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Not only is the Dell XPS 13 one of Dell’s best-known laptops, but it’s one of the best-known laptops, period. If you know anything about Windows laptops, you’ve probably heard its name. It’s great in pretty much every way, and it just keeps getting better.
So it’s forgivable to hear about a “Dell XPS 13 2-in-1” and assume it’s a run-of-the-mill XPS 13 that you can flip around. But the XPS 13 2-in-1 is very much a laptop of its own, with a different set of trade-offs and considerations from its clamshell counterpart. In some areas (like graphics performance), the convertible is a step ahead of the standard XPS; in others (like the keyboard), it’s compromising a bit. The best model for you depends on the type of tasks you’re looking to do.
Edge-to-edge keyboard, large touchpad — the works.
This year’s 2-in-1 starts at $1,099.99 for a Core i3-1115G4 processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. You can spec that all the way up to $2,249.99 (listed now at $1,999.99) for a 3840 x 2400 display, a Core i7-1165G7 CPU, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. You can also pay $50 extra for the white (“frost”) color rather than the silver and black model and $60 extra to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro.
I have a model in the middle, containing the 1165G7, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 1920 x 1200 touchscreen. That costs $1,949.99 (but is currently listed at $1,749.99 on Dell’s website). The regular XPS 13 with the same processor has just 8GB of RAM and is said to cost $1,499.99, but it’s currently listed at $1,349.99. That means you’re paying $400 extra for 8GB more memory, and the other benefits of the 2-in-1.
Before getting into that, I’ll give you a brief rundown of what’s new from the last XPS 13 2-in-1. It’s mostly one thing: the processor. This 2-in-1 (the 9310) includes Intel’s newest 11th Gen “Tiger Lake” mobile chips. The CPUs bring Intel’s best-in-class Iris Xe integrated graphics, which have been the talk of the town since Tiger Lake’s launch, as well as the Thunderbolt 4 standard. This 9310 is actually certified through Intel’s Evo program (denoted by a small sticker on the right palm rest), which is supposed to guarantee that a laptop meets the needs of an everyday home or office user, in categories from connectivity to battery life and performance.
The ports support up to two 4K displays and data transfers up to 40Gbps.
Apart from that, the new 2-in-1 has largely the same look as its predecessor and the clamshell XPS, complete with a slim and sturdy aluminum chassis, a 1920 x 1200 (16:10) Gorilla Glass screen, and four ports (two USB-C with Thunderbolt 4, DisplayPort, and Power Delivery, one headphone jack, and one microSD card reader). Dell has made a few tweaks as well: the webcam now supports Windows Hello, there’s a new “frost” color option, RAM has been bumped from 3733MHz to 4267MHz, the touchpad is quieter, and there’s an updated microSD reader that Dell says will deliver better performance. That’s all well and good, but the processor is the star of the show here — and it is a star.
For general performance, the 1165G7 handled my office workload, which includes a dozen-ish Chrome tabs, a few other apps like Slack and Spotify, and some downloading, file copying, and other office-y stuff in the background, with no problem. I never heard the fans spin up or felt any heat unless I was running an intense program. This is the experience you’ll have with any machine with an i7, but you certainly aren’t sacrificing any performance for this convertible form factor.
Heavier media work is where this system starts to stand out. The 2-in-1 took 10 minutes and 5 seconds to export our 5-minute, 33-second 4K video in Adobe Premiere Pro. That’s 38 seconds faster than the regular XPS 13 — effectively comparable. Both systems are faster than any 10th Gen Ice Lake laptop with integrated graphics, and they beat the Asus ZenBook 14 with the same processor (which took 11 and a half minutes). They also both lose out to the Arm-powered MacBook Air (which doesn’t even have a fan) and MacBook Pro, which finished the job in 8:15 and 7:39, respectively.
Where the 2-in-1 really differentiates itself from the clamshell, though, is gaming performance. You can actually play a fair number of games on this laptop without needing to bump the resolution down. The 2-in-1 smoked the clamshell on Rocket League’s maximum settings (an average of 120fps, to the clamshell’s 111fps) and League of Legends (226fps to the clamshell’s 205fps). You’ll only see 60fps on either XPS 13 since that’s the maximum their screens can display, but those results show how much higher Dell has clocked the 2-in-1 over the standard XPS.
The 2-in-1 is putting up such impressive numbers that there are actually games where you’ll see better performance than you will on the clamshell. It breezed through Overwatch’s Ultra settings, averaging 71fps. That beats the standard XPS 13, which averaged 48fps on the same preset — a difference you’ll notice in gameplay. It also beats Lenovo’s IdeaPad Slim 7 with AMD’s eight-core Ryzen 7 4800U, which put up 46fps and actually isn’t too far off a system I tested with the most powerful Tiger Lake processor (the Core i7-1185G7) which averaged 89fps.
The really exciting news is that you can actually play Shadow of the Tomb Raider on this machine at 1080p. The 2-in-1 averaged 36fps on the game’s built-in benchmark (at the lowest-possible settings). That’s just two off from the newest MacBook Air with Apple’s M1 chip (38fps), which has been outperforming 1165G7 systems across the board. Now, you may very well not want to play demanding titles like Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 38fps, but you can play them on this machine without feeling like you’re watching a flipbook. That’s a big accomplishment for these integrated graphics, especially considering that the standard XPS 13 only averaged 22fps on the same benchmark.
Similar to that of the clamshell XPS, however, the convertible’s cooling system (including two fans, hidden vents in the hinge, and what Dell calls “an ultra-thin vapor chamber”) is being pushed to its limit during these high-intensity tasks. During the Premiere Pro export and my gaming sessions, the CPU spent some time in the high 90s (Celsius) and even hit 100 a few times. This may cause problems for the XPS form factor down the line if Intel doesn’t make significant gains in efficiency. On the plus side, the keyboard and touchpad never got hot at all. (The keyboard got toasty on the clamshell.)
