Seen quite a few cracked glass screens on touch enabled laptops. Some (including Dell) put a hole near the top of the glass for the microphone. Causes a weakspot near the top of the screen where folks will hold the screen to open it. Not very clever. Be wary of all glass screens.
I've had a glass-screened laptop for over a year (yoga 11s). My toddler pulled it off the table and onto the hardwood floor. Cracked the corner of the plastic case, but the screen is still intact.
Just something to be aware of. Anyone with knowledge of structural integrity etc. would avoid putting a hole in a brittle substance near to a point of frequent stress. It seems that laptop manufacturers aren't too clued up on this. The last one I got handed from a customer with a cracked touch screen took three visits from Dell to fix.
The screens still work its just you have a nicely cracked glass layer on top. Not pretty.
Price is not too high. This is a very nice machine, and worth the money, no question.
I'd have an i5, 8GiB, 256GB, FHD version. Stupid QHD+ eating FIVE hours of battery life, screw that, waste of time.
The ONLY problem with the aforementioned awesome spec is... the somewhat shitty graphics. If Intel pulls their finger out, or Dell can somehow fit better graphics in the same chassis, everyone else has been utterly schooled.
I’ve been using this machine for a few weeks now. My impressions so far are largely positive. Here are some things that would take this laptop from “Great” to “Unbeatable”: --Offer option to disable auto-brightness --Improve display calibration of FHD model --Use less aggressive anti-glare coating on FHD model --Give more touchpad options for configuration --Reduce tendency of fan to spool up when plugged in (this can be tweaked in software settings, however) --Adjust position of webcam --Add just a smidge more key travel (I wouldn’t mind a 1mm thicker device) --Use a different material for keyboard such that smudging is less noticeable --Reduce price of 256GB SSD/8GB RAM model by $100 --Provide option for touch display on the FHD model for $100 or less premium
If Dell made the above changes then this device would absolutely take the market by storm. As is, it’s still a very solid device in my opinion.
I will say that I’m not getting anywhere close to the battery life that Anandtech is reporting for the FHD model. I’ve read on forums that the CPU usage spikes up whenever the touchpad is used, so that might account for the disparity. It would be great if Anandtech could investigate this.
"I will say that I’m not getting anywhere close to the battery life that Anandtech is reporting for the FHD model."
Do you mean web browsing battery life? If so, are you using chrome? If yes, then it could be the culprit. Last time I checked chrome used a bit too much power compared to IE.
Why would you say you feel crazy? IE has been a good browser for a while now and it is less resource intensive than chrome. It's funny that chrome started out as the light, simple alternative to IE and now it is the bloated one. The only reason to stay with chrome is if extensions are important to you and Spartan is reported to allow extensions.
Ya, I use to swear by chrome a few years ago, but about 1.5 years ago I started having odd issues where it would slow my computer down and have odd rendering/graphical glitches. I tried FF again for a few months but really hate the changes they have been making to it. So now I have been using IE for the last year for lack of something better... and you know what? It pretty much works. I do miss some of the plugins that I use to have, but the privacy settings do a decent job at blocking most adds which is the big thing. Not saying that I have really fallen in love with IE, but for 90% of what I do it works great, and the other 10% I hold my nose and use FireFox.
If not for the performance (and privacy paranoia) I would switch back to chrome in a heartbeat, but it simply is not as good as it use to be compared to the other options available.
I have the MS signature version with i5, 256gb, 8gb ram, QHD touch display and NOT running chrome. Light usage I'm only getting 6.5 hours of usage in balanced mode. I am using the touchpad exclusively. It would be nice to understand why I'm getting such a different result than Anadtech. This is a deal killer for the price I paid.
Could be lots of things really. What is your display set to for brightness? Display is a big draw. You are getting between our heavy workload and our light workload, so assuming your display is close to 200 nits, it could just be that your light workload is still a lot heavier than our light web browsing workload. File copies, network access, and other things can all contribute to a lot more power draw.
First suggestion is to set the brightness lower as it will likely have the biggest impact. You can also try installing Battery Bar to see what kind of power draw you are pulling at any one time.
Go to the windows 8 start screen and just type in brightness, the auto feature should be there to turn off? I don't have this model but that's how it worked on every win8 laptop I used.
The article stated that there is no option to off the auto brightness setting and have asked Dell to respond. I'm sure it is something that can be fixed in a future firmware update.
Not sure what more touchpad options mean. I bet the fan spools up when plugged in because the power setting are set for highest performance when plugged in. There is probably not much they can do with the web cam without increasing the bezel. I would suggest a flip up web cam that is hidden and you flip it up when you need it. Plus this will insure privacy since people won't be able to hack in to the laptop and access the web cam. The rest of your comments seem very doable.
Any thoughts on the keyboard flex seen in the LinusTechTips vid? Makes the unit look really flimsy and I *really* wanted to upgrade to this from my 2012 MBA...
Watch that video again, and look at how much flex is being exhibited by the table itself. It's not all (or even mostly) the keyboard. Something's flimsy alright, but it's not the keyboard.
In my experience, the new XPS13 does have more keyboard flex than the MBA, but but only slightly, and it's far from being a deal-breaker.
The comparison is totally confusing. Dell has much better battery life, but Surface is still on Haswell. Surface has a touch screen plus pen, but the keyboard is a necessary $130 add-on. USB ports are not similar. The base Dell wireless doesn't have Bluetooth, but Surface does. Webcam placement can be a big deal; while Surface has front and back cams. Surface can be had with a docking station designed for it.
This would be a tough choice between either device.
Personally, I hate click pads. I don't care where; I just don't like them anywhere.
Wow this looks great for a travel laptop! I wish that the 256 Gb hard drive and 8 Gb RAM were standard but oh well.
There seems to be a lot of good options for high end mobile right now. Between this Dell, the Razer, Surface Pro, and Apple's line up I don't know what I want my next upgrade to be. (I get these are all very different options, but they all seem to be executed really well).
Wow. I don't really need a laptop, but this really makes me want one. I don't really do a whole lot on my desktop any more, really, so I might actually consider it or the Surface Pro 3's Broadwell refresh (assuming there is one).
Have Dell/Sharp ever explained what is so special about the new display to get the bezels that small? They hyped it up as a Dell exclusive when first announced; but looking at it the first thing to come to mind is "smartphones have had bezels that small for a while; what's so special about making a laptop size screen the same way."
PS No web cam fail picture? The one from Ars Technica's review was great.
sure, phone screens also were more robust when they were made out of plastic. the good thing is a laptop is closed when transporting it and since you're not just holding your laptop in one hand, chances it is dropped are also much smaller.
glass on the other hand feels much nicer on touchscreens, imho it's much easier to clean and it can even make the screen lid more rigid.
i think panicing over broken laptop screens is a slight over reaction, but to each their own.
As I understand it, the bezel is where the control circuitry (among other things like edge lighting) exists. IGZO or Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide transistors are transparent compared to amorphous silicon. Plus, they have significantly more electron mobility. All this combined means that the control circuitry can be etched on the panel itself instead of the bezel. Plus, the transparency and increased electron mobility allows them to make really high res displays that also consume less power.
They even have prototypes of non-rectangular IGZO displays (such as truly circular displays).
But all this is based on reading a few articles, so feel free to correct me if I got something wrong.
It isn't special. It's just that nobody bothered to do it yet.
I have an E6520, the bezels are around thumb-wide. But when i disassembly the display there is really only 3-4mm of metal to the side of the display. The rest of the space is air, an cable, and the solid magnesium frame. This laptop contains an completely standard display, an format that hasn't changed since.. a long time.
Of course that has it's advantages as well. If you drop your XPS 13 the display is progably more likely to break than a laptop with MBA-sized bezels. Mobile phones are more forgiving because there is less mass to begin with.
Somebody bothered, years ago: Samsung series 9. Where they beat Dell to small bezels, they also announced the series 9 2015 model in December 2014: 12" screen, under 1 kg (2 lbs), passively cooled core M, high res screen and long battery life. Yeah, that is Apple's new MacBook, just three months earlier.
Somebody bothered, years ago: Samsung series 9. Where they beat Dell to small bezels, they also announced the series 9 2015 model in December 2014: 12" screen, under 1 kg (2 lbs), passively cooled core M, high res screen and long battery life. Yeah, that is Apple's new MacBook, just three months earlier.
Looks like some great specs and a great laptop... Hopefully it doesn't suffer from the odd glitches and high fail rates that some (not all) Dell products suffer from. Time will tell.
The statement that a 15 inch laptop needs a quad-core CPU is a little perplexing. The only quad-core Intel CPUs for laptops are the high wattage versions of the Core i7 CPUs, and they represent a valuable but very small portion of the market. More and more high end laptops ship with the "U" series if Core i7 CPUs, which are dual core, even in machines that are meant to replace quad-core offerings. The value is multiple cores is seriously over-hyped as far as desktops are concerned. Lots of applications are still single threaded, or multithreaded where one core still bottlenecks the main thread. Two fast cores are plenty for most laptop and tablet users, specially if that saves battery life.
Yeah, 8GB is just not going to do it for me these days. 16GB min, and 32GB preferred. Also I would like a 35w quad core, instead of a U-series. However I DO NOT want discrete graphics! It seems like pretty much all laptops with 35/45w quads have discreet graphics as well. I think Clevo makes a model (Haswell) that is like this, though. Although Clevo machines are great in the fact you can customize the crap out of them, their all-plastic build makes them a bit fragile. I have a P150EM (Ivy Bridge) and I am nearly afraid to take it around much, because I don't want it to get damaged, vs my work laptop which is a Latitude E6530 which is a straight up tank, I mean I can/have dropped it, kids walk on top of it, and no damage whatsoever. Any of that crap to my P150EM, and something will break!
I would have bought this laptop (with i5, QHD display and 256GB SSD) in an instant if it had 16GB version.
The way I use my computer, I've got a lot of applications and generally over 20 tabs open at any times, sometimes 50-60 when I'm in the middle of research. I just can't live with 8GB.
Pity, cause it's an excellent laptop otherwise. Maybe the Skylake update will bring a 16GB option.
The only major drawback is the auto-brightness, which I'm sure will be fixed with an update soon. IINM, the original Acer S7 had a similar issue which they fixed with a firmware update. Once that is fixed, I don't think there's any real con! Yes, we would all love it to do Yoga style acrobatics, and have touch for $800, but let's be realistic. Even with the battery life hit the QHD+ option is still class leading! Dell can't fight the the current state of technology...
But the fact that these are brought up as shortcomings just tell us how great this laptop is. I mean, no one's complaining that the $1000 Macbook Air sports an archaic non-touch non-matte low-res TN panel.
Some other sites seem to be reporting much lower battery life versus Macbook Air. I wonder if that is because they are penalising the display for being brighter? Or using Chrome? Chrome has godawful efficiency right now with Hi DPI support, I'm surprised that this is not more commonly known! My laptop does 8 hours with IE, 5 with Chrome.
Believe me, PLENTY of people are complaining about the screen on the current Macbook Air. Nobody cares about touch on a Mac, but they certainly care about the TN and low-res part.
