Dell XPS Series To Take On Microsoft Surface Pro, Surface Book, And MacBook Pro

The spotlight lately may be on Microsoft’s Surface Pro and Surface Book, but Dell has some surprises on its hands: the updated XPS 13 and XPS 15. Dell shocked the industry earlier this year with the release of the 2015 version of the XPS 13. After its introduction at CES, Business Insider gave the XPS 13 a glowing review.

“Dell’s newest XPS 13 laptop is so excellent it persuaded me to give up my personal MacBook for Windows 8 for a week. The XPS 13 is light, gorgeous, and works well. If you want a Windows machine that’s just as good, and perhaps better than, the MacBook Air, this is the laptop to buy.”

The XPS 13 shocked everybody with its bezel-less display and 4K display screen. It was a 13-inch computer in the body of an 11-inch laptop. There were some driver problems with the trackpad at first, but Dell appears to have fixed all that. Now, Dell is getting ready to unleash the updated XPS 13 and it sounds like a killer of a notebook. AnandTech has the news.

“Dell has tried to take the XPS 13 and push it to the next level, and they are starting with Skylake. Dell will offer Core i3-6100U all the way up to Core i7-6600U. Memory options start at 4 GB and go up to 16 GB of LPDDR3, and storage gets a bump too. The base 128 GB model is still a SATA based SSD, but the 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB models are all PCIe versions.”

AnanTech notes that these are evolutionary updates, but the move to Skylake has also given Dell the opportunity to add Thunderbolt 3 to the XPS 13 through a USB Type-C port. If you need a larger notebook in the same form as the Dell XPS 13, look no further. There is also the Dell XPS 15.

“Dell has brought the look and feel of the Infinity Display to the XPS 15. They have squeezed a 15.6-inch display into the body of a 14-inch notebook. Let’s talk about that display too. It is an Ultrasharp 4K Ultra HD model, which comes in at 282 pixels per inch and has a 350-nit brightness rating.”

AnandTech notes that the 4K model also covers 100 percent of the Adobe RGB color space, which is a wider gamut than the typical sRGB space of most other notebooks. If this doesn’t make your geek mind explode and all you want is a tablet/laptop hybrid, look no further than the Dell XPS 12, which will compete with the new Surface Pro 4. The Verge talks about a very unique aspect of the XPS 12.

“Dell is using a 12.5-inch display, and surprisingly you can even get a 4K option here. Dell is using magnets to slide the screen into the base unit and all of the components are housed in the tablet itself. It’s basically a tablet that has a good keyboard. The magnets also work to keep the tablet secured to the keyboard when you close them together like a regular laptop,” the article claims.

A 4K screen puts the XPS 12 in an advantage when compared to the Surface Pro 4, which has a 2,736 x 1,824 pixel resolution display. It appears that the XPS 12 keyboard has a more solid feel, even though the new Type Cover for the Surface Pro 4 is said to be an improvement over the previous version. Dell has definitely proven itself as a force to be reckoned with this year.

[Feature photo by Bloomberg for Getty Images]