So the 2-in-1 gives you better graphics performance than the standard XPS (as well as a convertible form factor) for just a slightly higher price. What’s the catch? There are two worth considering.
The Dell logo is slightly larger than it was on the last 2-in-1.
The first is battery life. I averaged eight hours and 50 minutes using the 2-in-1 as my primary work driver with the screen at 200 nits of brightness. That’s quite good among the Tiger Lake systems we’ve seen so far, and it means you should get a full workday from one charge. But it’s a bit worse than the standard XPS, where I usually saw nine hours and 15 minutes — a small difference but one that could be important to students or frequent business travelers who are looking for every ounce of juice they can get.
The second trade-off to consider is the keyboard. The standard XPS 13 has one of my all-time favorite laptop keyboards; it’s snappy, quiet, and comfortable, with a really nice texture. The 2-in-1 has a different keyboard that Dell calls the “Next Gen MagLev keyboard.” It has wider keycaps with just 0.7mm of travel. It feels similar to using the old low-profile butterfly keyboard on the 2019 MacBook Pro. Personally, I hate this. Typing on the convertible feels like slamming my fingers onto flat plastic. But I begrudgingly acknowledge that some people (including Verge deputy editor Dan Seifert) prefer these kinds of keys.
Overall, the XPS 13 2-in-1 9310 is an excellent Windows convertible. It keeps the slim, sturdy, premium build quality that makes the XPS line the best of the best while also delivering some of the best performance you can get from an ultraportable laptop. It’s a formidable competitor to Apple’s groundbreaking MacBooks, especially if you’re looking for a touchscreen and a convertible form factor.
A few steps forward, a few steps back.
If you’re deciding whether to buy the XPS 13 or the XPS 13 2-in-1, the differences are simple — but they’re also significant and worth thinking about. The convertible form factor is the most obvious distinction, but I would argue it’s not the most important one (unless your job requires tablet use). You’ll be using the keyboard a lot, so you’ll want to figure out which one you prefer (if you’ve used MacBook butterfly keyboards and other MacBook keyboards, those are a rough approximation). You should also consider the sorts of tasks you’ll be putting your system through and whether a significant increase in graphics performance (especially with demanding games) is worth giving up a bit of battery life. And of course, there’s the $400 price difference.
Anyone who’s considering an XPS 13 and thinks they might prefer a convertible should definitely consider the 2-in-1. Just don’t assume they’re the exact same package.
The NUC M15 is a premium productivity laptop meant to compete with the XPS and Spectre computers of the world
Intel is launching a new laptop. Yes, that’s right, Intel itself has a new laptop that it designed in-house and will be selling through various partners early in 2021. The NUC M15 is the latest computer in the company’s expanding Next Unit of Computing line, which is best known for making tiny desktop PCs.
You won’t actually see Intel’s name stamped on the lid, however. That’s because Intel is essentially supplying this laptop to boutique shops that will equip it with various storage configurations and brand it themselves (a process known in the industry as “white labeling”). This isn’t the first time Intel has done this: a little over a year ago, it produced the MAG-15, a gaming laptop that was sold by a number of smaller brands across the world, including Schenker in Europe and Eluktronics and Maingear in the US.
The NUC M15 is a different beast, however. Instead of targeting a gaming enthusiast crowd that is looking for impressive performance and cooling for an attractive price, the M15 is very much a premium productivity laptop. It’s got a 15.6-inch, 1080p IPS display (available with or without touch), a 73 watt-hour battery that Intel claims is good for up to 16 hours of use, and Intel’s 11th Gen Core i5-1135G7 or i7-1165G7 quad-core processor. Instead of a discrete graphics card from Nvidia, the M15 uses Intel’s Iris Xe integrated graphics. You’ll be able to get it with 8 or 16GB of RAM (soldered, so not upgradeable after purchase) and a variety of storage configurations, depending on which brand is selling it.
The M15 has an aluminum unibody and a 15.6-inch screen.
All of that is packed into an aluminum unibody that’s 14.9mm thick (0.59 in) and a stout 3.64 pounds (1.65 kg). The fit and finish are right up there with what you’d expect from a premium laptop, even if the visuals are a bit boring. (Intel says is it using Tongfeng as its manufacturing partner for the M15, the same one it used with the MAG-15.)
A standard, well-spaced chiclet keyboard is centered under the display with a large glass Windows Precision trackpad just below it. There are two Thunderbolt 4 / USB 4 Type-C ports, two USB-A 10Gbps ports, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a full-size HDMI port along the sides. The two USB-C ports are on opposite sides, and you can charge from either one of them, which is convenient. The only thing that’s missing is an SD card slot.
If those specs sound familiar, it’s because they are effectively the same as the Asus ZenBook 14 and Dell XPS 13 we recently reviewed, plus countless other thin-and-light productivity laptops released this fall. The major difference with the M15 is that it has a 15-inch display; most productivity laptops have 13- or 14-inch screens on them, while 15-inch models tend to be costlier and more performance-oriented.
There are some other slight differences, such as an LED light bar in the front that works with the Alexa app for Windows. The light bar will glow blue when it hears you say the Alexa voice command, just like an Echo smart speaker. Four microphones installed along the top edge of the lid help the M15 pick up your voice from across the room.
The M15 also has a Windows Hello-compatible webcam for facial login, plus presence detection that will wake the computer up as you approach it and log you in automatically. It will also keep the computer unlocked so long as you’re sitting in front of it. It’s similar to what we saw on the Dell Latitude 7400 last year.