"The FHD model (1920x1080) arrived with a single 4GB memory module and the QHD+ version came with 2x4GB, which gives us the chance to check the performance differences between the single-channel memory and dual-channel memory."
These machines are memory down (soldered RAM) configurations. There are no modules, and Lenovo would be insane to not keep both channels populated and simply use different density packages for the different models. Are you sure they're shipping single channel setups?
Is it possible that Dell sent the laptops without the ability to change auto brightness on purpose so that the battery life tests would be extraordinarily high? I'm sure they'll be good when the update to turn auto brightness off arrives but most people will remember the hype of the original amazing battery life tests. With all due respect to Anandtech I think they should not have posted battery life tests until they auto brightness can be turned off. It's not really an apples-to-apples (no pun intended) comparison.
You are right and I'm not in ANY way implying there was an bias on Anandtech's part. It's a tough call. Publish the battery life to get the results out there quickly for readers with the caveat of not being able to disable auto brightness or just write "the battery life results look to be very impressive but we are not going to publish them until we can disable auto brightness." I'm just saying I would have gone with the 2nd option for two reasons. First, if with auto brightness off the results are dramatically lower than Dell pulled one over. And second, to send a message to manufacturers that if they don't allow fair comparisons due to locked software not all testing results will be published.
As I wrote above it's a tough call and I respect Anandtech's decision I just disagree with it.
The battery results are fantastic, I wonder how much the auto-brightness plays into it. I wonder if you pointed a bright light at the light sensor if that would force the brightness to stay at maximum.
FWIW, I've run tests with laptops at 100 nits before just to see how much that would help. The difference between 100 and 200 nits is usually on the order of 30-60 minutes at most, and often less. However, to get 15 hours from a 42Wh battery means that the laptop is using around 2.74W in our Light workload. If the display adaptive brightness saves 1W, battery life would drop to 11.24 hours (give or take). Which is what happens with the QHD+ panel I should note, though how much of that is the display alone and how much is caused by a higher load on RAM and CPU/GPU to handle the higher resolution is difficult to say.
How much power does touch circuitry/software consume? I remember first generation touch enabled laptops did rather poorly compared to their non-touch versions.
These days touch is pretty negligible as I understand it -- maybe 50mW? Obviously tablets and smartphones are able to provide touch and still get great battery life. They have smaller displays but also much smaller batteries, so it should be a wash.
I wonder if it would be feasible to have a retractable webcam at the top of the laptop that could retract when not in use. That would allow for the smaller bezel and would be good from a privacy perspective too.
Can someone please tell me in which market this 13" laptops belong. Screen is too small for any serious work or watching movies, it is only usable for administration tasks and portable server because of its size and thickness. Would love to see a review of Bay Trail laptops in range to 300 USD, they are cheap and offer a lot for their price.
Um professionals that sometimes travel. Those who do "serious work" have an external monitor at their primary work space. I mean you can get a decent 24" LCD for $150 these days...
It's perfect for lightweight tasks when travelling: SSH, web-browsing, IM, a bit of code, reading stuff. If I need actual power, I'll drag along something like a Precision around instead.
As a computer professional who doesn't have a desk at his job, but travels between 8 different worksites, something like this would be amazing to take with me, as in 80% of my computer time at work is dedicated to research, emails, and general day to day trudgery. I've been using 13 inch laptops for almost 7 years now, and have had no major issues with it (the only issue I have is if I ever try to do photo-editing, and at that point a 720p panel just doesn't have the pixels to display everything), even at 720p resolution.
I have a XPS 13 from 2013 and I love it. I use a 28" external at work, but when I'm sitting on the couch or traveling the smaller size machine works great.
Peter Bright over at Ars mentioned in the comments to his review that Dell told him the 512 GB SSD option was PCIe based. Which would be nice, but it also means that the M.2 slot supports both SATA 6 Gb/s and PCIe if you want to upgrade yourself.
And are we seriously OK with the GPU performance here, pushing 4.44x the pixels of the 13-inch MacBook Air with HD Graphics 5500 (GT2)? Not noticeably laggy or overwhelmed during general usage? This just seems crazy since we're talking 25% more pixels than the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display with roughly half the GPU power.
Also, any idea if the DP port is Dual-Mode, or if it supports DP 1.2 HBR2 and MST? I reckon it should...
It is DP 1.2, but maxes out at 3840 x 2160 @ 60 Hz on the Broadwell U-series processors. Supports MST with up to 3 independent displays (including the built-in display - same as Haswell). Don't know about dual-mode. https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/quick-re...
Thanks for the response. I was more curious if Dell's implementation as shipped with currently available Intel graphics drivers actually supported MST hubs or TMDS modes though. Sometimes the capabilities Intel lists for their GPUs don't always materialize straight away in shipping hardware / drivers.
For Windows use, Intel's HD 4600 and above generally run fine in my experience, even with a 4K display. Which isn't to say that gaming or certain other tasks work properly (H.265 video decoding I've heard can be too much for the BDW-U systems, not sure if that's still true), but no one buys a system with Intel GPU for gaming. It can handle it in some cases at lower quality settings, but that's about it.
So I'm in the market for a new travel laptop and I really like the idea of this, but it's actually maybe smaller than I want. Can I have an XPS 15 in a 13" chassis, please?
@Uplink10 - 13" is hardly too small for watching movies! Personally, I can enjoy films on a 10" netbook (and actually also on an 8" tablet). This laptop would be terrific in that regard.
I would seriously consider this if it had a 15" screen. My 17", 10 pound laptop gets heavy rather quickly; a lighter alternative would be welcomed when something lighter, but less powerful, would serve.
I don't think there are any M.2 2280 1 TB SSDs out yet. I think they only accommodate 4 NAND packages, which isn't enough for 1 TB at current densities / # of dies per package.
I see reviews of laptops with decent IPS displays but then when I actually try to purchase them they don't seem to exist. They seem to offer them for a time, and then they don't. I used a small XPS and now a Lenovo X220, both with IPS for my photography work(amateur), but I've been starting to look for a replacement. The X220 is really toooo small for my aging eyes. This looks perfect and frankly I don't think the price is that bad. My last two were in the 2k range. However the inability to calibrate is a non starter with me. They have to sort that out.
After my experience with the XPS12 and Dell's support, I wouldn't touch this thing with a 10 foot pole. My XPS12 is just plain broken and Dell won't do anything for me except keep sending me a box to ship it to their depot, where they do nothing but reinstall the OS, verify it boots and send it back. Extremely disappointed.
If you've had it serviced multiple times and are still in warranty insist on having the unit replaced. I had a first gen XPS 12 that Dell replaced with a 2nd gen XPS 12 last year (and got upgraded from a 256GB SSD to 512GB)
I'm very curious about the auto brightness issue. That is a Windows control in the detailed power settings not something that is usually manufacturer specific, did turning Display>Enable Adaptive Brightness off not work?
Also, just for clarity, was this a version straight from Dell with their usual bloat or a clean software image like what Microsoft sells in their stores? Seeing some wildly varying reviews on battery life, for example the Verge ragged the battery as being 6 hours in normal usage which is obviously not what you are seeing and I'm curious about possible reasons.
For starters the Verge places the brightness at like 70% during their battery tests, which is going to seriously penalize this display. Basically, their reviews aren't exactly scientific. (The reviewer even mentioned how like 30% brightness was enough for him).
I'm not sure what other sites do for testing, but we try to be as consistent as possible. The laptops are put in power saving mode, the display is put at as close to 200 nits as possible, and we use IE to test for battery life. All of our tests are repeated multiple times. All I can say is that I checked this a couple of times, and with the asterisk that Dell has enabled adaptive brightness with no way to disable it, the results were consistent across the runs.
If you really wanted a big SSD on the FHD model, it is pretty cheap to just buy it with the 128 gb hd and install your own 512GB even with it being m2. 512GB SATA 3 Transcend on Amazon is now just over $200, PCIe at roughly twice that. Given OEM's tendency to gouge on storage (at least not as bad as Apple which is just outrageous) it's the better way to go and even with drive copying and screwdriver work it's a 30 minute operation.
If you're comparing the prices of the cheapest SSDs you can find on Amazon or Newegg to CTO options from a major OEM, there's obviously going to be a difference. What makes Apple's pricing "gouging"? 256 GB SSD options generally run $200 extra compared to 128 GB, or $500 extra for 512 GB. Do you have a cheaper source for Samsung XP951 based PCIe 2.0 x4 SSDs using MLC NAND?
Apple charge £120 to upgrade from a 1TB drive to a 3TB drive in an iMac 27". These are standard 3.5" desktop drives. The price difference between a 1TB drive and 3TB drive at retail is about £35. £120 may not sound like much but that's still 350% more than free market prices.
Then there's the £800 for a 1TB SSD. Market prices are around £350. It's rather irrelevant if you can find a Samsung XP951 cheaper, they do not at any point advertise it being a Samsung XP951.
Even so, a 512GB XP951 costs £340 at retail, whereas the 'Apple cost' for it is around £450. And this is in a 27" iMac that can easily fit two, if not four 2.5" SSDs which would offer comparable storage and performance at less than half the cost - but they don't offer the option. Deliberately offering a very expensive option with no real advantages is the pretty much the definition of price gouging (note that I'm not referring to the US legal definition here)
Interesting - all credit for testing QHD vs. FHD. I'd seen the other reviews (QHD only) showing mediocre battery life and had been wondering why 14nm was't delivering an improvement!
The Inspirons may have been shite back then, but I recall fondly the Latitudes and Precisions of those days. Chunky beasts, yes, but it was a period when you could get high res screens in a decent chassis. 1400×1050 14", 1920×1200 15", 1600×1200 15".. blah, blah.. Got a D800 that still works fine, with Radeon 9600 GPU. Hot shit for the time.
Wow, looks like a really nice laptop. I've always wondered why bezels had to be so large.
I'm typing this on a 13" 2013 Retina MBP. Now that Windows is starting to get high dpi scaling into better shape, and vendors like Dell are making nice high-dpi hardware, I might be able to finally come back to the PC world. OSX just isn't that great, and running Windows on a mac isn't that great either.
Brett, there is one question this review has left me, and it seems like a fairly big one... is there any aftermarket upgradability with this device? I currently have an Acer TimelineX 3810 that's almost hitting the end of its life, and i find that i don't really use the dedicated graphics for anything, and I was thinking about upgrading to this laptop. Would i be able for example to upgrade the ram myself to 8gb? or be able to put in a 512gb ssd (i'm assuming it's not a 2.5 inch hdd in there)?
I bought the Core i3 version and had serious performance issues, to the point of trying to return the device. What I found was, even after doing a clean install of Windows 8.1, that the Intel Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework Settings (located in the advanced settings of the battery profiles) were set to 0.6GHz@15W for the Balanced and Power Saver profiles, even for plugged in mode. And for the High Performance profile, the battery setting was also set to 0.6GHz. I had not thought to look at that specific setting, but I couldn't accept that this brand new device was slower than my Venue 8 Pro tablet. It's weird that they choose to have this performance setting - even for the plugged in mode mind you - on the standard battery profile that ships with the device and/or OS. So after changing that setting, the device performance is night and day. So just a heads up if you get this and it feels slow, have a look at those settings.
