Dell’s XPS 13, the laptop that launched the narrow-bezel trend, brings it to a different level by having even smaller bezels. The bottom bezel has been eliminated and Dell has found the extra space after the removal of the bottom bezel.
Claiming space also meant that Dell would jettison the previous generations 16:9 “widescreen”, an aspect ratio that is better to watch movies than to do real work. The aspect ratio of 16:10 on the 2022 Dell XPS 13 9300 is identical to that on the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 7390, giving a little more space for flipping spreadsheets and large files.
This is not the only major change. Dell’s early 2022, XPS 13 9300 moves to Intel’s newest 10th generation, 10 nm Core i7-1065G7 “Ice Lake” CPU, adds a Windows Hello infrared camera and uses an M.2 SSD card. Many people were not happy when Dell’s much-lauded XPS 13 2-in-1 went to a soldered-in SSD Apple-style caps. And if you’re one of them, you can release your caps lock key right now.
Its SSD can be upgraded, Dell was requested to open a unit in order to have some photographic evidence. On the M.2 ride it is available as far as eliminating the copper heat spreader, but if you think the picture is FAKE! then we may not be able to persuade you.
The heat pipe and the dual fans are just above the M.2 drive, all of which seem to be a complete overhaul. By looking at the Dell XPS 13 9370, it was first launched in 2018 at CES, you can see the big change. The older one uses two pipes, running in the same direction.
The people at Dell are not worried about the efficiency or the performance of the newest XPS 13. However, the new cooling system would help in retain more heat evenly, in spite of concentrating it all under the keyboard.
With regard to the keyboard, this time Dell went around with a traditional rubber dome configuration rather than the XPS 13 2-in-1 7390 love-it – or-hate-it keyboard. The keyboard is a redesign from the previous model, extending all the way to the frame edges.
No more 6-core?
If you want to move to the 10nm 10th gen of Intel, you are going to lose the two cores. The Core i7-1065G7 comes out on a quad-core chip, whereas the previous Core i7-10710U had six cores in the XPS 13 7390, although using the older 14nm architecture. This is likely to result in a backward step in the performance of the CPU under intense multi-threading testing but a major step up in graphics performance, as we saw in the XPS 13 2-in-1 7390. Some will probably complain about the low performance of the CPU, but the 6-core Comet Lake has always been in many strange spaces. You’ve had great multi-threaded results, but only integrated graphics that are decent enough.
For this tiny and light computer, the balance of a good quad-core performance is going to make more sense. And if you’re still puzzled, we’ve laid out in an easy-to-digest format that 10th-gen Intel Core CPU to buy.
As the company says the laptop will hit 19 hours of run time with its 52-watt-hour battery and a FHD+ screen (1920×1200 vs. the standard FHD 1920×1080 in the previous model), Dell seems to get back into top battery life position.
Dell provides three display options: a without touch 500 nit FHD+, a touch 500 nit FHD+, and a 4 K “Ultra HD+” 500 nit screen that translates into a resolution of 3840×2400. With a three-panel display option, a touch-free 500 nit FHD+, a touch-free 500 nit FHD+ and a 4 K “Ultra HD+” 500 nit panel that translates into a resolution of 3840×2400.
It should be quite familiar with the rest of the XPS 13 9300. The largest M.2 SSD that you can get is 2 TB, two Thunderbolt 3 ports, an analog audio port, and a reader for microSD. The memory switches to faster LPDDR4X/3733, with up to 32 GB accessible by this February, thanks to the Ice Lake U chip.
The XPS 13 is expected to be delivered in the U.S., UK, France, Germany, and Switzerland on January 7, with many other geographies following in February.
The retail price of Dell for the XPS 13 is going to be $1,000 USD. A Linux-based Developers Edition will be available for $1,200 USD up from February 4 in the U.S., Canada, and a few European countries.