Dell XPS 13 (2024) Laptop Review

The Dell XPS 13 (2024) is available in Platinum or Graphite colors. See the bottom of the laptop here.

The build quality is exceptional. The all-aluminum chassis has almost no flex, and the screen assembly and keyboard deck feel very sturdy. The chassis, keyboard, and seamless glass touchpad's finish are relatively scratch-resistant and don't smudge with fingerprints. The Graphite color will likely show more fingerprints and smudges, though.

The hinge is outstanding. There's almost no wobble when you touch the screen or type vigorously, and you can easily lift the screen with one finger. You don't need to worry about the screen drifting or sagging from the position you adjust it to, either, as there's plenty of resistance to keep it in place.

Accessing the internals of the Dell XPS 13 (2024) is relatively easy. You need to remove six T5 screws and then use your hands to undo the bottom clips of the base cover. The SSD slot supports 2230 and 2280 M.2 PCIE Gen 4 SSDs.

You can find the owner's manual here.

• 60W power supply
• Power cable
• USB-C to USB-C (for power delivery)
• User documentation

The Dell XPS 13 (2024) is available with the following screens:

• 13.4" IPS 1920 x 1200 120Hz (non-touch, 500 cd/m², 100% sRGB)
• 13.4" IPS 2560 x 1600 120Hz (touchscreen, 500 cd/m², 100% DCI P3)
• 13.4" OLED 2880 x 1800 60Hz (touchscreen, 400 cd/m², 100% DCI P3)

The 2.8k OLED panel looks extremely sharp on the 13.4" screen. Because of the high pixel density, you don't see any individual pixels. The other FHD+ and QHD+ IPS panels have pixel densities of 169 and 226 PPI, respectively, which aren't as sharp but will still be good enough for most uses. All available display options use a 16:10 aspect ratio. This is great for productivity tasks as you get some additional vertical real estate for spreadsheets or Word documents in comparison to traditional 16:9 aspect ratios. While the OLED panel is susceptible to permanent burn-in from static elements, like the Windows taskbar, it's unlikely to be an issue if you vary the content on the display.

While OLED panels typically feature a near-instantaneous response time, this one does not. Its 60Hz refresh rate results in poor motion clarity, and its slower response times causes noticeable ghosting. In practice, this means that scrolling through webpages or Word documents won't be as smooth. The IPS displays are both 120Hz panels, so they'll provide a smoother user experience despite an advertised response rate of up to 35 ms. These displays also offer dynamic refresh rate, allowing the screen to change the refresh rate from 30 to 120Hz depending on what you're doing and whether you have the laptop plugged in or running on battery. However, this isn't the same as variable refresh rate technologies like G-SYNC or FreeSync, which synchronize a display's refresh rate to the frame rate of a GPU to reduce screen tearing. Regardless of which display you choose, there will likely be screen tearing.

The OLED panel effectively has an infinite contrast ratio, as it can individually turn off pixels to produce perfect blacks. The IPS panels have an advertised contrast ratio of 2000:1, which is great for an IPS panel but not as good as other panel technologies like VA.

The OLED panel gets bright enough for use in most indoor environments, and its exceptional contrast ratio helps the display appear brighter than it actually is. However, it's not suitable for outdoor use as you will struggle to see both bright and dark content. It gets very dim at its lowest brightness setting, which is great for using the laptop in a very dark environment to reduce eye strain. The IPS panels have a higher advertised brightness of 500 cd/m².

The glossy (or 'anti-reflection' as Dell names it) finish of the OLED panel does an outstanding job handling reflections. This panel localizes direct reflections so they appear dim and have minimal halo effects. In practice, you will barely notice reflections in bright indoor settings. The QHD+ panel uses the same 'anti-reflective' finish as the OLED, but the FHD+ panel uses a matte 'anti-glare' finish that's likely similar to the one used on the Dell XPS 14 (2024). The glossy finish handles reflections better than the matte 'anti-glare' finish found on the Dell XPS 14 (2024)'s IPS panel, which diffuses light across the surface of the display.

The OLED panel has perfect uniformity since OLEDs can turn off individual pixels. The IPS panels will have worse black uniformity.