Wow, that's a HUGE battery life penalty for the QHD+ screen that delivers very slightly sharper text.
It's not like 1080p @ 13.3" isn't already pin-sharp, and the IGP is useless in most games at even super low resolutions, so I'm genuinely thinking the FHD screen is a better choice here....
"I have an XPS13 on my desk at the moment. It's definitely the best I've seen from Dell to date, but it's got some issues that would drive me absolutely bonkers.
The touchpad, for starters, is just not there. That is to say it cannot hold a candle to anything the fruit has put out for the past I dunno, 8 years. The webcam placement? I mean, I know you have a lot to do to make that bezel so small, but this is just stupid. Who wants to look at my nosehairs and boogs during a chat? And another pretty annoying bit - Dell, dude.... put a friggin right angle on the damn power plug already! Or please come up with some non-patent-infringing magsafe like tech dammit. This plug is unsightly, ungainly, and flat out terrible for this class of ultrabook.
Otherwise, there is a lot to like - the unreal screen, the size, plenty of speed, etc.
It's just a few minor issues from being able to truly unseat the MBA which i'm sure were made to cut cost. The problem is, with the new (r?)MBA due out any moment, it may not even get the chance."
Dell is on the right track. Hopefully they address the issues in the next version (and release it post-haste).
Alongside the new ThinPad, this looks like a very nice machine indeed(and great to see that PC laptops are catching up with MacBooks in terms of performance and design!) My only gripe is that I wish there was a 16GB option.
Touch is stupid, any resolution beyond 1080p is stupid. (it negatively affects EVERYTHING, as evidenced in this review.) I don't want actual glass on my laptop.
If it weren't for these specific issues, mostly the glass, this would be my next executive laptop. I'm gonna need one next year. So hopefully they can fix these things before then, either that or I switch the company to Lenovo. Doesn't really matter to me, but I do really like what they did with the power adapter/battery.
I have a touch screen laptop and it is brillant, especailly for casual web browsing. It is precisely the reason that I see so many people with iPad keyboard cases.
XPS 12 flip hinge doesn't allow for bezels this small. But the XPS definitely could use a refresh with either a larger panel in the same body or smaller oversall size with the same sized panel.
In the Display section there is a big difference in Contrast and Black values between your diagrams and the following two pictures with very different values. Which are the correct ones? Is it a mistake caused by the auto-brightness or what?
We test contrast and black levels at maximum brightness, but the actual screen testing happens at 200 nits. Plus, we use a different tool for the brightness/black levels which is more accurate for blacks. So the result you see on the grayscale chart will be different for these reasons.
I mean, the different brightness level at witch you test the contrast can't be the cause of a contrast dropping from 1500 to 700, it is almost impossible. And even if that were the case you should take that as a reference because none uses their display at max bright unless outdoor in a sunny day.
The meter we test the grayscale and color accuracy is not accurate at detecting blacks, so the contrast ratio will go down because of the noise in the sensor thinking that there is more light than there actually is, which is why we use a different meter to test contrast. So yes, just ignore that reading since it is incorrect.
This is probably a silly question, but I have been wondering if the very good black levels could to some part be due to the adaptive brightness "feature". Is it right that if you measure the black level on a black screen, then the adaptive brightness would lower the brightness and therefore you would see a better black level? Could that have been the case in your measurements?
This is a pretty awesome Ultrabook. I prefer the form factor of my Surface Pro, but if I were to begin typing on the go a lot more, this would be right at the top of my list I think. Looks even better than the MBA I offloaded!
Looking at the model lineup...damn, they missed some pretty compelling options. Gimping the FHD screen in memory and SSD (and to a lesser extent CPU) is a damned shame. So what if the price would overlap with the bottom end of the QHD+ models, the battery life of the FHD screen model is insane; I would bet that one with an i5, 256GB or 512GB SSD, and 8GB of RAM would be extremely popular.
There is one: I have a Core i5 model with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. Availability of models varies a great deal between regions though. I'm in New Zealand. I'm loving the matte screen.
So what's the secret to the HD Graphics 5500 doing better than the 5000? It's 24EUs @ 300 - 950 (Boost) MHz, vs 40EUs @ 200 - 1100 (Boost) MHz. These things stay at the boost clock while gaming most of the time, so the base freq difference isn't a huge factor. Near half the EUs, lower max clock, and better performance?
I know of all the internal improvements to the Broadwell GPUs, but I thought we were expecting like 20% more squeezed out there, not being able to match a higher clocked 40EU part with a lower clocked 24EU part...
I wonder what the 48 EU part with eDRAM will perform like then...
Goddamit, Anandtech! As I was perfectly enjoying my day, this review comes up and manages to see this late night. At least it made me even more happier.
Almost bought one today, but then I found out that Linux support is less than stellar. Also it would be nice to have a PCIe/NVMe SSD instead of mSATA. Guess I'm gonna wait for Skylake.
Finally laptop's are catching up to their tablet cousins in battery life and display. One feature the article doesn't mention but I really miss with laptops is Access Point mode for the wireless card. The Intel card in particular is poor - no AP mode, 1 radio so it can't do both 2.4 and 5 GHz at the same time, can't handle multiple SSID's. I would really like to see more detail on the WiFi components.
My laptop (Gigabyte p34g) runs at 47-48 dB under full load as well. It's noticeably quite loud. I don't find it distracting while gaming as I'm engaged. It definitely wouldn't want to do video/photo editing with fans that loud though.
" we have 24 execution units, compared to only 20 on Haswell-U."
Isn't it 40 on the HD Graphics 5000, which is in Haswell-U? That's why I was confused about how a 24EU part at a lower boost clock does better than the old 40EU part at a higher boost, even with Broadwells new GPU features.
This is not the Iris or HD 6000 version of Broadwell-U, so it compares to HD 4400/4600 more directly, which had 20 EUs. HD 6000 has 48 EUs, but I don't know a single laptop using it yet.
Understandable, I'm curious what's making it perform better than the 40EU part though. I know a lot of that die space was used for running at a lower base clock to save power, but it had a higher turbo than the 5500 as well as near double the EUs, so the 5500 with less EUs and lower clocked performing better is what confused me.
We have not had any Kaveri laptops in for review unfortunately. The only one in Bench is a prototype, so not all testing was done on it, but here's a comparison on what we have: http://anandtech.com/bench/product/1422?vs=1236
Wish they'd include a discrete GPU option. Not anything particularly powerful, but something like the 840M that's been popular in other thin-and-light "ultrablades". That paired with the more reasonable 1080p screen would enable a lot of games at decent settings, without blowing power/heat budget.
I'm not sure the discrete GPU would be a good fit. Clearly it is designed as an ultrabook not as a thin and light gaming notebook. Even if the discrete GPU wouldn't add a huge amount of heat, it would still require sacrifices in thinness and battery life. The 840M wouldn't even provide enough GPU power for gaming enthusiasts, leaving the xps 13 awkwardly in the middle between pure ultrabook and pure gaming laptop.
It appears to be trivially easy to upgrade the SSD to whatever you want. Several Torx screws and one Phillips and the back comes off, and there is the M2 SSD right before your eyes. I wouldn't let storage be a worry.
Perhaps someone could help me out. Looking at this graph the xps13 display should be as bright as a macbook air? I have the FHD 256gb i5 model of the xps13 and a late 2011 11in macbook air. Side by side the screen appears 2x brighter on the mba. Is this a result of defective backlighting, or the antiglare coating, or perhaps I've reading the graphs wrong.
The Trackpad is currently unusable and needs to be brought to the attention of Dell / Microsoft. It is not really precision and needs dedicated drivers to adjust things like:
- Stopping the cursor from jumping when you lift your finger; - Ability to disable pinch to zoom as this sometimes interferes with two finger scroll and zooms the page in IE / Microsoft instead of scrolling it; - Ability to customize gestures as you can with Synaptics drivers
Not sure if this was already mentioned, but I think it should be noted in the battery life section that the Macbook Air 13" battery life was while it was running Windows 8, not OSX (The Surface Pro 3 battery life graph shows this).
It doesn't matter that the included SSD is SATA. M.2 requires PCIe and SATA to coexist based on the slot key. If it's B-Key, then it can talk SATA, PCIe-x2, USB, Audio, PCM, and lots of other things. If it's M-Key (like the XP941) then it only talks SATA and PCIe-x4. Reference:
I'd really like a MBP replacement. My MBP 13 has 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD, which is what I need for my serious photo work. But I don't like the Apple OS nor the Apple keyboard, nor the big touchpad without buttons, nor the sharp edge on the leading edge/wristrest. Dell, your XPS 13 is getting close. Please give us the equivalent with a 15" panel (in a 13" chassis so I can use it on the plane) with 16GB and 1 TB and a calibrate-able display.
The XPS 15 doesn't have the power-saving IGZO display technology, nor the superslim bezels, nor the power-saving 14nm broadwell CPUs. The difference in normalized battery life is incredible (6 min/Wh versus 17 min/Wh for the XPS 15 vs XPS 13 with FHD display).
Let's hope Dell delivers a new XPS 15 that provides similar features. We will have to wait for more quad core mobile Broadwell processors to arrive before we see that.
8 GB of RAM is necessary to boost the graphics numbers in most cases for the IGP. Sometimes the boost is very small, but it is there.
Apple's display is looking pretty substandard compared to the numbers of the other devices.
The battery life of the new Dell is remarkable; Apple needs to hit better numbers to be comparable as Windows is harder on battery life than OSX.
I had a chance to look at this device in person about a week ago. It is a nice device, yet the build quality in hand feels better on the Razer Blade all around. Not Apples to Apples though because the price difference and components. At the end of the day I wanted the Blade more so.
The Dell battery accessory is the best thing about this whole article because I deal with Dell at work. As someone who is caught in Dell's ecosystem that accessory is well thought out for versatility. I could use this for multiple devices that I carry and my users could too.
Just wanted to point out the iPad Air 2 gets the same scores in GFXBench's Trex and Manhattan tests (offscreen). So Apple's tablet SoC has the same graphical power as Intel's ultra book chips, despite operating at a much lower TDP.
Am I the only one that does not want 16:9 especially in a screen that small. At least give me 16:10 so I can actually put something other than video on the screen without a scroll-fest. That is one thing that makes the surface 3 so appealing to me.
No internal picture seems to be part of the reviews now which is disappointing particularly as these days the internal accessibility of parts can vary considerably.
Thankfully Ifixit have posted a full teardown, the SSD is upgradeable and easy to access but the ram isn't as it's soldered on.
I have worked on this laptop and it is truly a beautiful piece of technology. I got it just a few weeks after it initially launched for a co-worker. Set it up and loved it. Hated to part with it. I was carrying it all over the office and even non techie people were wanting to touch it and hold it due to it's tiny size yet huge screen.
Combined with a relatively low price for this type of unit with an included SSD and this is a no-brainer for any typical business user. I can't imagine why you'd want any other laptop unless you simply need more power, but very few business users do these days.
