The Dell XPS 13 is always one of the best laptops on the market, and since the industry is moving more and more toward 14-inch screens, it's easy to call it the best 13-inch laptop. Indeed, Dell even made an XPS 14 this year, for the first time, but it turns out that it's a drastically different product.

The XPS 13 (2024) weighs in at 2.6 pounds, which is much lighter than the 3.8-pound XPS 14. But don't let its weight fool you, because thanks to more powerful Core Ultra chips with on-board Arc graphics, it still packs a punch. If you're a creator that's going to use that power, you'll be happy with the tandem OLED display too.

The XPS 13 Plus has been absorbed into the mainstream XPS 13 line, so it comes with the futuristic design that's becoming familiar. That includes square keys, a borderless haptic touchpad, and capacitive function keys.

As always, I'm always happy to recommend the XPS 13.

Dell sent XDA the XPS 13 for review. It did not have any input on the contents of this article.

Dell XPS 13 (2024) pricing and availability

The Dell XPS 13 (2024) is available now from retailers like Best Buy and Dell.com, starting at $1,149. That price gets you an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, 8GB LPDDR5, a 512GB SSD, and a 1920x1200 120Hz display. If you want the tandem OLED screen like this review unit has, it'll run you an extra $400.

There's also a newly announced model with a Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 chipset, which starts at $1,299 with 16GB RAM, a 512GB SSD, and the FHD+ display. Additional models of that are coming.

Design

The previous design was short-lived

For a very long time, XPS had a signature silver and black design, but when the XPS 13 Plus was introduced a couple of years ago, the XPS 13 got a new look. It came in colors like Sky and Umber, and it was pretty cool. The product wasn't without shortcomings though, and it only lived for one generation before the XPS 13 Plus swallowed it up. Now, the entire XPS lineup uses this design.

The 2024 model is much more powerful than that 2022 one, which had 9W processors, one of the reasons it didn't stick around. The new one has Core Ultra H-series, a big difference.

The new XPS 13 is way more powerful than the last one.

It comes in two colors, Platinum and Graphite. Dell sent me the Platinum colorway, which seems to be everyone's favorite. It's also all I had ever used, reviewing two generations of the XPS 13 Plus and the all-new XPS 16, until I finally got a Graphite XPS 14. Personally, I lean toward the Graphite, but they're both pretty sweet.

The external look of the product is pretty straightforward. It's a silver or black laptop with a Dell logo stamped in the lid. It's made out of CNC-machined aluminum; it just wouldn't be a Dell XPS if it wasn't.

As far as ports go, you only get two. There are Thunderbolt 4 ports on either side, and that's it. You don't even get a headphone jack, which I'm fine with. The industry has been moving toward USB Type-C for almost a decade now. As far as headphones go, there's a good chance you're using Bluetooth with your phone anyway.

Display

Tandem OLED isn't just for iPads

When Apple introduced its new iPads this year, it touted new "Tandem OLED' screens, basically putting two OLED displays on top of each other to boost brightness. Apple even boasted that it needed its new M4 chipset to power the dual OLED panels. But as it turns out, Dell's been using one in its new XPS 13 all along. The news of the XPS 13 having a Tandem OLED display broke when the Snapdragon version was announced, but Dell confirmed to XDA that it's the same screen as the Intel model.

Dell XPS displays stomp on the competition.

It should not be a surprise. The displays that Dell uses in XPS laptops stomp on the competition; they always have. I remember when the company started using OLED in the first place, realizing that you could barely tell the difference because the LCD panels were so good in the first place. When you consider that Dell XPS has always led the industry in display technology, it shouldn't be a surprise that it was among the first to use this new type of OLED screen.

From my testing, the display supported 100% sRGB, 94% NTSC, 96% Adobe RGB, and 100% P3. You really can't expect better scores than that.

Brightness maxed out at 484.9 nits, a big boost from last year's XPS 13 Plus, which came in at 376.7 nits. It's a massive and welcome change. Brighter screens are better.

Like the rest of the XPS lineup, the webcam has finally been upgraded to 1080p. I still think Dell has a ways to go for webcam quality. While it chose to remain stagnant on a tiny 720p webcam for so long, the industry sprinted ahead as more and more people started working from home. It's definitely better, and passable for video calls, but HP is shipping a larger 9MP sensor on its Spectre x360 14 this year, giving it extra resolution to do things like auto reframing.

