HARDWARE REVIEW

Dell XPS 13 Infinity Edge (Kaby Lake) Review

by Luke Walsh, April 30th, 2017

The Dell XPS 13-inch laptop is a laptop to rival other portable ultrabooks on the market. With an i7 7th generation processor, 16Gb of RAM, 250GB SSD and 13-inch “Infinity Edge” touch screen display it packs a pretty decent array of specs. You can pick up one of these, starting from just £1149 with lower but decent specs.

Probably the most important part of the Dell XPS 13 portable laptop is the display, with Dell’s ‘Infinity Edge’ the XPS has almost no bezel which gives you a nearly full screen to edge look and it really stands out. The benefit of being able to do this, you get more screen for your money. What would normally only contain an 11 or 12-inch screen, now holds the 13-inch touch screen (on some models) display because the extra space is no longer taken up by the bezel around the frame.

Other parts of the laptop are strongly made, the outside consists of a machined aluminium frame which gives you that sturdy and nice textured feel. With the latest range, you can also pick up the XPS 13 in rose gold same as the unit we reviewed, with subtle tones of pink and gold the colour is a nice upgrade but does cost extra. So if you are a fan of having something different, it is worth checking out but for the budget conscious who want to stick that extra cash into the specs, you can still pick up the standard light grey version.

If I had to choose between the two colours though, I would have to pay the extra for the rose gold as it just grabs your attention. The silver is professional looking but lacks that “POW” that the rose gold colour offers and in my opinion is worth forking out that little bit extra for. However, the rose gold version does not seem to be available with the i3 processors or the i5 in the UK. So it will cost you a minimum of £1399 if you wish to pick it up with an i7 processor.

As with every ultrabook, the thing needs to be portable and the XPS 13 weighs 2.7 – 2.9 pounds or just over 1.2kg for us Brits. This makes the laptop lighter than the MacBook Air but not as light as the 12-inch MacBook which weights just 2 pounds or 0.9kgs. It is also a little bit thicker than its competitors, don’t let that put you off as there is a reason and it’s a good one….more ports. In terms of weight, I don’t think anyone will really notice whether a laptop is 2 pounds or 2.7 when you are carrying it around in your bag. The XPS is perfectly capable of being held for practically forever without your arm dropping off.

Ports, ports and more ports. The Dell XPS 13 as mentioned is a little bit thicker than some of the other ultras on the market. The benefit to it being a little bit chunkier is the ability for it to hold more ports than other competitors.

You will find that it has two USB 3.0 ports (one on either side), an SD card reader, a USB Type-C with Thunderbolt 3 support and a headphone jack along with the charging input. With the USB 3.0 you can connect up to two 4K monitors and with the USB-C it will charge the laptop from it. Being able to charge the laptop from a USB cable is a great addition but don’t worry it does come with its own standard power adapter.

Display and Webcam

Now onto the fresh meat of the XPS 13, the display. There are two different options you can choose from, both of them are decent. There is the full-HD, non-touch screen version which supports 1920 x 1080 with a matte finish. Or, you can select the 4K touchscreen monitor which has a resolution of 3200, 1800 and is a glossy type panel, which gives it more vibrancy but makes it more reflective to light and other objects.

As we had the touchscreen model to review, it was safe to say that the 4k picture was going to be the best one of the two. With more pixels to play with, the images and video were solid and the detail was spectacular. Watching movies you can clearly see the smaller details in landscapes and the nuances of people’s faces when close up shots where in frame. The benefit of the non-touch screen monitor though is the wider viewing angle that is created from the matte screen. Glossy screens are nice and create lovely vibrant pictures on the 4K version, but picked up background much more making it harder to view at an angle (also made it much hard to photograph). It did not happen all the time and is by no means a deal breaker as the 4K is impressive.

In testing, the non-touch screen version was not as colour accurate as the QHD screen which I expected but it was still decent out of the box. It was not as bright as the QHD screen but not something you would notice in day to day use outside of testing conditions.

One thing which is bizarre is the placement of the webcam. Users have come to expect it to be at the top, above the screen in the centre and this makes complete sense. As you would usually be directly in front of your monitor looking at the other person, you would also like to be in the centre of the shot. Dell has opted or probably had to move it due to the Infinity Edge design. By reducing the bezel around the top and sides there is no longer a space for a camera but in the age of video calling, it is still a necessity to have for most consumers. Leaving only the bottom bezel of the screen available and a little thicker than the rest, the webcam has been built into the lower left side.

The quality of the webcam is fine but the angle means you have very unflattering angles and usually of all your chins. This will make is unusable for pretty much everyone that has a little bit of vanity and being off centre you need to position the laptop so your not out of frame. This makes it almost pointless to have included but I understand why they did regardless.

Audio

For a small machine, it does pack a decent punch in the sound department but at the higher levels, the sound does start to distort. If you play about with the equaliser settings and tweak some values, you can make the audio much more balanced at the higher levels.

There are some other tweaks you can do and if you have some sound calibration software you should be able to come close to removing the distortion at the higher volume levels. For the size of the frame only being able to fit in Waves MaxxAudio® Pro tuned 1W x 2 = 2W total, the speakers are fit for purpose. If you want to get perfect audio, then you might as well buy a sound system and connect it up.

Keyboard and Trackpad

Typing on the Dell XPS 13 Infinity Display is a more comfortable experience than I had with Dell’s Alienware R3. With the chiclet keys measuring as 1.2mm, the travel time is a less than you would expect to come from mechanical keyboards or standard rubber domes.