Are you sure you can't disable the auto brightness? I found it unintuitive but I was able to figure out how to do it in the battery settings of my previous generation XPS 13
Just curious Brett, with the adaptive brightness enabled, how were you able to calibrate the display to get your results? I recently shipment of this otherwise great laptop on March 4 and using Xrite's i1Profiler have not been able to get a decent color profile made (yes, I've 'disabled' adaptive brightness in all the typical places.) Would it be possible to please ping Dell again, since your request would carry more weight than hundreds of us regular folk?! Thanks!
I was not able to calibrate the display, I was only able to read the stock results due to the Content Adaptive Brightness Control, and not by our standard means. I spoke to Dell just yesterday and they still do not have a solution to this issue yet.
Thanks for the update, Brett. Hopefully Dell is actively working on a solution, even if it negatively impacts battery life.
JoJ, the adaptive brightness is not based on ambient light level, but on the content of what data is being displayed on the screen. In the case of running display calibration/profiling software, after setting the initial brightness level, each color patch is displayed on screen and read back by a spectro/colorimeter. Any variation in brightness during this process results in creation of a bogus color profile.
Dell are missing a huge trend to carrying smaller kit in professional photography if they don't fix this brightness issue. I think this is holding back a lot of sales right now. I was going to go for the FHD as a coding and writing machine but this review suggested to me that the QHD might calibrate very well given the out of any advantage being so much over the FHD model I'm looking out for faster M.2 drives and crossing my fingers for any kind of hack to calibrate the shiny new super res screen...
Oh and oh for more RAM ... Dell just missed out on a blockbuster here?
Someone else had asked me that, so I set the 3200x1800 display to 1600x900, just to see if part of the battery life loss was due to rendering. My battery life test for this setting was almost identical to the 3200x1800 resolution.
So it does not improve battery life because the main power draw of the higher resolution display is the increased requirements of the backlight to drive the same brightness level through a much more dense TFT. At least that was my findings on the XPS 13.
Thanks very much, appreciate it! Torn on which one to buy, given that I am a frequent traveler, but also generally enjoy touch and have a pretty much unlimited budget.
I think that it'll never be fixed. It's April.. over 3 months from the launch... It's a pity, a great quality screen but with a glaring defect... no calibration possible... :(
I bought the 2015 Dell XPS 13 on the assumption that Dell would release a fix that would allow end users to calibrate the display. As mazzy said, it seems like Dell has no intention of fixing this, perhaps because it would reveal that battery life is highly dependent on Adaptive Brightness being enabled. Guess I'll wait to the last day to return it, and file this one away as being Duped-by-Dell.
Does the standard Dell Wireless 1560 support Intel Wireless Display (WiDi) or do I have to opt in the Intel AC 7260? Does that matter at all because the Dell Wireless 1560 might support Miracast?
The battery life for the system: i7-5500U / 8GB-RAM / 512GB-SSD / 3200x1800 infinity touch is listed to be only about 7.5 hours. The Apple 13-inch Macbook gets 10 hours or more.
But, Dell doesn't offer the 512 GB SSD, which I need for space, without also having the power-sucking HD+ screen. That stops me from buying the latest XPS-13.
Dell could make simple changes and make a machine I'd buy, but for some reason they don't do this.
The core i7 processor is a must, because it consumes less power than the core i5, and a 512 GB SSD is also a must to compete with Apple machines, but the HD+ screen wastes too much power. An HD screen is just fine on a 13-inch machine.
Until I can get a i7-5500U / 8GB-RAM / 512GB-SSD, with just the HD display (I don't care whether it's touch or not), I won't buy this. With the HD display, that system would have great battery life - I'd estimate at least 10 hours, and probably more like 11 or 12, maybe more. Dell ruins the machine by not offering the best options for battery life.
I do have an older first-generation XPS 13, and I like it, but with a meager 128 GB, 70 GB taken by the OS and restore partition, it's got too little storage.
If Dell makes the machine I want, I'll buy one tomorrow. If they don't make that by Christmas, I'll probably purchase the Apple 13 inch model. It has the good battery life for an Ultrabook.
Oh, and Dell's suggested solution for the poorer battery life is to carry around a plug-in battery pack for extra power. That competely defeats the purpose of having an Ultrabook!
You're comparing apples to oranges there. Trying to compare the XPS vs a Macbook isn't really targeting the same user. Macbook's come with Core m3 or m5 (below i-series) processors not the i7 processor that you consider a "must." No touch screen, no QHD, worse on board graphics, DDR3, single port, yada yada yada... And no, the Macbook does NOT get 17.5+ hours on a battery charge doing anything besides idling. The XPS is a VERY different machine than the Apple Macbook...
I just received a brand new skylake 16Gb/1TB i7 XPS13 and I am getting 4-5 hours of battery life while only browsing and emailing at 50% screen brightness. Is this the advertised "Up to 18 hours of battery life standard. Add an additional 10 hours with the optional Dell Power Companion."? - straight from the Dell web site specific for this model.
Is this the same as the advertised 50 GBit internet I signed up for and where I only received 14GBit? Or is there something I can do about this?
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jabber - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Seen quite a few cracked glass screens on touch enabled laptops. Some (including Dell) put a hole near the top of the glass for the microphone. Causes a weakspot near the top of the screen where folks will hold the screen to open it. Not very clever. Be wary of all glass screens.MonkeyPaw - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
I've had a glass-screened laptop for over a year (yoga 11s). My toddler pulled it off the table and onto the hardwood floor. Cracked the corner of the plastic case, but the screen is still intact.althaz - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Anecdotal evidence: It's anecdotal!jabber - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Just something to be aware of. Anyone with knowledge of structural integrity etc. would avoid putting a hole in a brittle substance near to a point of frequent stress. It seems that laptop manufacturers aren't too clued up on this. The last one I got handed from a customer with a cracked touch screen took three visits from Dell to fix.The screens still work its just you have a nicely cracked glass layer on top. Not pretty.
superflex - Monday, February 23, 2015 - link
Trololololololololololololololololololololcknobman - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Pretty solid offering from Dell.I like the i5, 8GB, 256GB, QHD+ model but the price is just too high.
The configuration that interests me is the i5, 8gb ram, 256gb ssd, FHD model which on Dells website is $1099.
Problem is I can get a Surface Pro 3 i5, 8gb ram, 256gb ssd, QHD model for $1199.
Dell needs to lower the prices on their models $100-$200.
boskone - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
No, they don't. The improved battery life (rougly 50-200% better) of the XPS 13 alone makes up the cost difference.It's really an apples-to-oranges comparison, though, since tablets and ultrabooks (or laptops in general) have different strengths and weaknesses.
nos024 - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Add $150 to the surface pro for keyboard.mebby - Thursday, February 26, 2015 - link
Good point. Though $130 not $150.piroroadkill - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Price is not too high. This is a very nice machine, and worth the money, no question.I'd have an i5, 8GiB, 256GB, FHD version. Stupid QHD+ eating FIVE hours of battery life, screw that, waste of time.
The ONLY problem with the aforementioned awesome spec is... the somewhat shitty graphics. If Intel pulls their finger out, or Dell can somehow fit better graphics in the same chassis, everyone else has been utterly schooled.
Stochastic - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
I’ve been using this machine for a few weeks now. My impressions so far are largely positive. Here are some things that would take this laptop from “Great” to “Unbeatable”:--Offer option to disable auto-brightness
--Improve display calibration of FHD model
--Use less aggressive anti-glare coating on FHD model
--Give more touchpad options for configuration
--Reduce tendency of fan to spool up when plugged in (this can be tweaked in software settings, however)
--Adjust position of webcam
--Add just a smidge more key travel (I wouldn’t mind a 1mm thicker device)
--Use a different material for keyboard such that smudging is less noticeable
--Reduce price of 256GB SSD/8GB RAM model by $100
--Provide option for touch display on the FHD model for $100 or less premium
If Dell made the above changes then this device would absolutely take the market by storm. As is, it’s still a very solid device in my opinion.
I will say that I’m not getting anywhere close to the battery life that Anandtech is reporting for the FHD model. I’ve read on forums that the CPU usage spikes up whenever the touchpad is used, so that might account for the disparity. It would be great if Anandtech could investigate this.
eddman - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
"I will say that I’m not getting anywhere close to the battery life that Anandtech is reporting for the FHD model."Do you mean web browsing battery life? If so, are you using chrome? If yes, then it could be the culprit. Last time I checked chrome used a bit too much power compared to IE.
Stochastic - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Yeah, I am using Chrome. I feel crazy saying this, but I'm actually really looking forward to Microsoft's Spartan browser.ymcpa - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Why would you say you feel crazy? IE has been a good browser for a while now and it is less resource intensive than chrome. It's funny that chrome started out as the light, simple alternative to IE and now it is the bloated one. The only reason to stay with chrome is if extensions are important to you and Spartan is reported to allow extensions.CaedenV - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Ya, I use to swear by chrome a few years ago, but about 1.5 years ago I started having odd issues where it would slow my computer down and have odd rendering/graphical glitches. I tried FF again for a few months but really hate the changes they have been making to it. So now I have been using IE for the last year for lack of something better... and you know what? It pretty much works. I do miss some of the plugins that I use to have, but the privacy settings do a decent job at blocking most adds which is the big thing. Not saying that I have really fallen in love with IE, but for 90% of what I do it works great, and the other 10% I hold my nose and use FireFox.If not for the performance (and privacy paranoia) I would switch back to chrome in a heartbeat, but it simply is not as good as it use to be compared to the other options available.
mhonard - Friday, March 13, 2015 - link
I have the MS signature version with i5, 256gb, 8gb ram, QHD touch display and NOT running chrome. Light usage I'm only getting 6.5 hours of usage in balanced mode. I am using the touchpad exclusively. It would be nice to understand why I'm getting such a different result than Anadtech. This is a deal killer for the price I paid.Brett Howse - Saturday, March 14, 2015 - link
Could be lots of things really. What is your display set to for brightness? Display is a big draw. You are getting between our heavy workload and our light workload, so assuming your display is close to 200 nits, it could just be that your light workload is still a lot heavier than our light web browsing workload. File copies, network access, and other things can all contribute to a lot more power draw.First suggestion is to set the brightness lower as it will likely have the biggest impact. You can also try installing Battery Bar to see what kind of power draw you are pulling at any one time.
tipoo - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Go to the windows 8 start screen and just type in brightness, the auto feature should be there to turn off? I don't have this model but that's how it worked on every win8 laptop I used.ymcpa - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
The article stated that there is no option to off the auto brightness setting and have asked Dell to respond. I'm sure it is something that can be fixed in a future firmware update.ymcpa - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Not sure what more touchpad options mean. I bet the fan spools up when plugged in because the power setting are set for highest performance when plugged in. There is probably not much they can do with the web cam without increasing the bezel. I would suggest a flip up web cam that is hidden and you flip it up when you need it. Plus this will insure privacy since people won't be able to hack in to the laptop and access the web cam. The rest of your comments seem very doable.Alexvrb - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
I like the idea of a flip-up webcam.OrphanageExplosion - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Any thoughts on the keyboard flex seen in the LinusTechTips vid? Makes the unit look really flimsy and I *really* wanted to upgrade to this from my 2012 MBA...Black Obsidian - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Watch that video again, and look at how much flex is being exhibited by the table itself. It's not all (or even mostly) the keyboard. Something's flimsy alright, but it's not the keyboard.In my experience, the new XPS13 does have more keyboard flex than the MBA, but but only slightly, and it's far from being a deal-breaker.
cump - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
I have a 2011 mba and the xps 13 doesn't feel flimsy at all imo.Dug - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
So under Power Options- Change advanced power settings- Display- Enable adaptive brightness- Setting: Off doesn't work?eanazag - Monday, February 23, 2015 - link
The comparison is totally confusing. Dell has much better battery life, but Surface is still on Haswell. Surface has a touch screen plus pen, but the keyboard is a necessary $130 add-on. USB ports are not similar. The base Dell wireless doesn't have Bluetooth, but Surface does. Webcam placement can be a big deal; while Surface has front and back cams. Surface can be had with a docking station designed for it.This would be a tough choice between either device.
