Dell XPS 13 OLED review
Our Verdict
Adding an OLED brandish makes one of the all-time laptops on the market fifty-fifty improve. With great functioning, a stylish chassis, and a beautiful 3.5K OLED touchscreen, the Dell XPS thirteen with OLED is a premium Windows laptop.
For
- 3.5K OLED display delivers vibrant colors and deep blacks
- Slim, attractive chassis with beautifully sparse bezels
- Strong functioning
- Comfy keyboard
Against
- Grainy 720p webcam
- Paucity of ports
- Battery life could be improve
Tom's Guide Verdict
Adding an OLED display makes ane of the best laptops on the market fifty-fifty better. With great performance, a stylish chassis, and a beautiful three.5K OLED touchscreen, the Dell XPS xiii with OLED is a premium Windows laptop.
Pros
- +
3.5K OLED brandish delivers vibrant colors and deep blacks
- +
Slim, attractive chassis with beautifully thin bezels
- +
Stiff performance
- +
Comfy keyboard
- +
Cons
- -
Grainy 720p webcam
- -
Paucity of ports
- -
Battery life could exist amend
The Dell XPS 13 is held in high esteem here at Tom's Guide: the fact that it packs powerful components into a slim, stylish chassis with remarkably thin bezels makes it one of our meridian picks for the all-time Windows laptop you can purchase, and i of the best laptops period.
Dell XPS thirteen w/ OLED
Price: ~$1,699
Display: xiii.iv-inch OLED touchscreen (3,456 10 2,160 pixels)
CPU: 11th Gen Intel Core i7-1185G7
GPU: Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics
RAM: xvi GB
Storage: 512 GB SSD (ane/2 TB too available)
Ports: ii Thunderbolt 4/USB-C ports, headphone jack, microSD card reader
Size: 11.6 x 7.eight x 0.five inches
Weight: 2.viii pounds
In 2021 Dell unveiled a new configuration of the XPS 13 that comes with a iii.5K OLED touchscreen, and later spending some fourth dimension with a review unit I tin tell you that the addition of OLED makes this great ultraportable even better. In fact, it's so good that it won the awards for all-time laptop display and all-time laptop overall in our Tom's Guide Awards 2021.
You lot can expect to pay a couple hundred bucks extra for the privilege of an OLED screen in your XPS thirteen, simply if you care well-nigh image quality, information technology's absolutely worth information technology. OLED displays are known for delivering vibrant colors and deep, rich blacks, and after some thorough testing (read: watching way too much UHD Idiot box) I'm here to tell you that the XPS 13 with OLED does exactly that. The fact that it's mounted in the XPS 13's almost bezel-less InfinityEdge display only enhances the entreatment — read on for a full review of Dell'south latest addition to the XPS 13 line.
Dell XPS 13 review: Cost and availability
- OLED screen is a $400 upgrade
- Expect to pay at to the lowest degree $1,650 for an XPS xiii with OLED on Dell'south website
You tin purchase an XPS thirteen with a 4K OLED display right at present on Dell's website, and yous may too be able to find it at select retailers. The OLED display is technically a $400 upgrade; at the fourth dimension of writing, you can get the lowest-spec Dell XPS 13 for $979, just that's a model with an Intel Core i3 CPU and a 2K not-bear on screen. To get the 4K OLED display, you tin can expect to pay (at time of publication) at to the lowest degree $1,649; that gets yous an Intel Core i7 CPU with Iris Xe integrated graphics, xvi GB of RAM, and a 512 GB SSD, though you can pay over $two,099 if you configure a model with the maximum 2 TB of storage.
Our review unit of measurement came configured with the 512 GB SSD, and at fourth dimension of publication information technology would have had a $ane,699 toll tag. That includes an extra $fifty for Dell'due south Arctic White pigment job, which decks the interior of the laptop out in a soft white. It's a overnice wait, but yous'll take to decide for yourself if it's worth the extra cost — the XPS thirteen'south default matte black interior is completely serviceable.
