Dell’s Revised XPS 13 Promises ‘Multi-Day Battery,’ Even Though It Still Can’t Quit Invisible Trackpads

It’s been a little less than two years since Dell showed off its redesigned and very controversial XPS 13. It hasn’t yet quit the fascination with an invisible touchpad, a super-flat, spaceless keyboard, and LED function row. The new XPS 13 includes the soon-to-launch Lunar Lake chips from Intel promising enough efficiency to stream for 26 hours. It’s also packing a tandem OLED display that promises beauty and brightness all in one. If you still hate the design, none of that probably matters too much to you.

As Dell described during IFA on Tuesday, the XPS 13 redux claims it has a “multi-day battery,” though that means watching Netflix movies continuously for 26 hours at a low brightness setting. If the 55Wh battery combined with the Intel Core Ultra 7 256V offers close to 20 hours, it would be a significant improvement over the previous XPS 13 models or the more recent XPS 14 with Meteor Lake.

It’s still the same thin, 2.6-pound laptop design, but the new XPS starts at $1,400 for the low-end version that comes with 512 GB of SSD storage, 16 GB of RAM, and an Intel Core Ultra 5 226V. There are options for 32 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage. The CPU can range from multiple Core Ultra 7 chips up to the highest-end mobile processor, the Intel Core Ultra 9 288V. The laptop is currently up for pre-order.

We have yet to benchmark any of the chips ourselves, but Intel promised some massive improvements in productivity benchmarks and even some large leaps in gaming performance for such thin laptops. 

The laptop’s 13.4-inch display is getting a major boost with the upgraded OLED. Apple first introduced the mass market to tandem OLED displays with the iPad Pro with M4. The screen type is essentially two layers of OLED on top of each other, allowing for better brightness than these kinds of displays typically offer. Dell says you should get a typical 500 nits of full-screen brightness. More layers means it’s more expensive to produce, which is likely why the laptop starts $350 more than the same device from 2022.

Despite all that, it’s still going to have the same old problems. I don’t much care for the flat, near-seamless keyboard or a trackpad that doesn’t show you the edges. I can live with both of those, but the LED touch function row is a terrible design that feels less intuitive than a simple button. It’s also an accessibility nightmare for anybody with vision issues. If you can survive the design, a significantly better battery life, and a better screen would make the XPS 13 a great slim productivity machine, though probably not as easy as the latest MacBook Airs. 

And if you’re looking for something much slimmer, less pricey, and with a more typical keyboard, Dell also shared info for the new Inspiron and Latitude models. The Inspiron 14 and Latitude 5455 have the option for a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus 8-core CPU. The latest slimmed-down form of the Qualcomm ARM-based chip packs fewer cores than the previous Snapdragon X Plus that’s been stuck in the more budget-end Copilot+ PCs. A cheaper chip necessitates a cheaper laptop, and the Inspiron 14 starts at $900, $100 less than the same laptop with the 10-core X Plus.

Both laptops will be available starting Sept. 24. The chip is supposed to outperform Intel’s low-end Core Ultra 5 125U chips with far better power efficiency. We don’t know yet how the Core Ultra 5 226V will stack up, especially since Intel is more keen to show off the benchmarks on its mid—or high-end CPUs.