The OLED's horizontal viewing angle is decent. The image remains accurate until you reach a moderately steep angle to the left or right. You can share color-critical work with someone else as long as the other person isn't too far off to the side. The IPS panel is likely better in regards to color shift but worse in regards to color washout and brightness loss.

The OLED's vertical viewing angle is decent. The image remains accurate until you reach a moderately steep angle to the top or bottom, although the colors do start to shift from relatively shallow angles. The IPS panel will shift less but will dim and wash out more.

The OLED panel's color accuracy is reasonable out of the box. The color temperature is slightly warmer than the standard 6500K, giving the screen an ever-so-slight yellowish tint. Most white balance inaccuracies are minor; however, colors look oversaturated, as the display targets a wider color space. The gamma is very close to the curve, except for very dark or very bright scenes, which are slightly too dark.

The 2.8k OLED panel offers full DCI P3 coverage, making it appropriate for color-critical work like photo or video editing. While the QHD+ IPS panel also advertises DCI P3 coverage, the FHD+ IPS panel option only covers the sRGB color space.

The OLED panel might bother people who are sensitive to display flicker. The IPS panels are likely entirely flicker-free.

The Dell XPS 13 (2024) has a good keyboard. Most keys are stable, though the modifier keys and space bar rattle depending on where and how hard you press them. The keys have a decent amount of travel and require very little force to actuate. While the keyboard is spacious, and the keys themselves are quite large, the layout takes some time to adjust to. In particular, the Caps Lock key feels awkwardly large and in the way, and the edge-to-edge keys increase the chance of accidental button presses. Finally, the backspace button feels awkwardly small and is next to the power button; the result is that the power button will likely get hit and accidentally put your computer to sleep.

The function keys are a capacitive button row. It shows the function keys by default; you can activate the media shortcuts by pressing Fn. You can also lock the capacitive row to the shortcuts by pressing Fn and Esc.

The Dell XPS 13 (2024) has a decent touchpad. The entire front deck is a single piece of glass, so there's no indication of where the touchpad actually is. You can get an approximate sense of its location in this thermal image. The tracking feels good once you get used to it, but since you can't see the touchpad, it can be difficult to know where the edges are. The touchpad provides excellent clicky haptic feedback, and palm detection mostly works fine while typing, though it can occasionally trigger inputs when you rest your hands on it by mistake.

The Dell XPS 13's speakers sound clear. While they get loud, their sound profile becomes harsh and tinny at higher volumes, making them fatiguing to listen to. They also lack bass and rattle at higher volumes.

The webcam is excellent on the Dell XPS 13 (2024). The image looks well-exposed and detailed, and the colors are vibrant, albeit warm. Voices sound loud and clear, with no static or white noise.

The port selection is bad on this laptop, as it only comes with two USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 ports. They support Power Delivery and DisplayPort; moreover, you can run two 4k 60Hz displays from a single port by daisy chaining or up to four 4k 60Hz displays with the internal display turned off.

The Dell XPS 13's wireless adapter is the Intel Killer Wi-Fi 7 1750 (BE200). Like Wi-Fi 6e, the Wi-Fi 7 standard gives you access to the 6GHz band but with even faster speeds, lower latency, and less signal interference. You need a router that supports Wi-Fi 7 to benefit from these features.

The Dell XPS 13 comes with the following CPU configurations:

• Intel Core Ultra 5 125H (14 cores, 18 threads, up to 4.5GHz, 18MB Cache)
• Intel Core Ultra 7 155H (16 cores, 22 threads, up to 4.8GHz, 24MB Cache)
• Intel Core Ultra 7 165H (16 cores, 22 threads, up to 5.0GHz, 24MB Cache

These three CPUs belong to Intel's new Meteor Lake product line. Comparing them to the last generation's Raptor Lake chips, they feature new low-power efficiency cores (LP-E cores) and a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) that uses AI for tasks like blurring your background during video calls or generating images. The difference between the SKUs is the clock speed and number of P-cores. The 155 and 165H have the same core configuration but a small clock speed difference, whereas the Core Ultra 5 125 H has two fewer P-cores and a larger drop in clock speed. Depending on your use case, the lack of P-cores may be a bigger issue than the difference in clock speed.

These CPUs are ideal for light productivity tasks like text processing, web browsing, and video playback. If you have a really demanding workflow, like video rendering or photo editing, you would be better off with a laptop like the Dell Alienware m18 R2 (2024) featuring the more power-hungry but higher-performing Intel Core i9-14900HX.