Dell XPS xiii review: Design
- The XPS thirteen'due south slim chassis and incredibly sparse bezels are still eye-catching
- Optional Arctic White paint chore looks great
We've reviewed a couple of Dell XPS thirteen configurations at this betoken, and each one earned praise for its slim, stylish chassis and incredibly thin bezels. The addition of a 4K OLED touchscreen does nil to mar the XPS 13'southward pattern strengths; this is notwithstanding a trim, low-cal, sturdy xiii-inch laptop with super-thin bezels around all four edges of Dell's InfinityEdge display.
At eleven.64 x vii.82 x 0.58 inches and ii.8 pounds, this OLED-equipped XPS 13 weighs every bit much as a MacBook Air with M1 and measures slightly smaller, though Dell's latest withal can't match the 0.45-inch thin, 2.five-pound Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga. Merely then, the Titanium Yoga costs more and but comes with a 2K display.
Dell XPS thirteen review: Ports
- Still only 2 Thunderbolt four/USB-C ports
- USB-A to USB-C adapter included, which is a dainty touch
With a slim chassis comes a slim port choice: the Dell XPS 13 sports a pair of USB-C/Thunderbolt iv ports, one on either side, every bit well as a headphone jack and a microSD bill of fare reader.
The freedom to plug in the USB-C charger on either side is prissy, merely the lack of a USB-A port will injure if you hope to utilize a mouse, keyboard, or other accessories more than a few years old.
Nonetheless, Dell does include a USB-C to USB-A adapter in the box, which is a squeamish touch I wish other manufacturers would re-create.
Dell XPS 13 review: Display
- three.5K OLED display looks gorgeous
- Super-thin bezels disappear into the inky blacks of the display
A three.5K OLED display is the big selling betoken of this Dell XPS 13 configuration, and in person it looks gorgeous. With a native resolution of 3,456 x ii,160 pixels it's non quite 4K, but it does back up HDR, and films and TV look beautiful on this screen. The OLED display allows for deep, inky blacks and high dissimilarity ratios, because each pixel generates its ain light and can be individually switched on or off. In practice, that means that I was able to notice pocket-sized details similar the gradations of sunlight reflecting off an actor's face in The Surface area, or a flash of gilt embroidery catching the light in a nighttime scene of Knives Out.
The display is capable of making colors look vibrant, and reds and golds really pop in dark scenes. In our testing, we plant the XPS 13 with OLED is capable of roofing 117.3% of the sRGB spectrum, which ways colors look great (and potentially over-saturated). That'due south better than the 13-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop iv (108.3% of sRGB) only not quite as adept as the 15-inch Samsung Galaxy Volume Pro 360 (120.2% of sRGB).
The nearly-4K resolution helps those small details stand out, though on a thirteen.4-inch screen it makes text so small you lot'll near certainly demand to rely on Windows' built-in brandish scaling to make things readable. However, I think the fact that this is an OLED screen is more meaningful than the iii.5K resolution. I happen to nevertheless accept a Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 review unit on hand, with its 1080p AMOLED brandish; when I fix it upwards adjacent to the XPS 13 and started watching the aforementioned film on both, I was struck by how similar the picture quality is, despite the resolution disparity. The Dell XPS thirteen's higher-resolution screen definitely delivered a sharper picture, and colors (especially greens and yellows) look a little warmer on the XPS xiii compared to the Pro 360, but if I wasn't scrutinizing them I'd have a hard fourth dimension telling the difference.
The black bezels of the Dell XPS 13's patented InfinityEdge display are as thin as ever, and at present that they're wrapped around an OLED screen they almost seem to disappear into the deep black borders of whatever you're watching. The screen doesn't reflect much light either, especially when it's powered on with the brightness cranked up.
However, since this is a touchscreen information technology is quite vulnerable to picking up prints and smudges during regular utilise. It's hardly a deal-breaker, merely information technology is something to keep in heed — and a good reason to throw some kind of cleaning cloth into your laptop handbag alongside this motorcar.
