Dell XPS 13 Plus review: XPS plus, battery minus

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Everyone who follows the laptop market was surprised by Dell's announcement. After I published my first impressions, I got a lot of questions from people. Many of us have wondered if it was a good or bad thing that it was a laptop.

The regular XPS 13 is one of the best Windows laptops. It is a great example of building quality among them. Dell has upgraded that model to a 12th Gen processor. Anyone who wants as much raw muscle as they can get in a 13-inch machine is able to get the XPS 13 Plus.

The palm rest has a fully integrated touch screen. There aren't any ports. The function row has been replaced with rows of touchable LEDs. The Plus is more expensive than the non-plus one. Dell decided to compromise in order to achieve the most powerful laptop possible.

The 13 Plus is not that. It is more expensive and much hotter than laptops of the same size and weight that deliver similar or better power, significantly better battery life, better webcams, and more usable port selections. I can't be the only one with the same experience. When Apple made changes to the MacBook in order to make it thinner, it didn't go as planned.

This is a nice looking computer with a great screen. I don't think it's a good idea to have the Dell branding and the Windows operating system on your computer.

The XPS 13 Plus is made from aluminum and glass. The lid is strong If you keep it closed, you won't see a difference between the two. Dell doesn't compromise on Durability as devices get thinner The 13-inch space is not a good place for a laptop. It is a nice looking machine with a flat keyboard deck that makes it look futuristic. My only complaint about the unit is that it has a fingerprints magnet. A Platinum color is also available.

There is a display. The model has a 16:10 aspect ratio. It is a great viewing experience with bright and vivid colors. The panel has a small screen-to-body ratio. Some people will care about only 60hertz, which is not everyone's cup of tea. I ran into a problem with my first review unit when the screen stopped working after I knocked a couch off the floor. If there is a problem with that unit, I will update the article.

The speaker array includes two upfiring speakers beneath the keyboard and two downfiring speakers in the base. The sound quality was great, even though the percussion was tinny, and there was no distortion at max volume, which was an issue I had with the previous model. It is on par with the audio from the M2 MacBook Air, which is quite good for the category. The MaxxAudio program can be used to adjust the edm settings.

Dell has made sacrifice in order to be thin. This machine is large before I get into it. It is 2.67 pounds. There is a non-OLED model. It is portable, but there are plenty of thinner and lighter Windows laptops in the 13 inch space that are cheaper than this one. The M2 MacBook Air is noticeably heavier than this configuration.

The only ports here are two. There isn't a jack for headphones. The laptop needs to be charged by one of those USB-Cs. The included 60Wadapter doesn't charge the device fast, that's a factor. My unit took an hour and 14 minutes to get to 60 percent. The price of a hub should be taken into account.

The touch bar is the second thing. This isn't a touch bar like Apple's Touch Bar, it's a "Capacitive touch function row" The physical function row that other keyboards have has been replaced by this one. The row of LEDs includes things like brightness, volume, microphone muting, escape, insert, and so on.

Similar to many complaints about Apple's Touch Bar, I'm not entirely sure if I've actually pressed the key. I couldn't brush it off without pressing a bunch of buttons and messing up what I was doing in the middle. I was not prepared for how frightening it would be to use a mix of real and fake keys to perform keyboard tricks. It feels very weird at the moment, maybe you get used to it.

The third thing is the trackpad. There is a seamless strip of glass below the keyboard deck on the XPS 13 Plus. There is a capacitive touch trackpad in the area where you would expect it to be, but it is not delineated in any way, and you have to rely on your muscles to click in the right spot.

I knew where to click when I used my right hand. When I needed my left hand to sub in, it became a problem because I didn't have that muscle memory. It was difficult to click and drag things when I needed two hands. With my left hand, I missed the unseeable zone a lot.

The click is shallow. Reviewers were encouraged to have their families try the device. We were told that they wouldn't believe it was glass. My mom gave it a click. She said it felt weird. I told you that it was a touch screen. She said that it made sense.