Intel says its goal with this computer is to provide a premium-level laptop to smaller companies so that they can compete with the Dells and HPs of the world without having to invest in the level of R&D that those companies have. The company described the M15 to me as “a premium product above the mainstream, but still targeted towards the average user” and that it is “optimized for a variety of use cases.” It says it saw “an opportunity for higher end premium laptop with a larger screen, thin and light with unbelievable battery life” in the market, and it designed the M15 to fit that.
The M15 technically isn’t labeled with Evo branding, which denotes a certain level of performance and features, including over nine hours of battery life, fast charging, Thunderbolt 4, Wi-Fi 6, and instant wake. But it is built to meet that specification, and Intel expects its partners to submit their finalized, branded machines for Evo certification. As for driver support, Intel says its goal is to provide support for anything it is involved in, which takes another burden off of small companies with limited support resources.
The company also tells me that it plans to bring more NUC laptops to market in the future and that it won’t become a once-per-year type of thing. But it also says that it doesn’t expect to have a full-range product stack like Dell or HP and that any models it does design and sell will be targeted to specific use cases.
Intel isn’t divulging the brands that will eventually sell the M15 early next year, but it’s likely that many of the companies that sold last year’s gaming laptop will participate, and Intel has hinted that it expects even more boutique brands to carry the M15. Intel also says its partners will ultimately determine the selling price, but it expects prices for the M15 to range between $999 and $1,499, depending on configuration.
That pricing is important because, unlike last year’s gaming-focused laptop, there really isn’t much that makes the M15 stand out from the extremely crowded productivity laptop field. The design is best described as a reference model, with a heavy-handed influence from the 2012–2015 MacBook Pro; the specs are not any different from what you can get from countless other brands; and it can’t lay claim to the thinnest or lightest package you can get, an important quality for many laptop buyers in this segment. In some respects, such as its 16:9 display, the M15 already feels behind the curve, as many companies have shifted to taller 16:10 or 3:2 screens that are easier to work with tall documents or webpages on. It also has two fans, unlike Apple’s new MacBook Air that can handle professional work in complete silence.
Last year’s MAG-15 was far from perfect, and it had an equally generic design. But it was interesting to gaming enthusiasts because it had an advanced cooling system, excellent performance, great build quality, a light chassis, and shockingly good battery life for a gaming laptop. It’s hard to find that exact mix of qualities from the name brands in the gaming space. As a result, many enthusiasts were able to get past the fact that it wasn’t made by a known brand, such as Alienware or Razer, because they could get a unique mix of features and top-tier performance at a discount. (I should know; I personally bought a MAG-15 last year for this very reason.)
XPG is one of the brands that’s likely to sell the M15 once it hits retail. Schenker, Eluktronics, and Maingear are other likely candidates.
The productivity laptop market is wildly different from the enthusiast gaming world, though, and without any standout performance qualities aside from its slightly larger screen, it’s hard to see why anyone would buy the M15 from a brand they never heard of instead of just getting a tried-and-true Dell XPS 13 or HP Spectre x360. The M15 is likely to be a perfectly competent laptop — there are no glaring faults that I can see from the list of specs and features, and the pre-production unit I was able to try out ahead of today’s announcement seems mostly fine — but that’s not likely to make the average person choose it over another model.
The pricing that Intel has set expectations for is premium level, but it is a little lower than similar configurations from the big names. It’s definitely lower than you typically pay for a premium 15-inch laptop, though those generally come with higher-end processors, discrete GPUs, and higher resolution screens than the M15 has.
We should have a better idea of how well the M15 fares in the near future, once we have the ability to put a unit through its paces. Until then, this will be something to watch.
Apple’s new in-house M1 chip is officially on the market. The first reviews and benchmarks are starting to pop up, so we’re gathering everything we know about it into one handy place, which we’ll update as we learn more.
Apple M1 Cheat Sheet: Key details at a glance
Release Date:
Ships Week of 11/16
Found in:
MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac Mini
Architecture:
Arm-based
CPU Cores:
8-core CPU
Nm Process:
5nm
Graphics:
Integrated 8-core GPU with 2.6 teraflops of throughput
Memory:
8GB or 16GB of LPDDR4X-4266 MHz SDRAM
Apple M1 Release Date
The first computers with Apple’s M1 chip are
already up for purchase
. To try it, you’re going to have to choose between one of the three new products that feature the chip: the new
MacBook Air
, the
13-inch MacBook Pro
or the
Mac Mini
. Each comes with two configurations using the M1. The MacBook Pro also still has two Intel configurations on offer, and the Mac Mini has one Intel processor offering.
Apple started shipping out M1 device purchases this week.
Apple M1 Price
The M1 is a mobile chip, so you have to get it built into one of Apple’s machines.
The Mac Mini starts at $699 with 256GB of storage, making it the cheapest way to get an M1 processor. The price range stretches all the way to $2,099, which will net you the 13-inch MacBook Pro with 2TB of storage.
Pricing is largely down to the specifics of your purchase. But so far, it doesn’t seem like M1 Macs will be significantly more expensive than Intel-based Intel counterparts. The M1 MacBook Air configuration that is most similar to the Intel MacBook Air we reviewed earlier this year is $1,249, for instance, which is $50 cheaper than last year’s version. The $999 starting price remains unchanged.
Apple M1 Specs
Here’s the M1’s bread-and-butter. What does Apple’s new Arm-based chip have that Intel’s x86 architecture doesn’t? Well, it uses a
5nm process
, for one. By comparison, even
Intel’s 7nm process
isn’t expected to start hitting its products until at least 2022. Apple’s CPU has 8 cores, which you would typically need to step up to Intel’s H-series product stack to get on mobile chips.