Personally, I hate click pads. I don't care where; I just don't like them anywhere.
uditrana - Wednesday, April 29, 2015 - link
Also Microsoft Store has had a 100$ price cut on the models they have for a while now.ingwe - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Wow this looks great for a travel laptop! I wish that the 256 Gb hard drive and 8 Gb RAM were standard but oh well.There seems to be a lot of good options for high end mobile right now. Between this Dell, the Razer, Surface Pro, and Apple's line up I don't know what I want my next upgrade to be. (I get these are all very different options, but they all seem to be executed really well).
Duraz0rz - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Wow. I don't really need a laptop, but this really makes me want one. I don't really do a whole lot on my desktop any more, really, so I might actually consider it or the Surface Pro 3's Broadwell refresh (assuming there is one).ymcpa - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Judging by the recent price drops and trade-in promotions for the Surface pro 3, a refresh might show up pretty soon.DanNeely - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Have Dell/Sharp ever explained what is so special about the new display to get the bezels that small? They hyped it up as a Dell exclusive when first announced; but looking at it the first thing to come to mind is "smartphones have had bezels that small for a while; what's so special about making a laptop size screen the same way."PS No web cam fail picture? The one from Ars Technica's review was great.
http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2015...
retrospooty - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
The question is, "why haven't other been doing this all along"... Or at least making an effort towards smaller bezels in general.jabber - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Just watch the flex as you open with a glass screen and bezels that thin."Ahh another fine morning, let's open up my lovely laptop and start work!"
'CRACK'
"Damn!"
retrospooty - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Its not going to crack when you open it... Dropping it may be a bigger worry than with other laptops, but not normal day to day usage.sorten - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
jabber, you're expending a lot of energy to warn people about cracked screens.jabber - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Yes cos I've had quite a few come into me to fix. Didn't happen before screens had a glass touch layer on them.Well fancy that!
Not as robust as you would think. I'll take the non-touch option thanks.
fokka - Saturday, February 21, 2015 - link
sure, phone screens also were more robust when they were made out of plastic. the good thing is a laptop is closed when transporting it and since you're not just holding your laptop in one hand, chances it is dropped are also much smaller.glass on the other hand feels much nicer on touchscreens, imho it's much easier to clean and it can even make the screen lid more rigid.
i think panicing over broken laptop screens is a slight over reaction, but to each their own.
asliarun - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
As I understand it, the bezel is where the control circuitry (among other things like edge lighting) exists. IGZO or Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide transistors are transparent compared to amorphous silicon. Plus, they have significantly more electron mobility. All this combined means that the control circuitry can be etched on the panel itself instead of the bezel. Plus, the transparency and increased electron mobility allows them to make really high res displays that also consume less power.They even have prototypes of non-rectangular IGZO displays (such as truly circular displays).
But all this is based on reading a few articles, so feel free to correct me if I got something wrong.
kyuu - Monday, February 23, 2015 - link
It's not the IGZO tech that allows for the reduced bezels. This is evidenced by the fact that the 1080p non-IGZO option has the same sized bezels.Darkstone - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
It isn't special. It's just that nobody bothered to do it yet.I have an E6520, the bezels are around thumb-wide. But when i disassembly the display there is really only 3-4mm of metal to the side of the display. The rest of the space is air, an cable, and the solid magnesium frame. This laptop contains an completely standard display, an format that hasn't changed since.. a long time.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSKZSjNuAr4 @ 4:00.
Of course that has it's advantages as well. If you drop your XPS 13 the display is progably more likely to break than a laptop with MBA-sized bezels. Mobile phones are more forgiving because there is less mass to begin with.
jospoortvliet - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link
Somebody bothered, years ago: Samsung series 9. Where they beat Dell to small bezels, they also announced the series 9 2015 model in December 2014: 12" screen, under 1 kg (2 lbs), passively cooled core M, high res screen and long battery life. Yeah, that is Apple's new MacBook, just three months earlier.Series 9 had been and continues to be ahead 😃
jospoortvliet - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link
Somebody bothered, years ago: Samsung series 9. Where they beat Dell to small bezels, they also announced the series 9 2015 model in December 2014: 12" screen, under 1 kg (2 lbs), passively cooled core M, high res screen and long battery life. Yeah, that is Apple's new MacBook, just three months earlier.Series 9 had been and continues to be ahead 😃
retrospooty - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Looks like some great specs and a great laptop... Hopefully it doesn't suffer from the odd glitches and high fail rates that some (not all) Dell products suffer from. Time will tell.programcsharp - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
I like this, but what I really want is a 15" version with a bit more oomph. The 13" ends up being cute but pricey.Do a 15" QHD+ version with an i7, 512gb ssd and 32 gb RAM and now we're talking.
esterhasz - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Not to forget: all you're saying, and in the footprint of a 13" machine!andrewaggb - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
agreed. A 15" (13" frame) machine would be great.jeffkibuule - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Quad core Broadwell chips still haven't shipped, which is why we probably haven't seen a new 15" laptop from any major OEM yet.I'm also not sure we will get 32GB in a mainstream laptop yet, seems 16GB is still the top for the high end. Maybe with DDR4?
UtilityMax - Wednesday, February 25, 2015 - link
The statement that a 15 inch laptop needs a quad-core CPU is a little perplexing. The only quad-core Intel CPUs for laptops are the high wattage versions of the Core i7 CPUs, and they represent a valuable but very small portion of the market. More and more high end laptops ship with the "U" series if Core i7 CPUs, which are dual core, even in machines that are meant to replace quad-core offerings. The value is multiple cores is seriously over-hyped as far as desktops are concerned. Lots of applications are still single threaded, or multithreaded where one core still bottlenecks the main thread. Two fast cores are plenty for most laptop and tablet users, specially if that saves battery life.extide - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Yeah, 8GB is just not going to do it for me these days. 16GB min, and 32GB preferred. Also I would like a 35w quad core, instead of a U-series. However I DO NOT want discrete graphics! It seems like pretty much all laptops with 35/45w quads have discreet graphics as well. I think Clevo makes a model (Haswell) that is like this, though. Although Clevo machines are great in the fact you can customize the crap out of them, their all-plastic build makes them a bit fragile. I have a P150EM (Ivy Bridge) and I am nearly afraid to take it around much, because I don't want it to get damaged, vs my work laptop which is a Latitude E6530 which is a straight up tank, I mean I can/have dropped it, kids walk on top of it, and no damage whatsoever. Any of that crap to my P150EM, and something will break!aryonoco - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
I would have bought this laptop (with i5, QHD display and 256GB SSD) in an instant if it had 16GB version.The way I use my computer, I've got a lot of applications and generally over 20 tabs open at any times, sometimes 50-60 when I'm in the middle of research. I just can't live with 8GB.
Pity, cause it's an excellent laptop otherwise. Maybe the Skylake update will bring a 16GB option.
trane - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
This must deserve an Editor's Choice award?The only major drawback is the auto-brightness, which I'm sure will be fixed with an update soon. IINM, the original Acer S7 had a similar issue which they fixed with a firmware update. Once that is fixed, I don't think there's any real con! Yes, we would all love it to do Yoga style acrobatics, and have touch for $800, but let's be realistic. Even with the battery life hit the QHD+ option is still class leading! Dell can't fight the the current state of technology...
But the fact that these are brought up as shortcomings just tell us how great this laptop is. I mean, no one's complaining that the $1000 Macbook Air sports an archaic non-touch non-matte low-res TN panel.
Some other sites seem to be reporting much lower battery life versus Macbook Air. I wonder if that is because they are penalising the display for being brighter? Or using Chrome? Chrome has godawful efficiency right now with Hi DPI support, I'm surprised that this is not more commonly known! My laptop does 8 hours with IE, 5 with Chrome.
RT81 - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Believe me, PLENTY of people are complaining about the screen on the current Macbook Air. Nobody cares about touch on a Mac, but they certainly care about the TN and low-res part.repoman27 - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
"The FHD model (1920x1080) arrived with a single 4GB memory module and the QHD+ version came with 2x4GB, which gives us the chance to check the performance differences between the single-channel memory and dual-channel memory."These machines are memory down (soldered RAM) configurations. There are no modules, and Lenovo would be insane to not keep both channels populated and simply use different density packages for the different models. Are you sure they're shipping single channel setups?
repoman27 - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
D'oh! Dell, not Lenovo.Brett Howse - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Sorry I made a mistake there. It is in fact 2x2GB and the article has been updated.Hulk - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Is it possible that Dell sent the laptops without the ability to change auto brightness on purpose so that the battery life tests would be extraordinarily high? I'm sure they'll be good when the update to turn auto brightness off arrives but most people will remember the hype of the original amazing battery life tests. With all due respect to Anandtech I think they should not have posted battery life tests until they auto brightness can be turned off. It's not really an apples-to-apples (no pun intended) comparison.trane - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
To be fair, he did check the brightness from time to time. If there were any notable changes I'm sure they would have withheld the results.Hulk - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
You are right and I'm not in ANY way implying there was an bias on Anandtech's part. It's a tough call. Publish the battery life to get the results out there quickly for readers with the caveat of not being able to disable auto brightness or just write "the battery life results look to be very impressive but we are not going to publish them until we can disable auto brightness." I'm just saying I would have gone with the 2nd option for two reasons. First, if with auto brightness off the results are dramatically lower than Dell pulled one over. And second, to send a message to manufacturers that if they don't allow fair comparisons due to locked software not all testing results will be published.As I wrote above it's a tough call and I respect Anandtech's decision I just disagree with it.
andrewaggb - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
The battery results are fantastic, I wonder how much the auto-brightness plays into it. I wonder if you pointed a bright light at the light sensor if that would force the brightness to stay at maximum.JarredWalton - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
FWIW, I've run tests with laptops at 100 nits before just to see how much that would help. The difference between 100 and 200 nits is usually on the order of 30-60 minutes at most, and often less. However, to get 15 hours from a 42Wh battery means that the laptop is using around 2.74W in our Light workload. If the display adaptive brightness saves 1W, battery life would drop to 11.24 hours (give or take). Which is what happens with the QHD+ panel I should note, though how much of that is the display alone and how much is caused by a higher load on RAM and CPU/GPU to handle the higher resolution is difficult to say.icrf - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
How much power does touch circuitry/software consume? I remember first generation touch enabled laptops did rather poorly compared to their non-touch versions.JarredWalton - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
These days touch is pretty negligible as I understand it -- maybe 50mW? Obviously tablets and smartphones are able to provide touch and still get great battery life. They have smaller displays but also much smaller batteries, so it should be a wash.Brett Howse - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
It is not a light based auto-brightness, or I could have done that. It's Content Adaptive.extide - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
The brightness stayed at 200 nits for the whole test, which is where they test at, so whats the big issue?maecenas - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
I wonder if it would be feasible to have a retractable webcam at the top of the laptop that could retract when not in use. That would allow for the smaller bezel and would be good from a privacy perspective too.Uplink10 - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Can someone please tell me in which market this 13" laptops belong. Screen is too small for any serious work or watching movies, it is only usable for administration tasks and portable server because of its size and thickness.Would love to see a review of Bay Trail laptops in range to 300 USD, they are cheap and offer a lot for their price.