The unit was given to my younger brother by me. He asked, "Aren't Apple's like that?" I said that they were. He said that the apple one was better. I guess it depends on the family.

When my hands were wet, the trackpad went crazy, thinking it was depressed, which made it useless. Dell recommended that I dry my hands before using the laptop after I asked about this. I use a lot of laptop models, but rarely, if ever, experience issues to this degree.

The new "zero-lattice" keyboard has been completely flattened and I don't have a problem with it. Almost no space between the keys makes it edge to edge. Don't worry, we have the second coming of the butterfly keyboard on our hands, it's not that bad. The keys feel bouncy even though there is only a small amount of travel. The caps are wide enough that I could type quickly and accurately, though the overall feel took a while to get used to. The arrow keys are half-height, and the power button is squeezed in next to the backspace key, which will bother some people.

The webcams is an improvement over the last one but still not amazing. Instead of going the Apple route and having a camera notch stick out of an otherwise tiny bezel, Dell has kept it and separated the camera from the regularWebcam. I wasn't dark or washed out, but my co-workers were able to see the strands of hair I had on while I was on the phone.

The 12th Gen Core P-Series chip is the most promising of all of this. The U-Series is used by most laptops of this size, but the Plus isn't messing with it. The base model has an i5-1240P, 8GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a non-touch display. The unit I was sent has a Core i7-1280P, 16 gigabyte of ram, 512 gigabyte of storage, and a higher resolution screen. The unit has a non-OLED screen. Everything else is soldered.

This computer costs more than $2,000 and makes it an expensive one. An M2 MacBook Air, thinner and lighter, with more ports, a betterWebcam, a physical function row, and a more usable trackpad, could be as much as $350 cheaper than the model I have. Both are less expensive than the non-OLED model. The Core-i7 U-series would be $600 cheaper.

• 13.4-inch 3456 x 2160 OLED touch display
• 12th Gen Intel Core i7-1280P (24MB Cache, up to 4.8GHz, 14 cores)
• 16GB LPDDR5 128-bit dual channel at 5200MHz
• 512GB PICe 4 x4 SSD
• Two Thunderbolt 4 USB Type-C with DisplayPort and Power Delivery
• One USB-C to USB-A v3.0 adapter in box, one optional USB-C to 3.5mm headset adapter
• Quad-speaker design with 8W total output, dual microphone array
• Zero-lattice backlit keyboard, 1.0mm travel
• 720p Windows Hello camera
• Intel Killer Wi-Fi 6E 1675 (AX211) (2x2), Bluetooth 5.2
• 11.63 x 7.84 x 0.6 inches (295.3 x 199.04 x 15.28 mm)
• 2.77 pounds (1.26 kg)

This device is more powerful than any of the 12th Gen U-Series machines you can buy, and it is an improvement over the 11th Gen XPS 13 I didn't experience any performance issues in most of my work. Multiple versions of the program took forever to open and were slow to run, but that is not unusual in this segment of the market.

The 13 Plus is beating Apple in multicore benchmark tests. It's not close to the M2 in single-core or graphic use cases. The fan of the XPS 13 Plus will help it better sustain long-term loads, which is one of the reasons it is different from the Air. The fan of the XPS 13 Plus was having a hard time.

The laptop was boiling after a few hours of regular use. I was typing on the keyboard while sitting on the palm of my hand. I put it on my lap.

I usually work in Quiet mode, but I tried all the different fan profiles and didn't make a difference. The system was a bit cooler but still warm. The Cool mode made the fans loud, but it didn't make the system cold. I used Ultra Performance during benchmark testing, which made the fans loud loud, like Intel MacBook Pro levels of loud, and theCPU was still frequently hitting 100 degrees Celsius. Despite its impressive power, this device still seems to make the most sense for short-term activities if you don't want to fry your Chassis andCPU.