Four of the M1’s cores are dedicated to high-power performance, while the other 4 are for low-power efficiency. That evens out to a 10W thermal envelope overall, with the low power cores supposedly taking up a tenth of the power needed for the high-power cores. The chip also has a total of 16 billion transistors.
The M1 is also a system on a chip (SOC) with integrated graphics and onboard memory. The included GPU has 8 cores as well, with 128 total compute units and 2.6 teraflops of throughput (there is one exception here: the entry level MacBook Air uses a version of the M1 with a 7-core GPU). The “unified memory” replaces the need for separate RAM, meaning that the chip comes with either 8GB or 16GB of LPDDR4X-4266 MHz SDRAM, depending on your device.
The M1 also has a separate 16-core neural engine for machine learning tasks.
(Image credit: Apple)
Apple M1 Native Performance
The core drawback to the M1 chip right now is that, because it uses a different architecture and instruction set from Intel or AMD parts, it won’t be able to run x86 apps without emulating them. Developers are already on the case, with Microsoft saying it’s working on a version of Microsoft Office that will run natively on M1 machines and Adobe saying that it’s working on an M1-native creative suite. But early adopters might have to wait a bit to get the most performance they can out of their new chips.
When the M1 does get to run natively, though, it seems to pack some serious power.
Engadget
reports that the M1 MacBook Air had Geekbench 5 results of 1,619/6,292. That’s well above their results for the
2020 i7 MacBook Air
, which were 1,130/3,053. Meanwhile, the Tiger Lake
Dell XPS 13 9310
scored in 1,496/5,254 on our own Geekbench 5.0 benchmarks, while the
ThinkPad X1 Carbon Extreme Gen 3
with an Intel Core i7-10850H chip scored 1,221/6,116.
The M1’s single-core score also beats the 27-inch 2020 Core i9 iMac’s single-core score, which only hit 1,246. It loses out to the iMac’s 9,046 multi-core score, but that officially gives the M1 higher single-core test results out of any Intel Macs, even desktops.
Outlets like The Verge also tested the M1, but under different conditions. Using a MacBook Pro and testing with Geekbench 5.3, The Verge found its review unit scored 1,730/7,510 points.
We’re curious to see how the M1 stacks against a potential 8-core Tiger Lake chip down the line, as well as AMD’s new Ryzen 5000 processors, which are also looking to take Intel’s CPU crown. For now, though, the M1 is looking to be the fastest mobile chip you can buy.
Apple M1 Emulated Performance
Finally, we reach the biggest potential drawback for the M1: Since the Apple M1 uses a completely new architecture (at least new for Macs), it can’t natively run apps designed for x86 chips. Instead, it has to emulate them. Apple’s built a tool to let users easily do this, called Rosetta 2, but running apps through Rosetta 2 means they’re going to take a performance hit.
Official reviews are reporting on emulation more anecdotally rather than with official numbers, but user
Geekbench results
show that, even when emulating apps, the M1 chip is still faster than Intel counterparts. On November 14th, a user posted test results for an M1-equipped MacBook Air running the x86 version of Geekbench. The machine earned a single-core score of 1,313 and a multi-core score of 5,888. That’s about 79% as powerful as the native scores for the same machine, which were 1,687 on single-core and 7,433 on multi-core. Still, even the emulated scores are higher than any other Intel Mac on single-core, including the 2020 27-inch iMac with a Core i9 processor. As for the multi-core score, it’s still much higher than the 3,067 score of the Core i7 2020 MacBook Air.
Keep in mind that performance varies from program to program, however. When The Verge tested the x86 version of Adobe Creative Cloud on its MacBook Pro review unit, the publication came across a bug that consistently halved its export bitrate. The publication said that export times stayed flat even when running multiple 4K exports in a row, suggesting strong performance, but it’s a good reminder that emulation still has drawbacks even if benchmark results look strong.
Again, this is a place where we’re looking forward to seeing how the M1 fares against the newest Intel and AMD chips. Because the M1 isn’t going to be running at its best here, other chipmakers might be able to make up the current performance gap more easily in upcoming mobile chip releases.
(Image credit: Annapurna Interactive)
Apple M1 Graphics Performance
With Apple M1-equipped machines already starting to hit the public, preliminary benchmark results are starting to show up on the GFXBench browser. And while the 8-core, 128 CU, 2.6-teraflop chip’s obviously not going to compete with recent behemoths like the RTX 3000 series or even with older yet higher-end discrete GPUs like the GTX 1080, it does beat old standards like the Radeon RX 560 and the GTX 1050 Ti.
For instance, on high-level GFXBench tests like 1440p Manhattan 3.1.1, the Apple M1 hit 130.9 frames per second, while the 1050 Ti only hit 127.4 fps and the Radeon RX 560 was capped out at 101.4 fps. Meanwhile, on the more intensive Aztec Ruins High Tier test, the M1 hit 77.4 fps while the GTX 1050 Ti maxed out at 61.4 fps. The Radeon RX 560 did perform best in this test, with a score of 82.5 fps, but generally has lower frame rates across most tests.
Meanwhile, Ars Technica found that the M1 scored 11,476 points in 3DMark’s Slingshot Extreme Unlimited GPU test, as compared to the iPad Pro 2020’s score of 9,978 and the iPhone 12 Pro’s score of 6,226.
While it’s tricky to try to judge overall chip performance off of a few online and mobile benchmarks, these tests are the best official benchmark results we have right now. Still, reviews are making strong anecdotal claims as well. Engadget said that The Pathless runs at a solid 60 fps on its review MacBook Air, as does Fortnite at 1,400 x 900.