That said, it's pretty solid, and again, a big upgrade from previous generations.

Keyboard

It's becoming one of my favorites

The biggest change to this year's Dell XPS lineup is that all models use the square keys that we first saw in the XPS 13 Plus. Having reviewed two generations of the XPS 13 Plus, the new XPS 14, XPS 16, and now XPS 13, I've spent a lot of time with it. That's on purpose. This keyboard takes some getting used to and I want to be able to live in it.

The keys have the right combination of depth and resistance, so it's super-comfortable to type on. The function row is capacitive, which I really like. By default, it shows media controls, brightness, and so on. If you hit the Fn key, it changes to standard F-keys.

Most people barely touch the function row on laptop keyboards. Apple knew this, which is why it created the Touch Bar. The problem is that the small minority of people that frequently use those keys hate having them removed. If you're not one of those people, you're good to go.

And of course the touchpad is borderless, something I still don't really love. Muscle memory takes over most of the time, but it's still really annoying when you try to drag and drop something and slide off of the touchable area.

There's a solution to this too. The technology exists to make the entire palm rest into a touchpad. I'm not suggesting that, but it would be great if a larger area could be activated when you're dragging and dropping. The PC just has to be smart enough to know you're about to run off of the activated area.

Performance

Intel Core Ultra with integrated Arc graphics

The Dell XPS 13 (2024) comes with Intel Core Ultra processors, like the rest of the lineup. It's the only one without dedicated graphics, a key feature differentiating it from the XPS 14. This product is geared more toward portability than power.

The Dell XPS 13 is geared toward ultra-portability.

There actually isn't much to talk about. Core Ultra laptops have been on the market for six months now, and it took Intel a very short amount of time to start talking about next-gen products. If you want a real AI PC, you'll want to wait for Lunar Lake, which has an NPU that meets the minimum requirements for Copilot+. If you don't want to wait, you can always grab the Snapdragon version of this product.

Performance comes down to this. If you don't care about Copilot+, grab a Meteor Lake laptop, and the XPS 13 is one of the best you can choose. Core Ultra does have an NPU, which is why Intel was trying to call it an AI PC chip for the past six months. It's around 11 TOPS though, a far cry from the 48 TOPS promised for Lunar Lake.

In real-world applications, the XPS 13 performs exactly like you'd expect. Every latest-gen Intel mobile chip with integrated graphics clears that bar, because Intel usually sets the bar. Core Ultra does have more powerful Arc graphics, which is great for things like photo editing, but again, Intel is promising a 50% performance boost in graphics with Lunar Lake.

Benchmark scores are kind of interesting here. Unsurprisingly, CPU test scores like Geekbench and Cinebench are similar between the XPS 13 and XPS 14, since the main difference there is the GPU. The HP Spectre x360 14 scores a bit higher all-around.

What's interesting was that I couldn't actually get a lower PCMark 10 score running on battery than I could when connected to power. A performance drop is expected on x86 systems, but that wasn't the case here. Typically, that drop is decided by OEMs to save battery life, so I guess Dell decided it wasn't necessary in this product.

That being said, battery life is pretty great. The best I was able to do was 589 minutes, which is almost an incredible 10 hours. Note that this was with very light productivity usage. I can get it down to about four hours if I'm on Google Meet calls all day, so while battery life is really solid, you still can't take the product to work and leave the charger at home.

Should you buy the Dell XPS 13 (2024)?

You should buy the Dell XPS 13 (2024) if:

• You edit photos regularly
• You want to look cool (don't pretend this doesn't matter!)
• You're on the go a lot

You should NOT buy the Dell XPS 13 (2024) if:

• You want Copilot+ features (except for the Qualcomm model)
• You're editing video or gaming
• You use the function row on the keyboard frequently

There are a few key things that you need to know about the Dell XPS 13. One is that it has a beautiful, bright, and vibrant OLED display. The color gamut makes it great for creative work like photo editing, and the brightness makes it a lot better for outdoor use. Combine that with the compact form factor and it's perfect to take on the go.

The elephant in the room is that Intel won't have Copilot+ chips until later this year, but Dell does have a Snapdragon version of the XPS 13 that has the suite of AI features. And if you're doing creative work that's more GPU-heavy like video editing, you'll want dedicated graphics, such as with the XPS 14 or XPS 16.