have heard about Lunar Lake.

That’s not to say you should ignore this version altogether. If you go for this config for basic productivity, it’s an incredibly speedy machine in such a thin package. In Geekbench 6, the Core Ultra 7 256V will score better than the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus in single-core settings but trail slightly behind multi-core. It also won’t beat AMD’s latest Strix Point processors like the Ryzen 9 HX AI 370, which you can find in PCs like the Asus TUF Gaming A14.

It’s a worse performer in the Cinebench rendering test, which I found still underperformed in multi-core settings by close to 300 points compared to a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite or the Ryzen 9 HX AI 370. I’m still looking for that fabled laptop that will contain the Intel Core Ultra 9 288V, let alone more with the slightly higher-performance Lunar Lake chips than just the 258V.

Of course, any PC with a dedicated GPU will be far better for graphics tests like 3D Mark. The Dell XPS 14 with just an Nvidia Geforce RTX 4050 can topple anything that Intel’s onboard ARC graphics can try. I’m still disappointed mainly by the slow times on our Blender tests, where we time how long it takes for the PC to render a single image of a BMW under CPU and GPU settings.

Dell XPS 13 Review: Build Quality and Usability

As somebody who uses a lot of laptops regularly, I end up typing with several different keyboards regularly throughout my workday. Given that, I should have experience with the newfangled XPS design thanks to my time with the Dell XPS 14 and XPS 16 laptops. Then I returned to it with the XPS 13 and its flat panel, no-space keyboard, and invisible trackpad, and it still somehow made me feel like a fish out of water.

I could grow to like it if I spent ages with it and got so used to the space-less keyboard that I would struggle to get the same feel on other keyboards. Why would I, though, when the experience is worse than other laptops?

Worse still is the touch function row, which simply disappears when the PC is turned off. Worse, with this eggshell color, the light-up touch keys disappear like ghosts in direct sunlight. The light-up keys may become an accessibility nightmare for anybody with vision issues.

All that is such a shame because I would otherwise enjoy using the XPS 13. This thing is light at only 2.6 pounds. For comparison, an M3 MacBook Air weighs 2.7 pounds. It’s just a few grams lighter than an Asus Zenbook S 14. Beyond the weight, it’s packing WiFi 7 and a bright display for indoor and outdoor use. However, there’s no problem worse than routinely hitting the wrong key when you’re typing, just because you can’t feel out where your fingers are unless you’re looking at the keyboard.

See XPS 13 (9350) at Dell

Dell XPS 13 Review: Screen, Webcam, and Sound

This 13-inch laptop has a decent screen, an okay webcam, and mediocre sound quality. The 13.4-inch LCD runs at a 1920 by 1200 resolution with a VSS between 30 and 120 Hz. No, it’s not as inky and pretty as OLED, which you’ll get on prettier configs than the 9350, but at the very least, it’s bright.

The 1080p webcam looks fair under bright light, but things start to look fuzzy as soon as any dim fluorescent light illuminates you. Without space for physical speakers, there’s only so much you can expect from the sound on a thin laptop. The XPS is good enough for listening to it by yourself, but it has a thin quality that’s immediately apparent if you switch off from any 14-inch laptop to this 13-inch one. It can get moderately loud, at the very least.

Dell XPS 13 Review: Battery Life

The Dell XPS 13’s battery life might be its biggest selling point. When Dell and Intel first announced this config at IFA, it was part of the company’s claim that you would get close to 24 hours of battery life from an x86 chip. That’s a big promise, and we already knew it was only tested in video playback.

In our own video playback tests, where we ran down the battery watching a 24-hour YouTube video, the laptop conked out after 23 hours. That’s very good and the kind of battery you’d want from such a lightweight, fanless design.

As for daily use, it’s also a very strong contender. An entire workday of typing on it, without plugging it into any external monitors, resulted in me still having around 40% battery left over. I forgot to charge it and could still go half a workday without reaching for the plug. The battery drained far faster when supporting more than one monitor, as expected. It’s a better result than I had with the Asus Zenbook with the same chip, so Dell still has a great internal design to rely on, even if I don’t jive with the exterior.

Dell XPS 13 Review: Verdict

The Dell XPS 13 (9350) feels like a laptop that costs, at most, $1,100, which is where it currently stands on sale before the end of November. I know I’ve already said this design is not my jam, but even at a lower price, I would hesitate to reach for this over something more standard. It’s easily one of the lightest, most well-balanced laptops I’ve used. It hangs out in my backpack and barely puts any more weight on my shoulders than the hoard of paperback books I tend to carry around.

Plus, it has an excellent battery life that adds to its longevity and keeps me from bringing a charging brick everywhere I go. The charging unit that comes with the XPS 13 is already relatively small and light, so that’s a plus. When put like that, there’s so much I want to like about this laptop, though perhaps not with this configuration. Then again, the next step up, with the 258V, 32 GB of RAM, 1 TB of storage, and an LCD, costs $1,700 MSRP (currently $1,500 on sale). The OLED touchscreen version is even more pricey. Even on sale, I can’t imagine buying a super-thin laptop for that price when there are other machines you can get.

It’s a perfectly usable laptop and perhaps one you could begin to love. But I’m a curmudgeon, and I don’t like it when I tap a key and accidentally tap two. Perhaps I should blame myself for my imprecise digits. Instead, however, I’ll blame the laptop.

See XPS 13 (9350) at Dell

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