Apple M1 Battery Life
Despite packing more processing power overall, the M1 chip comes with 4 low-power cores that help it conserve battery life. Apple’s saying that this gives M1-equipped machines “the best battery life ever on a Mac,” which it tested by wirelessly browsing the web with brightness set to “8 clicks from the bottom” and by playing FHD videos under the same brightness settings. These tests are far from comprehensive, but reviews generally tend to place M1 Macs either around or above current Intel counterparts.
According to Engadget’s battery benchmarks, which “involved looping an HD video,” the M1 MacBook Air can stay powered on for up to 16 hours and 20 minutes, which is about 5 hours more than the publication’s numbers for the latest Intel MacBook Air. That’s also about 7 hours more than we got on our own battery benchmark for the the latest Intel MacBook Air.
The Verge found that the M1 MacBook Pro’s numbers are a little less impressive, which is to be expected with more power. The publication claimed to “easily get 10 hours on a charge” and said it had to resort to running 4K YouTube videos on Chrome in the background to drop that down to 8 hours.
The Verge is less optimistic on MacBook Air, though, saying it’s getting “between 8 and 10 hours of real, sustained work.”
macOS Big Sur, iPhone and iPad Apps
One of the coolest new features of the M1 chip is that, because it uses the same processor architecture as the iPhone and iPad, it can now run apps designed for those devices natively. However, reviewers are skeptical of this feature’s current implementation.
First, you’ll have to download these programs through the Mac app store using a filter, since developers still aren’t allowed to directly distribute iOS apps even on more traditional systems. Second, you’ll find that many of your favorites won’t be available, like Gmail, Slack and Instagram. That’s because developers are allowed to opt out of making their apps available on Mac, which plenty seem to be opting for. Third, apps that require touch input direct you to a series of unintuitive “touch alternatives,” like pressing space to tap in the center of a window or using the arrow keys to swipe.
The Verge called using iOS apps on Mac a “messy, weird experience,” in part because the apps that are available are “from developers that haven’t been updated to be aware of newer devices.” While Overcast, a podcast app, worked great for The Verge, HBO Max was stuck to a small window that couldn’t be resized and couldn’t play fullscreen videos.
Playing iOS games also proved to be a chore for some reviewers, as
TechCrunch
noted. The publication tried the iOS version of Among Us on an M1 MacBook Air and found that, while it ran smoothly, using the trackpad to emulate a touchscreen was a chore. There’s also an option to operate a virtual touchscreen with your mouse, but as the reviewer also ran across a fixed window size with no full screen functionality, it’s clear that gaming on M1 still has a way to go.
The elephant in the room here across all experiences seems to be the lack of a touchscreen. We were hoping Apple would announce touchscreen Macs during its ‘One More Thing’ event earlier this month. But with no word on those yet, it’s hard for iOS apps on M1 to feel like more than an afterthought. There’s also the lack of support from big developers, who are probably waiting for these kinks, like no touchscreen support, to work themselves out.
Apple has made very full-bodied promises about the performance and efficiency of the new system-on-chip M1, but has not published any common benchmarks. The first results in Geekbench 5 have now appeared, which put the M1 well ahead of the current fastest x in multi-core performance 86 – Mobile processors with 15 to 30 Show watts TDP, i.e. Intel Core i7 – 1185 G7 (4 cores) and AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 4750 U (8 cores). But also knowledge about the Apple A 14 from the iPhone 12, which is closely related to the M1, reveal more about the M1 technology.
Eight cores , GPU and KI According to Apple, the M1 contains eight computing cores, a GPU with eight cores or shader clusters as well as a neural engine with 16 Cores for AI and machine learning algorithms. The GPU can also be used as an accelerator for some computing tasks.
The system-on-chip (SoC) M1 also contains controllers for I / O interfaces (Thunderbolt / USB4, PCIe 4.0) as well as functions that were previously handled by the separate T2 security chip with built-in SSD controller, including a Secure Enclave (SE). The latter is important for biometric authentication (Face ID, Touch ID) and payment functions.
In addition, the M1 has a RAM controller that can handle up to 16 GByte memory connects, probably with two 64 – bit channels for LPDDR4 or LPDDR4X.
The system- on-Chip Apple M1
(Image: Apple)
Fire and Ice An internal “fabric” links the individual function blocks as well as an additional cache that intercepts memory accesses. The CPU cores are divided into two groups, each with its own L2 cache. Each individual CPU core in turn has L1 cache, as with x 86 Usually separate for commands (Instructions), abbreviated L1I, and data (L1D).
The M1 has four particularly powerful and particularly efficient CPU cores. Apple has not officially confirmed it, but experts say the code names for the strong cores are “Firestorm” and the more efficient ones are “Icestorm”.
According to Apple, each Firestorm core has 192 KByte L1I cache and 128 KByte L1D cache. These data buffers are much larger than for example Intel’s current “Tiger Lake” CPUs (48 KByte L1I / 32 KByte L1D) and AMD Zen 2 (each 32 KByte). However, the x 86 – processors also so-called Micro-Op- (µOP-) caches, which work particularly efficiently.
Apple’s information on the strong and efficient ARM cores in the M1
(Image: Apple)
Apple’s different ARM core groups can each use a common Access L2 cache: The four Firestorms on together 12 MByte, the four Icestorms on 4 MByte. In addition, there is the fabric cache, the capacity of which Apple has not revealed and which, from the point of view of the CPU cores, serves as an L3 cache. Bionic is very similar to the M1 and has as many efficient Icestorm cores as well as a neural engine with also 16 cores. In A 14 but only two strong Firestorm cores with a smaller L2 cache (8 MByte) and a GPU with 4 instead of 8 cores. In addition, the arithmetic units clock in A 14 is generally lower because it can dissipate less heat in iPhones and iPad Air 4 and draw less battery power than in the Macs.