Gunbuster - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Um professionals that sometimes travel. Those who do "serious work" have an external monitor at their primary work space. I mean you can get a decent 24" LCD for $150 these days...ZeDestructor - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
It's perfect for lightweight tasks when travelling: SSH, web-browsing, IM, a bit of code, reading stuff. If I need actual power, I'll drag along something like a Precision around instead.John_dune - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
As a computer professional who doesn't have a desk at his job, but travels between 8 different worksites, something like this would be amazing to take with me, as in 80% of my computer time at work is dedicated to research, emails, and general day to day trudgery. I've been using 13 inch laptops for almost 7 years now, and have had no major issues with it (the only issue I have is if I ever try to do photo-editing, and at that point a 720p panel just doesn't have the pixels to display everything), even at 720p resolution.Zan Lynx - Saturday, February 21, 2015 - link
I have a XPS 13 from 2013 and I love it. I use a 28" external at work, but when I'm sitting on the couch or traveling the smaller size machine works great.repoman27 - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Peter Bright over at Ars mentioned in the comments to his review that Dell told him the 512 GB SSD option was PCIe based. Which would be nice, but it also means that the M.2 slot supports both SATA 6 Gb/s and PCIe if you want to upgrade yourself.And are we seriously OK with the GPU performance here, pushing 4.44x the pixels of the 13-inch MacBook Air with HD Graphics 5500 (GT2)? Not noticeably laggy or overwhelmed during general usage? This just seems crazy since we're talking 25% more pixels than the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display with roughly half the GPU power.
Also, any idea if the DP port is Dual-Mode, or if it supports DP 1.2 HBR2 and MST? I reckon it should...
voicequal - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
It is DP 1.2, but maxes out at 3840 x 2160 @ 60 Hz on the Broadwell U-series processors. Supports MST with up to 3 independent displays (including the built-in display - same as Haswell). Don't know about dual-mode. https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/quick-re...repoman27 - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Thanks for the response. I was more curious if Dell's implementation as shipped with currently available Intel graphics drivers actually supported MST hubs or TMDS modes though. Sometimes the capabilities Intel lists for their GPUs don't always materialize straight away in shipping hardware / drivers.JarredWalton - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
For Windows use, Intel's HD 4600 and above generally run fine in my experience, even with a 4K display. Which isn't to say that gaming or certain other tasks work properly (H.265 video decoding I've heard can be too much for the BDW-U systems, not sure if that's still true), but no one buys a system with Intel GPU for gaming. It can handle it in some cases at lower quality settings, but that's about it.Colin1497 - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
So I'm in the market for a new travel laptop and I really like the idea of this, but it's actually maybe smaller than I want. Can I have an XPS 15 in a 13" chassis, please?Arbie - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
@Uplink10 - 13" is hardly too small for watching movies! Personally, I can enjoy films on a 10" netbook (and actually also on an 8" tablet). This laptop would be terrific in that regard.rpjkw11 - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
I would seriously consider this if it had a 15" screen. My 17", 10 pound laptop gets heavy rather quickly; a lighter alternative would be welcomed when something lighter, but less powerful, would serve.mac2j - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
There's nothing preventing you from swapping out the 256GB SSD for 1 GB right? Nothing proprietary that would make this an issue?mac2j - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
1 TB - sorry.repoman27 - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
I don't think there are any M.2 2280 1 TB SSDs out yet. I think they only accommodate 4 NAND packages, which isn't enough for 1 TB at current densities / # of dies per package.Wineohe - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
I see reviews of laptops with decent IPS displays but then when I actually try to purchase them they don't seem to exist. They seem to offer them for a time, and then they don't. I used a small XPS and now a Lenovo X220, both with IPS for my photography work(amateur), but I've been starting to look for a replacement. The X220 is really toooo small for my aging eyes. This looks perfect and frankly I don't think the price is that bad. My last two were in the 2k range. However the inability to calibrate is a non starter with me. They have to sort that out.Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Can you add DOTA2 battery life. I'm guessing even this notebook would struggle to deliver 3 hours of DOTA/LOL but it would be nice to know for sure.Jeff7181 - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
After my experience with the XPS12 and Dell's support, I wouldn't touch this thing with a 10 foot pole. My XPS12 is just plain broken and Dell won't do anything for me except keep sending me a box to ship it to their depot, where they do nothing but reinstall the OS, verify it boots and send it back. Extremely disappointed.peterfares - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
If you've had it serviced multiple times and are still in warranty insist on having the unit replaced. I had a first gen XPS 12 that Dell replaced with a 2nd gen XPS 12 last year (and got upgraded from a 256GB SSD to 512GB)VengenceIsMineX - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
I'm very curious about the auto brightness issue. That is a Windows control in the detailed power settings not something that is usually manufacturer specific, did turning Display>Enable Adaptive Brightness off not work?Also, just for clarity, was this a version straight from Dell with their usual bloat or a clean software image like what Microsoft sells in their stores? Seeing some wildly varying reviews on battery life, for example the Verge ragged the battery as being 6 hours in normal usage which is obviously not what you are seeing and I'm curious about possible reasons.
Drumsticks - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
For starters the Verge places the brightness at like 70% during their battery tests, which is going to seriously penalize this display. Basically, their reviews aren't exactly scientific. (The reviewer even mentioned how like 30% brightness was enough for him).Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
"did turning Display>Enable Adaptive Brightness off not work?"Correct. It is not possible to turn off adaptive brightness at the moment.
Brett Howse - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
I'm not sure what other sites do for testing, but we try to be as consistent as possible. The laptops are put in power saving mode, the display is put at as close to 200 nits as possible, and we use IE to test for battery life. All of our tests are repeated multiple times. All I can say is that I checked this a couple of times, and with the asterisk that Dell has enabled adaptive brightness with no way to disable it, the results were consistent across the runs.VengenceIsMineX - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
If you really wanted a big SSD on the FHD model, it is pretty cheap to just buy it with the 128 gb hd and install your own 512GB even with it being m2. 512GB SATA 3 Transcend on Amazon is now just over $200, PCIe at roughly twice that. Given OEM's tendency to gouge on storage (at least not as bad as Apple which is just outrageous) it's the better way to go and even with drive copying and screwdriver work it's a 30 minute operation.repoman27 - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
If you're comparing the prices of the cheapest SSDs you can find on Amazon or Newegg to CTO options from a major OEM, there's obviously going to be a difference. What makes Apple's pricing "gouging"? 256 GB SSD options generally run $200 extra compared to 128 GB, or $500 extra for 512 GB. Do you have a cheaper source for Samsung XP951 based PCIe 2.0 x4 SSDs using MLC NAND?qasdfdsaq - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Apple charge £120 to upgrade from a 1TB drive to a 3TB drive in an iMac 27". These are standard 3.5" desktop drives. The price difference between a 1TB drive and 3TB drive at retail is about £35. £120 may not sound like much but that's still 350% more than free market prices.Then there's the £800 for a 1TB SSD. Market prices are around £350. It's rather irrelevant if you can find a Samsung XP951 cheaper, they do not at any point advertise it being a Samsung XP951.
Even so, a 512GB XP951 costs £340 at retail, whereas the 'Apple cost' for it is around £450. And this is in a 27" iMac that can easily fit two, if not four 2.5" SSDs which would offer comparable storage and performance at less than half the cost - but they don't offer the option. Deliberately offering a very expensive option with no real advantages is the pretty much the definition of price gouging (note that I'm not referring to the US legal definition here)
Synomenon - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
So what's gaming performance like b/w the QHD+ and FHD versions if BOTH have 8GB of RAM?Jon Tseng - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Interesting - all credit for testing QHD vs. FHD. I'd seen the other reviews (QHD only) showing mediocre battery life and had been wondering why 14nm was't delivering an improvement!odedia - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
I can't believe you published this but still didn't publish the iMac 5k review. Disappointing.Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
To be clear, Brett's job here is to look at laptops and WinPhone devices. The iMac is my task, and what Brett works on has no impact on that.Samus - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Dell's still trying to shake off their poor reputation during the 00's, especially with bomb's like the Inspiron 700mBut this is a solid machine.
piroroadkill - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
The Inspirons may have been shite back then, but I recall fondly the Latitudes and Precisions of those days. Chunky beasts, yes, but it was a period when you could get high res screens in a decent chassis. 1400×1050 14", 1920×1200 15", 1600×1200 15".. blah, blah.. Got a D800 that still works fine, with Radeon 9600 GPU. Hot shit for the time.bznotins - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Wow, looks like a really nice laptop. I've always wondered why bezels had to be so large.I'm typing this on a 13" 2013 Retina MBP. Now that Windows is starting to get high dpi scaling into better shape, and vendors like Dell are making nice high-dpi hardware, I might be able to finally come back to the PC world. OSX just isn't that great, and running Windows on a mac isn't that great either.
Steveymoo - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Looks like the laptop to beat for travelling photographers!John_dune - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Brett, there is one question this review has left me, and it seems like a fairly big one... is there any aftermarket upgradability with this device? I currently have an Acer TimelineX 3810 that's almost hitting the end of its life, and i find that i don't really use the dedicated graphics for anything, and I was thinking about upgrading to this laptop. Would i be able for example to upgrade the ram myself to 8gb? or be able to put in a 512gb ssd (i'm assuming it's not a 2.5 inch hdd in there)?GTRagnarok - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
You can only upgrade the SSD. It's an M.2 form factor.Aristotle16 - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
I bought the Core i3 version and had serious performance issues, to the point of trying to return the device. What I found was, even after doing a clean install of Windows 8.1, that the Intel Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework Settings (located in the advanced settings of the battery profiles) were set to 0.6GHz@15W for the Balanced and Power Saver profiles, even for plugged in mode. And for the High Performance profile, the battery setting was also set to 0.6GHz. I had not thought to look at that specific setting, but I couldn't accept that this brand new device was slower than my Venue 8 Pro tablet. It's weird that they choose to have this performance setting - even for the plugged in mode mind you - on the standard battery profile that ships with the device and/or OS. So after changing that setting, the device performance is night and day. So just a heads up if you get this and it feels slow, have a look at those settings.mayankleoboy1 - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Which ssd is being used in them? A m. 2 ssd works definitely give a boost to battery and performanceBrett Howse - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
It is listed in the specifications - Samsung PM851.Chrispy_ - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Wow, that's a HUGE battery life penalty for the QHD+ screen that delivers very slightly sharper text.It's not like 1080p @ 13.3" isn't already pin-sharp, and the IGP is useless in most games at even super low resolutions, so I'm genuinely thinking the FHD screen is a better choice here....
tipoo - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
I must say, I've been liking Dells output ever since they went private.01nb - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Posted this yesterday at Engadget:"I have an XPS13 on my desk at the moment. It's definitely the best I've seen from Dell to date, but it's got some issues that would drive me absolutely bonkers.