Dell XPS 13 review: Audio
- Well-rounded sound performance
- Weak bass
When it comes time to nail some tunes at your desk or out on the patio, the Dell XPS thirteen won't allow you down. Only beneath either edge of the keyboard deck there'due south a thin cutout revealing speakers which pump sound out to the sides, helping information technology fill the room even when the laptop is on a table or lap.
The quality of the audio is pretty adept, too; I'm no audio snob, only while streaming tracks like Pinkish Floyd's Welcome to the Machine or The Police's Spirits in the Fabric World I couldn't discover much fault with the Dell XPS xiii'due south speakers. Bass comes through articulate but without much boot, while more treble-y stuff like vocals and power guitar solos sound warm and sweet.
Dell XPS xiii review: Functioning
- xvi GB of RAM and an i7 CPU give the XPS xiii plenty of power for daily tasks
- Even so, it struggles with demanding games and video work
With an Intel Core i7 CPU and 16 GB of RAM, our Dell XPS thirteen review unit had zippo trouble handling all my daily tasks without a single stutter. Even when I loaded information technology up with a frankly unreasonable (40+) number of Chrome tabs, three simultaneous video streams from unlike services, and a 10GB file transfer in the background, the XPS 13 didn't choke: CPU and SSD usage never went above l%, and RAM usage never went past 75%.
When we put our review unit to the test using the Geekbench v.4 multi-core CPU benchmark, it turned in a score of 5,420. That's amend than nosotros saw out of the similarly-equipped xiii-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop four (4,829), and near as good as the larger fifteen-inch Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 (5,575).
The Dell XPS 13'due south SSD is quite speedy equally well, managing to accomplish a transfer charge per unit of 742 MBps when tasked with duplicating 25 GB of multimedia files. That's much faster than the 13-inch Surface Laptop 4 (562 MBps) and nearly as fast as the SSD in the Samsung Milky way Book Pro 360 (869 MBps).
If you're looking to do some serious video editing, the XPS 13 can get it done -- just non exactly quickly. In our Handbrake video editing examination the laptop transcoded a 4K video to 1080p in eighteen minutes and 12 seconds, which is more time than it took the 13-inch Surface Laptop 4 (17:01) or the 15-inch Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 (16:24) to complete the same job.
The XPS 13 can get hot under this kind of pressure, also: nether the watchful eye of our heat gun the laptop achieved temperatures as high as 98.2 degrees along the top row of the keyboard. During normal lap employ I never noticed more than than a bearable amount of warmth radiating into my easily and legs, simply information technology definitely gets hot when y'all try things like playing 3D games with circuitous graphics.
Dell XPS xiii review: Graphics and game performance
- Most cutting-edge games won't run well
- Older, less enervating games run well and wait cracking
Speaking of which, the addition of an OLED screen hasn't suddenly turned the Dell XPS 13 into a graphical powerhouse, but it does help games and other apps look great. Without a dedicated GPU this laptop will take a real hard time running the most demanding PC games — good luck getting something budgeted a reasonable framerate in Cyberpunk 2077 — but you tin still enjoy lots of older or less demanding games.
Games similar Fortnite, Othercide, Into the Alienation, and Crusader Kings III run pretty well on the XPS 13, though performance will dip if you crank the game'southward resolution upwardly past 1080p. Sure enough, when we put it to the test using the graphical benchmark in Sid Meier's Civilization half dozen: Gathering Storm, the XPS 13 managed to achieve a decent 22.1 frames per second running at 1080p and 14.4 frames per 2d at its native iii.5K resolution.
Dell XPS 13 review: Keyboard, touchpad and touchscreen
- Sturdy, comfy keyboard
- Touchscreen works well, but prints and smudges mar the OLED's majesty
Information technology's hard to find much mistake with the Dell XPS 13'due south keyboard. If yous have large hands you may find the keys a bit cramped and the travel a bit shallow for your tastes, equally I do. But that's hard to avoid on a 13-inch laptop, and after a few days of using the XPS 13 I had no trouble hit 115 WPM in a 10fastfingers.com typing test. There's also a fingerprint reader built into the top-right key on the keyboard, affording yous the selection of logging in and out with a swipe of the finger.