Clock frequencies Nominal clock frequencies of A 14 and M1 are not revealed by Apple, nor is the Thermal Design Power (TDP). The latter is found in smartphone SoCs like the A 14 usually around 5 watts, but even then a smartphone would become very hot in the long run and a 11 – watt-hour battery (3.7 volts / 3000 mAh) would be empty in little more than 2 hours. On average, the power consumption of the chip is much lower, especially since the display usually needs more energy and the modem also swallows electricity.
Apple reveals the Thermal design power of the M1 not exactly, but rearranges it Watts on.
(Image: Apple)
When introducing the M1, Apple made comparisons with other chips at 10 Watt employed – so it is probably between Watts in the MacBook Air without fan and 15 to 20 watts for fan cooling. Processors of the “U” classes from AMD and Intel have 15 to 28 Watt TDP, but Here, too, the quality of the notebook manufacturer’s cooling system is crucial. These processors can be set in a wide range via configurable TDP (cTDP) and then deliver more or less computing power because they have to slow down quickly with sustained load. This also applies to the M1, as Apple explained at the launch: In the MacBook Pro 12 inches with a fan, its sustained performance is higher .
Geekbench data Notes on the clock frequencies from A 14 and M1 deliver results from the online database of the benchmark Geekbench 5. There is an A 14 the specification 2, 99 GHz and in the M1 result from a fanless MacBok Air a value of 3.2 GHz. In a MacBook Pro 13 Inch or Mac mini with fan, the M1 may clock a little higher.
However, these clock frequencies are significantly lower than the Turbo frequencies of Core i7 – 1185 G7 (4.8 GHz) and AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 4750 U (4.1 GHz). For higher clock frequencies both ARM and x 79 – Cores have higher core voltages, which is associated with significantly higher power loss. The “wider” data paths are laid out, i.e. the more arithmetic units and transistors run with higher voltage and clock rate, the more the losses grow when clocking up.
The more impressive are the results that A 14 and M1 in Geekbench 5. In the single-core run, which certainly works on a strong Firestorm core, there are 1596 (A 14) or 1732 Points (M1). The M1’s lead of 8.5 percent is largely due to the higher clock rate, the larger L2 cache has no major influence.
Apple M1 and A 14 in Geekbench 5 CPU Information according to the Geekbench database Benchmark results Device Clock Operating system Single-Core Multi-Core Apple M1 MacBook Air 3, 19 GHz macOS 11. 0 1732 7545 Apple A 14 iPhone 12 Per 2, 99 GHz iOS 14.1 1596 4008 Intel Core i7 – 1185 G7 MSI MS – 13 C4 4, 79 GHz Windows 10 1610 6113 AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 4750 U Lenovo ThinkPad T 14 4, 19 GHz Windows 10 1162 6509 Intel Core i7 – 1165 G7 Dell XPS 13 4, 70 GHz Linux 5.8 1726 5313 Compared to a Core i7 – 1185 G7 in an MSI notebook, the M1 in the multi-core evaluation is around 23 percent ahead, with single-core it is 7.5 percent faster. But there are also Geekbench 5 values for a Core i7 – 1165 G7 under Linux, which show it to be almost on par in single-core performance – but here it is much weaker in multi-core.
Intel’s Tiger Lakes like the mentioned Core i7 – 1185 G7 and 1165 G7s only have four cores and Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT alias Hyper-Threading), while all eight cores of the M1 work simultaneously – fast and efficient together. Therefore a comparison with the previously strongest multithreading 14 – exciting watt notebook processor, the AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 4750 U with eight cores and SMT, so a total of 16 threads. But even that is in Geekbench 5 multi-core around 15 Percent behind Apple’s M1 – because its Zen-2 cores deliver 33 Percent less single-core performance than an Apple Firestorm at 3.2 GHz. With the Ryzen 5000 U (Cezanne) with Zen 3 this could be 2021 move.
Razer has unveiled its most exclusive ultrabook, the Book 13, mounting a panel of 11. 4 “of ultra-thin bezels, Intel EVO certified and up to 4K touch screen.
The Razer Book 11 is the smallest and most powerful model of the manufacturer and comes specially designed for productivity . Its structure is made of a single piece of aluminum , coated by white mercury to give it a more resistant and premium touch. The screen of 13. 4 “arrives in format 13: 10 with options to versions FHD or 4K touch . Razer comments that both have a 201% coverage in sRGB and that are factory calibrated, while the touch version has Gorilla Glass 6.
On the other hand, in terms of power we are well served with the Razer Book 13, as it can be purchased with up to Intel Core i7 – 1165 G7 (up to 4.7 GHz turbo) and 16 GB of RAM, plus 512 GB of NVMe SSD.
The Razer Book 13 means having the great power of the i7 – 1165 G7 in an aluminum body of only 13 “
The keyboard of the ultrabook from 13 “comes with illumination n RGB per key customizable using Razer Chroma software. In addition, it has been certified by Intel EVO, Intel’s quality platform for laptops with the new processors of 11 3rd Generation. In this way, the Razer Book 13 promises an autonomy of at least 9 hours of actual use (for the FHD version) and more than 4 hours with only 30 charge minutes.
Other specifications that complete the small notebook are the inclusion of the Intel WiFi 6 AX network card 201, which also provides Bluetooth 5.1, while on the other hand the laptop also comes with two ports Thunderbolt 4 , a USB-A 3.1, an HDMI 2.0, SD card reader and 3.5 mm jack connector.
