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WIRED
No more nose cam. Great performance in a very compact package. Gorgeous display (4K model). Good battery life.
TIRED
Trackpad can be finicky about right-clicks. 4K display is power hungry. Integrated graphics. Backlit keys on the white model are difficult to read in some circumstances.
Dell's latest XPS 13 has achieved something near Nirvana. It's not perfect, but it's about as close as an ultraportable laptop is going get.
Last year's model was a portable, svelte, powerhouse but the presence of the dreaded nose cam—previously the web cam on the XPS 13 was at the bottom of the screen, giving anyone you were video chatting with a great view up your nose—has long kept us from really recommending it.
The latest (2019) model has finally moved the camera to the top of the screen, where it belongs. No more nose cam.
## Slim Shady
At 2.7 pounds and 19mm thick, the XPS 13 isn't the thinnest nor the lightest machine on the market, but it's small enough to slip into any carry-on, and light enough to not strain your shoulders toting it around for the day.
The 2019 XPS 13 looks nearly identical to my 2018 model (which is now the last of the nose cam models, sigh). The top bezel is a few millimeters thicker to accommodate the new camera, the camera which for years Dell claimed just wouldn't fit. To be fair, to get a camera in there Dell had to make the smallest 720p webcam on the market. The resulting slightly thicker bezel at the top is barely noticeable. The new model also features a quad microphone array for better sound during calls, and better results when you yell Cortana commands from across the room.
The performance is solid, though not industry leading by any means. All the XPS 13s use eighth-generation Core CPUs, depending on how much you want to spend you can get an i3, i5, or i7. There's support for up to 16-gigabytes of RAM and you can max out the drive with a 2TB SSD. So far so good, but the best the graphics get is Intel's integrated UHD 620. It's not, in other words, the gaming laptop you're seeking (that's probably the Asus ZenBook S13, which we haven't tested yet, but offers NVIDIA's MX150 GPU and looks excellent spec-wise).
The review model XPS 13 I tested was gray and white with i7-8565U CPU and 16GB of RAM, which is the top end configuration available. It had no trouble handling my basic workload of web browser, Slack, terminal, Zoom, streaming Pandora to a Bluetooth speaker, and a little photo editing on the side. I also ran it through the PC Mark 10 benchmarking suite and found performance to good enough for most use cases and just above average for an ultraportable laptop.
In my battery testing (looping an HD video until the laptop dies) the Dell XPS 13 gets just over 12 hours on a charge. That's good enough for all day use, or a long cross country flight, and matches roughly what you'd get from a Macbook. It's also nearly two hours more battery life than I got when running the same test on my 2018 XPS 13. I noticed that maxing out the CPU produces considerably less heat in your lap than the 2018 XPS 13.
Another nice new feature in this iteration of the XPS 13 is the 4K screen, which now supports HDR video via Dolby Vision. In a nutshell that means brighter highlights and darker, richer blacks in shadows. There's not a ton of content out there broadcasted in HDR yet, though YouTube had enough that I was able to test and notice the difference. Dolby Vision is still relatively new and mostly used in TVs, though as the XPS 13 demonstrates, it's making its way to the PC world as well.
Also notable in this update, there's a 1080p touch screen available if you want touch, but don't want the 4K screen.
The keyboard and trackpad appear identical to the previous model and while I like the keyboard, the trackpad still doesn't pick up right clicks as well as I'd like, a problem I've noticed for several iterations. This is easy to solve, just use two-fingered clicks, but mars what's an otherwise very good trackpad.
The ports remain the same in this model as well. Like the previous generation there's three USB-C ports, one of which is for power and two of which handle Thunderbolt 3. You also get a microSD card reader and a headphone jack. The former is a nice way to expand the storage capabilities of the the lower end XPS 13 models, though the card does stick out from the body just slightly. In a nod to those of us who keep our accessories for as long as we can, Dell includes a USB-C to USB-A dongle.
The Dell XPS 13 starts at an impressively affordable $899, but if you can afford it I strong suggest upgrading from there. That model offers only a Core i3, a mere 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. Spend a bit more and you step up to a machine with a core i5, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB drive, which will set you back $1209. I would highly recommend the top end model I tested here, which costs $1430. For an extra $600 you can add a 2TB SSD.
Buy the top end Dell XPS 13 from [Dell for $1430](https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/new-xps-13-touch-laptop/spd/xps-13-9380-laptop/xnita3ws707h?view=configurations&configurationid=db458b97-be15-4b72-830f-a8dbeb141634){: rel=nofollow}.
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