Dell XPS 13 (with Snapdragon X Elite) review

The XPS 13 is a stunner. It's slim, sleek, and built with premium materials like CNC machined aluminium and Gorilla Glass 3. The bezels around the display are practically non-existent, giving you an immersive viewing experience. It's also incredibly light, starting at just 1.19kg. This is a laptop you can take anywhere and it can even take a few knocks inside your bag.

Dell went overboard with the minimalist design of the new XPS. The keyboard is just flat without any definition or curvature in them to land your digits so you end up typing with a lot more errors than you would like. The function row keys are touch capacitive which looks good but I rather have physical buttons. Apple tried doing something like this with the touch bar in the MacBooks and then had to go back to the physical keys because a laptop is still a tool at the end of the day and you want to make sure it works well rather than looks good.

Even the touchpad doesn’t have a border so it’s really hard to tell where it starts and ends. I asked a couple of other reviewers and some said it takes a while before muscle memory kicks in but for some that never happened and it remained a frustrating game of ‘how big is my trackpad’.

There are only 2 USB Type-C ports capable of 40Gbps of transfer speeds. You will need a dock if you plan to do any serious office or creative work with this laptop. Dell has taken Apple’s approach back when it had Intel chips but currently, the MacBook Air has more ports than the XPS and costs less too.

Here's where things get interesting. The Snapdragon X Elite chip isn't your typical laptop processor. It's designed for efficiency and long battery life, and it delivers. Dell claims up to 27 hours of battery life on a single charge, which is insane and we got around 15 to 20 hours depending on how heavy the workload was that day.

The Qualcomm is really good at battery life. If you’re just going to be using this for office work and nothing more then expect the battery life to blow you away. It’s as good as the Asus we reviewed with the Qualcomm chip and can also outlive the MacBook Air in battery life at times. You can run some x86 applications on this laptop through the translation layer but we noticed a dip in battery life in those circumstances.

But what about performance? Well, it's not going to blow you away with raw power. It's more than capable of handling everyday tasks like browsing, email, and light productivity work. But if you're a gamer or video editor, you might want to look at Intel based chips which are available as well. Qualcomm is an ARM-based CPU and many applications have still not natively started supporting it. Not to mention, the GPU on this is really not capable of doing anything. On benchmarks it narrowly beats Intel’s Core Ultra chips in performance but many real software still don’t work on ARM-based chips for now. For instance, our Adobe InDesign software is still not supported at the time of writing this review. Maybe that will change slowly but right now, if you don’t want to think about software support and just want a functioning laptop, the Qualcomm one may not be for you.

On the flipside, Google Chrome, Microsoft Office, docs, Teams, Adobe Acrobat, Netflix, etc are all run very well on this Snapdragon chip. So if you’re someone who does corporate speak and still remains sane by the end of the day to watch Netflix, this is a very, very good laptop. The battery life is phenomenal and the laptop runs quiet without the fans kicking in at all.

Steam games are a hit and miss. Some will run and some will refuse to start at all. Even if you manage to run a game, the GPU really lacks the processing chops to make it run pretty.

The XPS 13's display is a beauty. You can choose between a 3K OLED touchscreen or a FHD+ non-touch display. Both options offer vibrant colours, sharp details, and wide viewing angles. The OLED option is particularly impressive, with deep blacks and incredible contrast.

This is one of the first Windows laptops we’ve used with Tandem OLED. The same tech Apple is using on the iPad with the M4 chip. It’s hella bright and absolutely gorgeous. It also supports Dolby Vision and touch controls so you may want to get this one if Netflix is a side hobby.

The Dell XPS 13 with Snapdragon is a real head-turner, with its sleek and stylish design. The display is top-notch, and the battery life is insane - perfect for those who are always on the go. But here's the thing, it's not the best choice for power users or people who need to run super-specific programs. The performance can be a bit lacking, and there might be some compatibility issues with certain software. But if you're looking for a lightweight, long-lasting laptop that's great for everyday stuff like browsing the web, watching movies, and checking email, the Dell XPS 13 with Snapdragon is definitely worth considering. Just keep in mind its limited port selection and minimalistic keyboard and trackpad layout.