The touchpad, for starters, is just not there. That is to say it cannot hold a candle to anything the fruit has put out for the past I dunno, 8 years. The webcam placement? I mean, I know you have a lot to do to make that bezel so small, but this is just stupid. Who wants to look at my nosehairs and boogs during a chat? And another pretty annoying bit - Dell, dude.... put a friggin right angle on the damn power plug already! Or please come up with some non-patent-infringing magsafe like tech dammit. This plug is unsightly, ungainly, and flat out terrible for this class of ultrabook.
Otherwise, there is a lot to like - the unreal screen, the size, plenty of speed, etc.
It's just a few minor issues from being able to truly unseat the MBA which i'm sure were made to cut cost. The problem is, with the new (r?)MBA due out any moment, it may not even get the chance."
Dell is on the right track. Hopefully they address the issues in the next version (and release it post-haste).
sporkloudly - Friday, April 10, 2015 - link
Did you have any issues with the buzzing noise everybody seems to be talking about?Laxaa - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Alongside the new ThinPad, this looks like a very nice machine indeed(and great to see that PC laptops are catching up with MacBooks in terms of performance and design!) My only gripe is that I wish there was a 16GB option.Hrel - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Touch is stupid, any resolution beyond 1080p is stupid. (it negatively affects EVERYTHING, as evidenced in this review.) I don't want actual glass on my laptop.If it weren't for these specific issues, mostly the glass, this would be my next executive laptop. I'm gonna need one next year. So hopefully they can fix these things before then, either that or I switch the company to Lenovo. Doesn't really matter to me, but I do really like what they did with the power adapter/battery.
Speedfriend - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
"Touch is stupid"I have a touch screen laptop and it is brillant, especailly for casual web browsing. It is precisely the reason that I see so many people with iPad keyboard cases.
phillyry - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
Beyond 1080p is not stupid.Ever hear of photo editing?
ajp_anton - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
"The only real issue is that you can't get touch with FHD"IMO, the issue is that you can't get QHD+ without touch so it can be used outside.
R3MF - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
keyboard backlight?ymcpa - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
yes, it has a backlight.markbanang - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Forget the Yoga hinge, what this needs is an XPS 12 style flip hinge - Broadwell U, FHD with touchscreen and a 15 hour battery life - Yes please!peterfares - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
XPS 12 flip hinge doesn't allow for bezels this small. But the XPS definitely could use a refresh with either a larger panel in the same body or smaller oversall size with the same sized panel.Fedef - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
In the Display section there is a big difference in Contrast and Black values between your diagrams and the following two pictures with very different values.Which are the correct ones?
Is it a mistake caused by the auto-brightness or what?
Brett Howse - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
We test contrast and black levels at maximum brightness, but the actual screen testing happens at 200 nits. Plus, we use a different tool for the brightness/black levels which is more accurate for blacks. So the result you see on the grayscale chart will be different for these reasons.Fedef - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
So the contrast ratios and black levels on the grayscale charts are wrong?Fedef - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
I mean, the different brightness level at witch you test the contrast can't be the cause of a contrast dropping from 1500 to 700, it is almost impossible.And even if that were the case you should take that as a reference because none uses their display at max bright unless outdoor in a sunny day.
Brett Howse - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
The meter we test the grayscale and color accuracy is not accurate at detecting blacks, so the contrast ratio will go down because of the noise in the sensor thinking that there is more light than there actually is, which is why we use a different meter to test contrast. So yes, just ignore that reading since it is incorrect.Fedef - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Thanks for clarifing that.Maybe you should just hide those result to avoid confusion.
srdm - Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - link
This is probably a silly question, but I have been wondering if the very good black levels could to some part be due to the adaptive brightness "feature". Is it right that if you measure the black level on a black screen, then the adaptive brightness would lower the brightness and therefore you would see a better black level? Could that have been the case in your measurements?althaz - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
This is a pretty awesome Ultrabook. I prefer the form factor of my Surface Pro, but if I were to begin typing on the go a lot more, this would be right at the top of my list I think. Looks even better than the MBA I offloaded!MadMan007 - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Looking at the model lineup...damn, they missed some pretty compelling options. Gimping the FHD screen in memory and SSD (and to a lesser extent CPU) is a damned shame. So what if the price would overlap with the bottom end of the QHD+ models, the battery life of the FHD screen model is insane; I would bet that one with an i5, 256GB or 512GB SSD, and 8GB of RAM would be extremely popular.Nicky Drake - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
There is one: I have a Core i5 model with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. Availability of models varies a great deal between regions though. I'm in New Zealand. I'm loving the matte screen.tipoo - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
So what's the secret to the HD Graphics 5500 doing better than the 5000? It's 24EUs @ 300 - 950 (Boost) MHz, vs 40EUs @ 200 - 1100 (Boost) MHz. These things stay at the boost clock while gaming most of the time, so the base freq difference isn't a huge factor. Near half the EUs, lower max clock, and better performance?tipoo - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
I know of all the internal improvements to the Broadwell GPUs, but I thought we were expecting like 20% more squeezed out there, not being able to match a higher clocked 40EU part with a lower clocked 24EU part...I wonder what the 48 EU part with eDRAM will perform like then...
peterfares - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link
Hurrah for RGB and not PenTile garbage!MikeMurphy - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
I'd love to know whether the m.2 slots are reasonably accessible.der - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Goddamit, Anandtech! As I was perfectly enjoying my day, this review comes up and manages to see this late night. At least it made me even more happier.nils_ - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Almost bought one today, but then I found out that Linux support is less than stellar. Also it would be nice to have a PCIe/NVMe SSD instead of mSATA. Guess I'm gonna wait for Skylake.Fedef - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Dell said there should be a Developer Edition with Ubuntu soon enoughnils_ - Monday, February 23, 2015 - link
Did I miss that in the article or do you have link? I might be interested in that.kepstin - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link
It's available now: http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pdjospoortvliet - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link
Yeah, no good on Linux? That is a shame... The developer edition of the XPS 13 would be great to have 😃jospoortvliet - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link
Yeah, no good on Linux? That is a shame... The developer edition of the XPS 13 would be great to have 😃jrs77 - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Looks interesting until you look at the glossy screen.Matte. We want matte displays.
Nicky Drake - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
The FHD (192 x 1080) version has a matte screen. I have it, the screen is great.rstuart - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Finally laptop's are catching up to their tablet cousins in battery life and display. One feature the article doesn't mention but I really miss with laptops is Access Point mode for the wireless card. The Intel card in particular is poor - no AP mode, 1 radio so it can't do both 2.4 and 5 GHz at the same time, can't handle multiple SSID's. I would really like to see more detail on the WiFi components.kevith - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
47 dB?! No thanks.Dr_Orgo - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
My laptop (Gigabyte p34g) runs at 47-48 dB under full load as well. It's noticeably quite loud. I don't find it distracting while gaming as I'm engaged. It definitely wouldn't want to do video/photo editing with fans that loud though.tipoo - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
" we have 24 execution units, compared to only 20 on Haswell-U."Isn't it 40 on the HD Graphics 5000, which is in Haswell-U? That's why I was confused about how a 24EU part at a lower boost clock does better than the old 40EU part at a higher boost, even with Broadwells new GPU features.
Brett Howse - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
This is not the Iris or HD 6000 version of Broadwell-U, so it compares to HD 4400/4600 more directly, which had 20 EUs. HD 6000 has 48 EUs, but I don't know a single laptop using it yet.tipoo - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Understandable, I'm curious what's making it perform better than the 40EU part though. I know a lot of that die space was used for running at a lower base clock to save power, but it had a higher turbo than the 5500 as well as near double the EUs, so the 5500 with less EUs and lower clocked performing better is what confused me.lefty2 - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
This seems to be the first Broadwell-U review done by AnandTech. It's a pity you didn't compare performance with Kaveri laptopsBrett Howse - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
We have not had any Kaveri laptops in for review unfortunately. The only one in Bench is a prototype, so not all testing was done on it, but here's a comparison on what we have:http://anandtech.com/bench/product/1422?vs=1236
lefty2 - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Thanks. At least that's something anyway ;)Brett Howse - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Don't forget though that's a 35w Kaveri vs 15w i5.lefty2 - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Yeah, seems like no one buys 35W laptops anymoreGreenMeters - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Wish they'd include a discrete GPU option. Not anything particularly powerful, but something like the 840M that's been popular in other thin-and-light "ultrablades". That paired with the more reasonable 1080p screen would enable a lot of games at decent settings, without blowing power/heat budget.Dr_Orgo - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
I'm not sure the discrete GPU would be a good fit. Clearly it is designed as an ultrabook not as a thin and light gaming notebook. Even if the discrete GPU wouldn't add a huge amount of heat, it would still require sacrifices in thinness and battery life. The 840M wouldn't even provide enough GPU power for gaming enthusiasts, leaving the xps 13 awkwardly in the middle between pure ultrabook and pure gaming laptop.Sureshot324 - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
13" is too small for me but I'd love a 15" laptop the size of a 13" one. Hopefully this is a trend that catches on in other sizes.pjcamp - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
It appears to be trivially easy to upgrade the SSD to whatever you want. Several Torx screws and one Phillips and the back comes off, and there is the M2 SSD right before your eyes. I wouldn't let storage be a worry.cump - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Perhaps someone could help me out. Looking at this graph the xps13 display should be as bright as a macbook air? I have the FHD 256gb i5 model of the xps13 and a late 2011 11in macbook air. Side by side the screen appears 2x brighter on the mba. Is this a result of defective backlighting, or the antiglare coating, or perhaps I've reading the graphs wrong.jamesau - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
The Trackpad is currently unusable and needs to be brought to the attention of Dell / Microsoft. It is not really precision and needs dedicated drivers to adjust things like:- Stopping the cursor from jumping when you lift your finger;
- Ability to disable pinch to zoom as this sometimes interferes with two finger scroll and zooms the page in IE / Microsoft instead of scrolling it;
- Ability to customize gestures as you can with Synaptics drivers
MyManFly - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Not sure if this was already mentioned, but I think it should be noted in the battery life section that the Macbook Air 13" battery life was while it was running Windows 8, not OSX (The Surface Pro 3 battery life graph shows this).Brett Howse - Saturday, February 21, 2015 - link
Good catch I'll add the OS X battery life to the charts.jordanthoms - Friday, February 20, 2015 - link
Why no 16gb model? Intel restriction? 8gb just isn't enough. I'd like to have the option to pay more and get a faster CPU in it as well.Until they do that I guess I'll be sticking with macbooks...
edwardhchan1975 - Saturday, February 21, 2015 - link
Does anyone know how the M.2 SSD slot is keyed? Wonder if I can install a Samsung XP941 in there which is an M-Key card...attcaa - Sunday, February 22, 2015 - link
the ssd is M.2-sata, not pcieedwardhchan1975 - Monday, February 23, 2015 - link
It doesn't matter that the included SSD is SATA. M.2 requires PCIe and SATA to coexist based on the slot key. If it's B-Key, then it can talk SATA, PCIe-x2, USB, Audio, PCM, and lots of other things. If it's M-Key (like the XP941) then it only talks SATA and PCIe-x4. Reference:http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/02/understandi...
