5 Things We Love About Dell's New XPS 13

Good As Gold

As we noted in our recent review out of the CRN Test Center, Dell's new update to its popular XPS 13 laptop doesn't disappoint. The laptop adds enough that's new, while keeping plenty that was good about the previous edition, to make the new XPS 13 a contender for best laptop of 2016. What stands out about the laptop?

In the following slides, we've laid out five of the features we liked most about Dell's new XPS 13 for 2016.

Speed

Dell's new XPS 13 is one of the first major laptop releases on the market to feature the latest generation of Intel's top-of-the-line Core processors – the seventh generation, known as Kaby Lake. The laptop includes the choice between seventh-gen Core i7, i5 or i3 processors, which are a bit faster than the sixth generation – mthough every bit helps, in our view. Combined with the inclusion of Killer 1535 Wireless-AC technology for a faster, smoother Wi-Fi connection, the new XPS 13 loaded web pages for us at blazing speeds (even on airline Wi-Fi).

Display And Form Factor

The new version of the XPS 13, like the previous one, impresses us with its 13.3-inch InfinityEdge display that barely has a bezel on the top and sides – making it a laptop that feels small and highly portable overall yet still has plenty of screen space. Among 13-inch laptops, the XPS 13 has the smallest total surface area, according to a recent comparison. Its small footprint showed while we used it easily during a cramped flight across the U.S. The higher-end model of the new XPS 13 offers a Quad HD touchscreen display, though we tried out the non-touch FHD display version, which still looked great.

Portability

The minimal bezel around the display helps enable Dell to create a laptop with a small body all around, allowing to it rate high on portability. The new XPS 13 maintains the same thin-and-light profile of the previous version with a thickness of 0.6 inches and a weight of 2.7 pounds for the non-touch version, or 2.9 pounds for the touchscreen edition.

Battery Life

Even though this is a thin-and-light laptop, Dell has still managed to fit a lot of battery power into the new XPS 13. The battery is 7 percent larger than the previous version, and we found the battery life to be terrific in our tryout. Even with heavy usage (including in the battery-draining Chrome browser) and screen brightness set to 75 percent, we got between nine and 10 hours on a charge in our tests – far better than most of the laptops we've tried out in 2016. This, of course, was for the non-touch edition, and the touchscreen version would likely run down the battery faster.

Rose Gold

The new XPS 13 is available in silver, as with the previous version, but this time Dell has added rose gold as a color option for an extra $50. Our test model came with the color and it's pretty. If we were buying the laptop, we'd spend extra for rose gold.