This laptop is only available with the integrated Intel Arc Graphics from the Intel Core Ultra CPUs. Integrated graphics are primarily designed for general productivity tasks like web browsing and video playback rather than intensive tasks like gaming or 3D rendering.

You can configure this laptop with 8, 16, 32, or 64GB of RAM. The 8GB models use LP-DDR5 6400MHz modules, whereas every other configuration uses faster LP-DDR5x 7467MHz. The memory isn't user-replaceable.

When you buy the laptop, you can configure it with 512GB, 1TB, 2TB, or 4TB of PCIE Gen 4 M.2 NVMe storage. This laptop has one user-replaceable SSD slot that supports 2230 and 2280 M.2 sizes.

The Dell XPS 13 (2024) performs well in the Geekbench 5 benchmark suite. It's in line with other premium ultraportable laptops, which means it performs great for general productivity tasks like word processing, spreadsheets, web browsing, and video playback. While the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU is a fast processor, the form factor of the Dell XPS 13 is the limiting factor; it doesn't provide adequate cooling for workloads requiring sustained performance. The Neural Processing Unit (NPU) might help in some tasks, though few applications currently use it. As for GPU-intensive tasks, the integrated Intel Arc GPU performs poorly and is unsuitable for graphically demanding tasks.

While the Dell XPS 13's Intel Core Ultra 7 155H has excellent single-core performance, its multi-core performance is poor compared to other laptops with the same chip, like the Dell XPS 14 (2024). This is due to the thermal solution that Dell has designed for this ultraportable. If your workflow involves tasks that require sustained multi-core performance, it would be better to opt for this laptop's bigger sibling, the Dell XPS 16 (2024), which has a much beefier cooling solution.

This laptop can handle Blender workloads, but again, only in short sessions, as performance decreases significantly over time. A laptop with a discrete GPU is preferable if you want to do serious Blender work.

While the Intel Arc iGPU scores acceptably on the Basemark GPU, it's not well suited to any intensive gaming. This isn't surprising, considering that it's an integrated graphics processor designed for light productivity tasks.

Models with the IPS panel will have better battery life.

Borderlands 3 isn't playable on the Dell XPS 13 (2024), even on the lowest settings. The integrated GPU isn't fast enough to handle this and other similarly demanding games.

Civilization VI performs decently on the Dell XPS 13 (2024). As a turn-based strategy game, you can easily turn down settings to Minimum and have a very enjoyable experience. Average turn time is also great, so you won't have to wait long to see if barbarians are coming for your capital, yet again!

While you can manage above 60 fps on Low settings in CS2, persistent stuttering makes this game, and other fast-paced competitive FPS games, choppy and unplayable.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is unplayable on the Dell XPS 13 (2024), as it lacks the graphical horsepower to provide a smooth experience. With severe stuttering issues, you can expect other graphically demanding RPGs to perform poorly on this laptop.

This laptop is silent when idle and not particularly loud under load. Its acoustic and thermal performance is identical in every performance profile, including 'Ultra Performance.' These profiles are available in the MyDell app. The keyboard is also comfortable to use under load, as the chassis doesn't get too hot. The bottom of the laptop gets slightly warmer at 42.7 °C (108.9 °F).

The Dell XPS 14 has a few pre-installed applications, including:

• Dell Digital Delivery: Lets you purchase and download software applications from Dell.
• Dell SupportAssist: Scans your computer for firmware and driver updates.
• Intel Unison: Lets you connect your smartphone to the laptop, allowing you to send and receive messages, view photos taken on your smartphone, and transfer files, similar to Windows' MyPhone app.
• Killer Intelligence Center: Lets you optimize network performance.
• McAfee: Antivirus software. Requires a subscription.
• My Dell: Contains system and warranty information. Also contains various settings to apply noise cancellation during video calls, change the speakers' sound profile, calibrate the display, and change the power settings.
• Solitaire Collection: Various Solitaire-based games.
• Spotify Music: App for the music streaming service.

There's a facial recognition IR camera, and the power button incorporates a fingerprint sensor. You can use either to log in quickly, authorize purchases in the Windows Store, and auto-fill saved passwords on supported websites.