We can’t resist comparing this Razer Book 11 with a merger between the Dell XPS 13 and the Razer Stealth 13. There will be 3 initial settings, for now:
Razer Book 13 (Core i5 – 1135 G7 with 8 / 256 GB FHD): $ 1199
Razer Book 13 (Core i7 – 1165 G7 with 16 / 256 GB FHD): $ 1599
Razer Book 11 (Core i7 – 1165 G7 with 16 / 512 GB 4K): $ 1999
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Under the hood, Dell’s Tiger Lake update to its XPS 13 2-in-1 convertible makes it the best iteration of the line yet. But an unreasonably shallow keyboard makes using it as a laptop a chore.
For
Strong performance
Bright screen
Clear audio
Against
Low keyboard travel
Few ports
Not upgradeable
Dell’s latest iteration on the XPS 13 2-in-1 brings
Tiger Lake
to this popular line of convertibles, complete with
Intel Evo
certification that promises a better mobile experience. That means you’ll be getting up to 11 hours of battery life, plus features like instant wake. You’ll also get Intel’s new Iris Xe integrated graphics, plus
Thunderbolt 4
ports.
That’s a lot of quality-of-life improvements (or at least quality of your PC life), and our benchmarking shows that you can expect strong performance on CPU-heavy tasks like Geekbench and video editing as well. But that arguably doesn’t matter if the laptop itself is difficult to use, especially given that convertibles sell themselves on their all-in-one nature. We had complaints about Dell’s new keyboard direction for this line of computers on last year’s model, saying it resembled Apple’s much-maligned butterfly keyboard. How does this new model hold up?
Dell’s latest XPS 13 2-in-1 updates last year’s model with a silver and black color scheme that makes it look largely generic on the outside, but much more premium on the inside. While the silver case does have a slightly glittery finish that gives it some texture, its noticeable hinge means it doesn’t give too sleek of a first impression –that is, until you open it up.
Opening the XPS 13 2-in-1 reveals an all-black keyboard surrounded by a comfortable black “woven glass fiber” cushion that has a leathery appearance. It feels great on my wrists while typing, and its checkerboard pattern immediately makes the laptop look boardroom-level fancy.
That impressive look means you might want to take this machine into the conference room with you, but since it’s sacrificed most I/O options in exchange for a thinner form factor, you’ll probably need to bring a dongle or two. There’s a single Thunderbolt 4 port on the laptop’s left side along with a microSD card reader, as well as another Thunderbolt 4 port on the laptop’s right side next to a 3.5mm combination headphone and microphone jack. That’s all the connectivity you’ll get out of the box, though our review unit did come with a USB Type-A to USB Type-C dongle for connecting older devices to the laptop’s Thunderbolt ports more easily.
That lack of ports does mean the 2-in-1 is impressively thin, though other recent machines have offered more connectivity while still hitting the same thinness. At 11.7 x 8.2 x 0.6 inches, it’s roughly on par with the 11.6 x 7.8 x 0.6 inch non-convertible
XPS 13 9310
, as well as the 12 x 8.3 x 0.6 inch
Zenbook Flip S
. The Dell clamshell has the same ports as the 2-in-1, while the Asus has a full HDMI connection and a USB Type-A port. The non-convertible
Zenbook 13
is slightly thinner than the XPS 2-in-1 at 11.9 x 8 x 0.5 inches, despite also having a full HDMI connection and a USB Type-A port.
The XPS 13 2-in-1 is also slightly heavy for an ultraportable, though certainly not clunky. At 2.9 pounds, it’s heavier than its 2.8-pound nonconvertible cousin, as well as the 2.7-pound ZenBook Flip S and the 2.4-pound Zenbook 13.
Productivity Performance of Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 (9310)
The Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 is the first Evo-certified Dell convertible, which means it packs a Tiger Lake i7-1165G7 chip and has a number of mobile optimizations such as greater than 9 hours of battery life and the ability to wake from sleep in less than 1 second. The laptop’s Evo features held up in our testing, but even beyond that, it was able to excel against other i7-1165G7 laptops like the nonconvertible XPS 13, the ZenBook Flip S and the ZenBook 13 in most tests.
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In Geekbench, which tests general system performance, the 2-in-1 snagged 5,571 points, more than any other contender. The nonconvertible XPS 13 was the closest, with a score of 5,254 points, while the Zenbook 13 was next with 5,084 points and the ZenBook Flip S lagged behind with 3,880 points.
Both of Dell’s recent XPS options lagged behind on file transfer speeds, though. The 2-in-1 transferred 4.97GB of files at a rate of 503.1 MBps, while its nonconvertible cousin was faster at 806.2 MBps. But both Dells lagged behind Asus’ machines, as the ZenBook Flip S was much speedier at 1,297.2 MBps and the ZenBook 13 was respectable at 966.8 MBps.
However, video editing once again put the 2-in-1 in the spotlight. On our Handbrake video editing benchmark, which tests how long it takes a computer to transcode a video down from
4K
to
FHD
, the XPS 13 2-in-1 was easily the fastest computer we tested, with a time of 15:52. The next quickest contender was the ZenBook 13, with a time of 17:51, while the nonconvertible XPS 13 had a time of 18:22 and the Flip S was the slowest with a time of 22:05.
New to Intel’s Tiger Lake chips are Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics, which we tested using 3DMark’s Fire Strike benchmark. The ZenBook 13 performed best here, with a score of 4,407, with the 2-in-1 coming in next with a score of 3,847. The nonconvertible XPS 13 and ZenBook Flip S rounded out the list with scores of 3,598 and 3,351 respectively.