The only suggestions I would have made was to include backlit keys, this would probably take up a little more space but these days I think all laptops should have backlighting. It would make it much more versatile in low lit conditions which might be a bonus for those travelling on dimly lit trains or at night. Gamers will also want it out of normality for them, as everything we buy is luminous in some way.

The touchpad is Dell’s Precision trackpad and to be honest is probably one of the best touchpads I have used. Being a gamer, we generally shy away from touchpads and scour at their existence because it is almost impossible to use as a gaming input. I tried using the trackpad in Age of Empires II HD which requires you to be fairly accurate with your inputs but not so much compared to FPS games.

I was pretty surprised with how well I could control my little people and get them to build in a fairly swift manner, compared to when I am playing more competitively online at my desk with a proper mouse. It is not perfect and you can still struggle with the multi-tasking requirements of moving and clicking but because it is spacious and glides smoothly, it’s more usable than other trackpads. As far as trackpads go, these should be on every laptop.

There is also gesture commands compatible with the trackpad being able to launch Cortana by tapping with three fingers and swiping three fingers to switch apps in Windows 10. Even with the big pad, it is not something I am inherently used to doing but the commands were easy enough to perform due to the size.

Performance and Benchmarks

Although we usually look at gaming laptops, this was a good chance to test a “non” gaming laptop with our typical benchmarks which consist of Firestrike, Dishonored 2, Bioshock Infinite and Fallout 4 to test framerates and overall power of the laptop and its graphics chip. A big disclaimer is that the Dell XPS 13 only has Intel HD Graphics 620, so to make the test a little fairer, I will compare the Firestrike results with my slightly older i5 Surface Pro 3 which contains an Intel HD 4400 chip.

Firestrike

XPS – 930
Surface Pro 3 – 331

Bioshock Infinite

High – 20fps

Medium – 28fps

Low – 45fps

Dishonored 2

High – 8fps

Medium – 10fps

Very Low – 15fps

Fallout 4

High – 13fps

Medium – 20fps

Very Low – 28-32fps

For an ultra-portable laptop, the Dell XPS 13 did better than I thought it would with some of the most recent games to date. Okay, there are more recent games but to keep them in line with our tests, these games still can be quite demanding on the rig.

The XPS 13 did not manage to run any of the games on the high setting but playing Dishonored 2 was just about passable on very low settings. It does not look as shiny and the game did dip below 30 fps most of the time to around 15-18fps but for the most part, I was able to play a pretty intensive game on it. This means that anything below Dishonored 2’s level you should be able to get away with. Titles like Age of Empires, League of Legends and some older titles would be playable. You might need to tweak the settings a little to get it above 30fps but as a non-dedicated gaming laptop, it does an alright job.

On Fallout 4 it performed a little better, averaging around 28fps with it doing better out in the world than it did when inside buildings. Combat was manageable from an FPS point of view but I think the game is also more forgiving of frame rate by being able to use V.A.T.S to take away some stuttering. Again, it was not perfect and did not sit over the 30fps mark all the time but did more often than when I was playing Dishonored 2.

The game which played the best was BioShock Infinite was is to be expected as the oldest out of the three games. On low settings, you could play the game unhindered by the framerate as it would stay above the 30fps minimum pretty much consistently. I did boot up Overwatch on the XPS 13 but did not benchmark the FPS while playing on low settings, it also stayed above 30fps easily which was a nice surprise.

Titles like Age of Empires, Overwatch and League of Legends and older games like BioShock Infinite would be playable on low settings. You might be able to get more beauty by tweaking the settings but as a non-dedicated gaming laptop, it does an alright job.

Something that was pretty impressive was the noise, it was very quiet even when at full power. Now, I bore in mind that the internals are not mega-cooled like the Alienware, so will not be as noisy but it was nice to be able to game on a lower volume. The downside to the quietness is the heat, it can be cool to the touch when you are just using it to browse the web but put it under pressure and the underside does get pretty hot.

The heat is something that will become noticeable if you have it on your lap and the restricted airflow for extended gaming sessions on it I would worry about the life expectancy. If you do plan to game on it, I’d suggest on a flat surface to maximise the air flow.

Battery

Ultrabooks usually have decent battery lives because they don’t usually require a mass amount of ongoing performance because of the nature of their use. The Dell XPS 13 in the past has meant to be one of the best at staying awake of the main socket. The newest model now features an even bigger 60-watt and hour battery up from the previous 56-watts.

This means the latest model is able to stand the test of endurance and have a battery life of around 13 hours when using it under normal conditions such as browsing the web, document editing etc. If you decide to go for the touch-screen model the battery time is reduced though by a few hours with our testing only lasting about 8-9 hours of average use.

In games, the testing time was even shorter only lasting a few hours when it needed to give as much energy as possible to keep framerates high. Honestly, though, the XPS 13 lasts longer than any laptop I have encountered before of mains power and that includes my Surface Pro and MacBook Air.

Overall Thoughts

Ultrabooks are designed usually to be as light and small as possible to win the race of the “most portable” this, however usually means you sacrifice components such as extra ports or battery life are reduced and even performance in mind of replacing those cooling systems for smaller more spacing saving alternatives.

The Dell XPS 13 with the Infinity Display does not bow down to these expectations within the Ultrabook market and instead opts to make your experience a better one. You get more ports than on competitor machines, a staggering battery life and a design which is comfortable to travel with.

With the Kaby Lake i7 processor and SSD combined make for some pretty decent performance, which is even possible to game on it. It might not play the latest titles on the highest settings but on low settings your games library will be pretty wide on the XPS. It has an accurate and actually usable trackpad with a webcam that has the world’s strangest placement but the Dell XPS 13 is a hard laptop to win against.