The battery life is something else. I used the screen for five hours and two minutes per day. The high-resolution screen is likely to be a factor here, as we often see disappointing longevity from OLED models. I always review the configuration I have, and this one did not last long enough to justify the price.

This makes the problem worse, because this thing is going to need a lot of time plugged in, so you will have to give up 50 percent of your port selection. I know I sound like a broken record, but I just want to point out that the MacBook Air lasts me over twice as long as any other computer.

The Dell XPS 13PLus presents you with a number of things to agree to or decline.

There are mandatory policies for which an agreement is needed.

• A request for your language and keyboard layout
• Connect to Wi-Fi network
• Microsoft Software License Terms
• Sign into a Microsoft account or create a password

There are a lot of things that can be agreed to.

• Device privacy settings: Find My Device, Inking and Typing, Advertising ID, Location, Diagnostic data, Tailored experiences

There are mandatory and optional agreements.

The XPS 13 Plus is willing to take on the status quo. A laptop that is trying to do what very few products have done is rare. Dell is trying to put a P-series processor in a thin and beautiful case.

The laptop isn't fundamentally different from what it was in the past. It's an electronic device. I tell the same story here that I have been telling for a long time. The high-resolution screen is killing the battery life and it is too hot.

I still use a Macbook Pro for work, but I am surprised how similar the experience is to using the XPS 13 Plus. The Plus is thin and light, but it is always hot, lacks ports, and doesn't have a battery life. It is possible that Apple has decided to reverse many of the changes it made in the past few years. Dell has made some changes that are less extreme than others, but I worry that the narrative is moving in the same direction.

I haven't reviewed the regular XPS 13 yet, but my sense is that Dell intends for that to remain most people's choice, and for the Plus to be the "power user" laptop I wouldn't recommend this model to a group with its limited capacity to hold its own. I think that people who need the full power of a Core i7-1280P might want something that has ausb-a.

Monica Chin is a photographer.

• The letter keys are 1.8 x 1.7 centimeters with 0.1 centimeters between them. All keys are backlit. Only the Caps Lock key has an indicator light. The power button is 1 x 1.7 centimeters. The volume keys are touch LEDs. The keys are black with white text and take a bit of firm force force to depress.
• The speakers reached an average of 80 decibels in my testing.
• The laptop weighs 2.77 pounds.
• There are two Thunderbolt 4 USB Type-C ports with DisplayPort and Power Delivery.
• The lid can be opened with one hand. It can be tilted back to 140 degrees.
• The screen is 13.4 inches with a 3546 x 2160 resolution. It reached 380 nits of brightness and a 181,940:1 contrast ratio in my testing. There is a touchscreen option.
• The touchpad is not delineated and supports precision gestures.
• Setup involves turning the device on, and clicking through several menus.
• The XPS 13 Plus supports fingerprint and facial recognition logins.

• Windows 11 includes a dedicated accessibility menu.
• Windows 11 includes a built-in screen reader (Narrator). It supports third-party screen readers including NVDA from NV Access and Jaws from Freedom Scientific. A full list of compatible software can be found on Microsoft’s website.
• Windows 11 supports voice typing (accessed by Windows + H) and speech recognition (toggled with Windows + Ctrl + S).
• Color Filters including inverted, grayscale, red-green, and blue-yellow can be toggled with Windows + Ctrl + C. Contrast themes are toggled with Alt + Left Shift + Print Screen. Standard Dark Mode and custom colors are also available under Personalization.
• Caption color and size can be customized and appear close to the bottom of the screen.
• The keyboard can be remapped with Microsoft’s PowerToys. Sticky Keys is supported. An on-screen keyboard is available.
• The cursor’s size and speed can be adjusted and gestures can be remapped in Touchpad Settings.
• Windows 11 supports eye control with external eye trackers.
• Windows 11 includes a Snap Layout feature, accessed by hovering over the Maximize button on any open window.