The touchpad beneath the keyboard is equally functional, and I rarely had trouble or noticed missed inputs while using it. It picks upwardly Windows 10's touchpad gestures very reliably, though I did observe it "lock up" two or three times during testing and stop registering input for a few seconds.
Tapping and swiping on the iii.5K OLED touchscreen feels intuitive and responsive. I found myself pinching and zooming in on webpages and documents ofttimes, just to make the text more readable on the high-res screen. Notwithstanding, every bit noted above, do be aware that the screen picks upwards smudges and prints fairly easily, so information technology'south a good idea to bear a cleaning material with you.
Dell XPS 13 review: Webcam
- 720p webcam delivers serviceable only grainy video quality
- Equipped with IR sensors for Windows Hello facial logins
The Dell XPS 13'south 720p webcam is a tiny dot crowning the top of the display, and it delivers grainy, unexciting picture quality. I happen to own ane of the older XPS xiii models with the webcam mounted in the top of the keyboard, which led to a lot of up-the-olfactory organ camera angles during video calls; I still experience some lingering gratitude to Dell for moving it upward to the top of the screen where it belongs.
Still, it would be nice to see an XPS 13 ship with a 1080p webcam. Such extravagances are still pretty hard to notice congenital into laptops, especially xiii-inchers, merely with so many of united states working remotely amid a global pandemic the quality of our webcams has go more important than ever.
If yous like to log in with your face via Windows Hello, good news: the XPS thirteen's webcam has IR sensors that permit it to practice that for you, affording you a hands-costless (albeit slightly creepy) style of unlocking the car.
- The all-time webcams for habitation and part
Dell XPS 13 review: Battery life
- 8-hour battery life is good enough, merely non great
- However, it does accuse quickly
Sadly, the improver of a 3.5K OLED screen comes at the expense of battery life. In our battery test, which tasks the laptop with incessantly browsing the spider web over Wi-Fi with the screen set to a brightness level of 150 nits, the Dell XPS 13 w/ OLED managed to last but under 8 hours — 7:59, to be precise.
That's quite a chip less bombardment life than either the 13-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop iv (ten:46) or the xv-inch Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 (13:33). If y'all're open to using a Mac, y'all'll get much better battery life from the MacBook Air with M1 (14:41) or the MacBook Pro with M1 (16:32).
For comparison's sake, in our testing the Dell XPS thirteen with a 4K non-OLED screen lasted even less time on a full accuse (vii:32), while the Dell XPS 13 with a 2K screen lasted hours longer (11:07) in the same test.
Notwithstanding, the XPS xiii does charge pretty quickly: I plugged it in at 5%, and an hour later it was sitting at 51% charged, which is plenty to get another two or three hours of utilise.
Dell XPS 13 review: Verdict
The Dell XPS 13 has been one of our favorite Windows laptops for years, and the addition of a 3.5K OLED screen but enhances the appeal. Paying an actress couple hundred bucks for it might not be worthwhile if you don't tend to become hung up about prototype quality, but given that one of the Dell XPS 13'south big attractions is its cute, most-borderless InfinityEdge brandish, paying more to slap an OLED in there is a worthwhile add-on.
If you desire something a little bigger and more than performant for roughly the same cost, the Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 is also a good choice. It has a 1080p AMOLED touchscreen that looks almost as good every bit the XPS thirteen's OLED, with slightly better performance and much better bombardment life. However, information technology'south also a larger, heavier 2-in-1 that comes with a lot of Samsung bloatware installed. And of course, if you're open to using a Mac, the M1-equipped MacBooks offer much better battery life than only about any Windows laptop on the market.
That said, the option to add an OLED display makes 1 of the best laptops on the market even better. With corking operation, adept speakers and a beautiful 3.5K OLED touchscreen, the Dell XPS 13 is a premium Windows laptop that should stand you in good stead for years.
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Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/dell-xps-13-oled-review
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