Zhongrui - Saturday, February 21, 2015 - link
nice hardware, shitty OS.kyuu - Monday, February 23, 2015 - link
useless commentgfieldew - Saturday, February 21, 2015 - link
Could the FHD model drive a 4K TV/Monitor adequately? I'm not expecting HDMI 2.0 but 60Hz would be good. Thank-you!dszc - Sunday, February 22, 2015 - link
I'd really like a MBP replacement. My MBP 13 has 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD, which is what I need for my serious photo work. But I don't like the Apple OS nor the Apple keyboard, nor the big touchpad without buttons, nor the sharp edge on the leading edge/wristrest.Dell, your XPS 13 is getting close. Please give us the equivalent with a 15" panel (in a 13" chassis so I can use it on the plane) with 16GB and 1 TB and a calibrate-able display.
attcaa - Sunday, February 22, 2015 - link
xps15TrackSmart - Sunday, February 22, 2015 - link
Your response is off the mark.The XPS 15 doesn't have the power-saving IGZO display technology, nor the superslim bezels, nor the power-saving 14nm broadwell CPUs. The difference in normalized battery life is incredible (6 min/Wh versus 17 min/Wh for the XPS 15 vs XPS 13 with FHD display).
Let's hope Dell delivers a new XPS 15 that provides similar features. We will have to wait for more quad core mobile Broadwell processors to arrive before we see that.
milkod2001 - Monday, February 23, 2015 - link
From the price options i like this one: $1000 (i5, 8GB, 128GB, FHD) , could have touch screen though.eanazag - Monday, February 23, 2015 - link
A few take-aways from the article numbers -8 GB of RAM is necessary to boost the graphics numbers in most cases for the IGP. Sometimes the boost is very small, but it is there.
Apple's display is looking pretty substandard compared to the numbers of the other devices.
The battery life of the new Dell is remarkable; Apple needs to hit better numbers to be comparable as Windows is harder on battery life than OSX.
I had a chance to look at this device in person about a week ago. It is a nice device, yet the build quality in hand feels better on the Razer Blade all around. Not Apples to Apples though because the price difference and components. At the end of the day I wanted the Blade more so.
The Dell battery accessory is the best thing about this whole article because I deal with Dell at work. As someone who is caught in Dell's ecosystem that accessory is well thought out for versatility. I could use this for multiple devices that I carry and my users could too.
eanazag - Monday, February 23, 2015 - link
Is the RAM and SSD upgradable by user (or power user)?milkod2001 - Tuesday, February 24, 2015 - link
RAM: noSSD: yes
sonicmerlin - Tuesday, February 24, 2015 - link
Just wanted to point out the iPad Air 2 gets the same scores in GFXBench's Trex and Manhattan tests (offscreen). So Apple's tablet SoC has the same graphical power as Intel's ultra book chips, despite operating at a much lower TDP.sonicmerlin - Tuesday, February 24, 2015 - link
By scores I mean FPS.candl - Tuesday, February 24, 2015 - link
I couldn't find anywhere, but can the SSD drive be replaced? Or does it void warranty (or worse, it's actually soldered to the mainboard)?candl - Tuesday, February 24, 2015 - link
Ok, should have investigated further. The SSD is apparently replaceable. Sorry.miahshodan - Tuesday, February 24, 2015 - link
Am I the only one that does not want 16:9 especially in a screen that small. At least give me 16:10 so I can actually put something other than video on the screen without a scroll-fest. That is one thing that makes the surface 3 so appealing to me.ilkhan - Wednesday, February 25, 2015 - link
no internal pictures?Can you upgrade the SSD and/or memory?
Johnmcl7 - Sunday, March 1, 2015 - link
No internal picture seems to be part of the reviews now which is disappointing particularly as these days the internal accessibility of parts can vary considerably.Thankfully Ifixit have posted a full teardown, the SSD is upgradeable and easy to access but the ram isn't as it's soldered on.
shadarlo - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
I have worked on this laptop and it is truly a beautiful piece of technology. I got it just a few weeks after it initially launched for a co-worker. Set it up and loved it. Hated to part with it. I was carrying it all over the office and even non techie people were wanting to touch it and hold it due to it's tiny size yet huge screen.Combined with a relatively low price for this type of unit with an included SSD and this is a no-brainer for any typical business user. I can't imagine why you'd want any other laptop unless you simply need more power, but very few business users do these days.
sporkloudly - Friday, April 10, 2015 - link
But you didnt have any issues with the keyboard noise that people are reporting in the forums?djscrew - Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - link
Are you sure you can't disable the auto brightness? I found it unintuitive but I was able to figure out how to do it in the battery settings of my previous generation XPS 13FranC - Friday, March 6, 2015 - link
Just curious Brett, with the adaptive brightness enabled, how were you able to calibrate the display to get your results? I recently shipment of this otherwise great laptop on March 4 and using Xrite's i1Profiler have not been able to get a decent color profile made (yes, I've 'disabled' adaptive brightness in all the typical places.) Would it be possible to please ping Dell again, since your request would carry more weight than hundreds of us regular folk?! Thanks!Brett Howse - Saturday, March 7, 2015 - link
I was not able to calibrate the display, I was only able to read the stock results due to the Content Adaptive Brightness Control, and not by our standard means. I spoke to Dell just yesterday and they still do not have a solution to this issue yet.JoJ - Sunday, March 8, 2015 - link
Couldn't you just find the light sensor and put some duct tape or even better optical sealing tape from a photo repair supply, over the darn thing?Would that not solve any variability??
FranC - Sunday, March 8, 2015 - link
Thanks for the update, Brett. Hopefully Dell is actively working on a solution, even if it negatively impacts battery life.JoJ, the adaptive brightness is not based on ambient light level, but on the content of what data is being displayed on the screen. In the case of running display calibration/profiling software, after setting the initial brightness level, each color patch is displayed on screen and read back by a spectro/colorimeter. Any variation in brightness during this process results in creation of a bogus color profile.
JoJ - Sunday, March 8, 2015 - link
Dell are missing a huge trend to carrying smaller kit in professional photography if they don't fix this brightness issue. I think this is holding back a lot of sales right now. I was going to go for the FHD as a coding and writing machine but this review suggested to me that the QHD might calibrate very well given the out of any advantage being so much over the FHD model I'm looking out for faster M.2 drives and crossing my fingers for any kind of hack to calibrate the shiny new super res screen...Oh and oh for more RAM ... Dell just missed out on a blockbuster here?
JoJ - Sunday, March 8, 2015 - link
Out of box not out of any. auto typo sorry :'(growl - Sunday, March 22, 2015 - link
Is it possible to run the QHD screen at the lower 1080p resolution, and would this improve battery life? Or is that not at all how things work?Brett Howse - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
Someone else had asked me that, so I set the 3200x1800 display to 1600x900, just to see if part of the battery life loss was due to rendering. My battery life test for this setting was almost identical to the 3200x1800 resolution.So it does not improve battery life because the main power draw of the higher resolution display is the increased requirements of the backlight to drive the same brightness level through a much more dense TFT. At least that was my findings on the XPS 13.
growl - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
Thanks very much, appreciate it! Torn on which one to buy, given that I am a frequent traveler, but also generally enjoy touch and have a pretty much unlimited budget.mazzy - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link
Hi Brett, Any Update on Auto Dynamic LCD brightness ?Brett Howse - Saturday, March 28, 2015 - link
Nothing yet sorry.mazzy - Tuesday, April 7, 2015 - link
I think that it'll never be fixed. It's April.. over 3 months from the launch...It's a pity, a great quality screen but with a glaring defect... no calibration possible... :(
FranC - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
I bought the 2015 Dell XPS 13 on the assumption that Dell would release a fix that would allow end users to calibrate the display. As mazzy said, it seems like Dell has no intention of fixing this, perhaps because it would reveal that battery life is highly dependent on Adaptive Brightness being enabled. Guess I'll wait to the last day to return it, and file this one away as being Duped-by-Dell.paul1508 - Monday, April 20, 2015 - link
Does the standard Dell Wireless 1560 support Intel Wireless Display (WiDi) or do I have to opt in the Intel AC 7260? Does that matter at all because the Dell Wireless 1560 might support Miracast?technoway - Monday, April 27, 2015 - link
The battery life for the system:i7-5500U / 8GB-RAM / 512GB-SSD / 3200x1800 infinity touch
is listed to be only about 7.5 hours.
The Apple 13-inch Macbook gets 10 hours or more.
But, Dell doesn't offer the 512 GB SSD, which I need for space, without also having the power-sucking HD+ screen. That stops me from buying the latest XPS-13.
Dell could make simple changes and make a machine I'd buy, but for some reason they don't do this.
The core i7 processor is a must, because it consumes less power than the core i5, and a 512 GB SSD is also a must to compete with Apple machines, but the HD+ screen wastes too much power. An HD screen is just fine on a 13-inch machine.
Until I can get a i7-5500U / 8GB-RAM / 512GB-SSD, with just the HD display (I don't care whether it's touch or not), I won't buy this. With the HD display, that system would have great battery life - I'd estimate at least 10 hours, and probably more like 11 or 12, maybe more. Dell ruins the machine by not offering the best options for battery life.
I do have an older first-generation XPS 13, and I like it, but with a meager 128 GB, 70 GB taken by the OS and restore partition, it's got too little storage.
If Dell makes the machine I want, I'll buy one tomorrow. If they don't make that by Christmas, I'll probably purchase the Apple 13 inch model. It has the good battery life for an Ultrabook.
Oh, and Dell's suggested solution for the poorer battery life is to carry around a plug-in battery pack for extra power. That competely defeats the purpose of having an Ultrabook!
vaga13ond - Saturday, June 11, 2016 - link
You're comparing apples to oranges there. Trying to compare the XPS vs a Macbook isn't really targeting the same user. Macbook's come with Core m3 or m5 (below i-series) processors not the i7 processor that you consider a "must." No touch screen, no QHD, worse on board graphics, DDR3, single port, yada yada yada... And no, the Macbook does NOT get 17.5+ hours on a battery charge doing anything besides idling. The XPS is a VERY different machine than the Apple Macbook...rgin - Monday, October 12, 2015 - link
Would the performance of this beauty be affected if we ran linux on it?ThomasDahl - Friday, December 25, 2015 - link
I just received a brand new skylake 16Gb/1TB i7 XPS13 and I am getting 4-5 hours of battery life while only browsing and emailing at 50% screen brightness. Is this the advertised "Up to 18 hours of battery life standard. Add an additional 10 hours with the optional Dell Power Companion."? - straight from the Dell web site specific for this model.Is this the same as the advertised 50 GBit internet I signed up for and where I only received 14GBit? Or is there something I can do about this?
Why do I feel ripped off?
Regards
Thomas Dahl
thomas.[email protected]