If you’re curious how those numbers translate to games, we also played about a half hour of Overwatch on the XPS 13 2-in-1 at various settings. Despite some hiccups on the first try, the system ran mostly smoothly after a reboot. At 1920 x 1080, we were most comfortable playing on low settings, which tended to hover around 60 fps exactly and had the fewest drastic framerate drops. Medium settings will drop you down to 30-40 fps, but runs the risk of occasional dips into the 20s.
We also stress tested the XPS 13 2-in-1 by running it through Cinebench R20 on a loop 20 times. It started off with fairly strong performance at 2,056.3 points, before dropping off to an average of 1,584.8 points. During this benchmark, its CPU ran at an average clock speed of 2.53 GHz and had an average temperature of 60.3 degrees Celsius.
Display on Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 (9310)
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The XPS 13 2-in-1 has a basic 13.4 inch LED touchscreen that, despite not being
IPS
or
OLED
, makes an impression thanks to a bright backlight and a 16:10 1920 x 1200 aspect ratio.
I tested the 2-in-1’s screen by watching the trailer for The Devil All the Time on it. The first thing I noticed was how bright the picture was, though this didn’t save the screen from having poor viewing angles. Regardless of how much surrounding light I had on it, the 2-in-1’s screen tended to wash out whenever I got more than a 45 degree angle away from the center. Still, the blacks were deep and the colors were accurate, if not particularly vivid.
The taller aspect ratio also proved helpful when scrolling through webpages, although that feels more intuitive in vertical orientation in tablet mode.
According to our tests, the XPS 13 2-in-1 has an average brightness of 488 nits, which was the highest among the laptops we compared it to. By comparison, the non-convertible XPS 13 had an average brightness of 469 nits, while the ZenBook Flip S and ZenBook 13 had average brightnesses of 370 nits and 375 nits, respectively.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The color rankings were a bit closer. According to our colorimeter, the 2-in-1 covers 70% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which is indistinguishable from the conconvertibles XPS 13’s 69% score. Asus’ laptops performed generally better here, with the ZenBook 13 covering 76.1% of the DCI-P3 spectrum and the ZenBook Flip S hitting a much wider 113.1%.
Keyboard and Touchpad on Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 (9310)
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Keyboards are often the bane of convertible laptops, and the XPS 13 2-in-1 is a great example of this form factor’s greatest weakness.
The difficulty with putting a keyboard on a convertible is making sure it doesn’t become distracting or cumbersome when the laptop is in tablet mode. One answer to this issue (while also keeping the device thin) is to heavily reduce key travel distance. This will make the keys seem flatter and less present when not in use. That seems to be the answer Dell has gone for here, but the issue with this solution is that it greatly hampers the keyboard’s comfortable usability in laptop mode.
The XPS 13 2-in-1’s keyboard easily has the shallowest travel distance of any laptop keyboard I’ve reviewed yet, which makes it difficult to feel much feedback when typing. This meant that not only did I make frequent typos while using it, but I also had to completely change up my typing style. While I usually type with all of my fingers, I found that I frequently lost track of where I was on the keyboard as I typed, and that the best way to keep track of my finger placement and thus increase speed and reduce typos was to limit my typing to just my two index fingers.
That might sound like overkill, but this strategy isn’t too dissimilar to my approach when using a touchscreen keyboard, which the XPS 13 2-in-1’s keyboard shares some similarities to due to the lack of noticeable feedback on each keypress. Even so, my speed on 10fastfingers.com tended to hover anywhere from 59 wpm to 70 wpm, with my average being closer to 80, as well as having far fewer typos.
While your mileage may vary on typing speed or accuracy, the keyboard also just isn’t very comfortable. The lack of travel distance also made the keyboard feel hard and tough to press, like I was repeatedly jamming my fingers up against a wall as opposed to pressing buttons. Even Apple’s much-maligned butterfly keyboard, which has similar issues, feels comparatively cushiony when bottoming out.
In tablet mode, I also still found myself accidentally pressing keys more often than I’d like. Keyboard input is disabled in tablet mode, so this doesn’t have any effect on your activity, but it still felt clumsy and made me wonder if the sacrifices to the keyboard’s travel distance were worth it.
With all that said, the 2-in-1’s touchpad and touchscreen input are both excellent. The laptop uses Windows precision drivers and expertly handles multi-touch gestures on either device, and the 4.4 x 2.6 inch touchpad in particular is smooth and feels almost cushiony to the touch. This mirrors the cushiony, leathery material on the laptop’s wrist rest area, which is also comfortable.
Audio of Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 (9310)
The XPS 13 2-in-1 has bottom-firing speakers on either side, which I tested by listening to Be Prepared from the Lion King soundtrack — the original one. I found that despite being somewhat quiet, the laptop packs impressively true-to-life audio.
Be Prepared is arguably more dialogue than music, which turned out to be a great way to demonstrate the XPS 13 2-in-1’s voice quality. Scar’s actors in this scene (he actually swaps from Jeremy Irons to Jim Cummings partway through, fun fact) sounded clear and unmuddled throughout, with a rich quality that both expressed performance and clarity. That’s despite the song’s numerous background sound effects, like hissing geysers, which did not distract and sounded as atmospheric as ever.
The backing music also didn’t lose its bass, nor did the xylophone segments sound tinny, regardless of how high I raised the volume.
That leads me to the speakers’ biggest issue: They don’t get very loud. Even at maximum volume, I had difficulty filling more than one room with sound. Still, if you’re sitting next to the laptop, it gets plenty loud for personal use.
Upgradeability of Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 (9310)
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
There’s not much point to opening the XPS 13 2-in-1, though Dell hasn’t gone out of its way to make it too difficult. Just use a Torx screwdriver- we used a T5 bit- and remove the 8 screws along the bottom, then pry off the case with a spudger.
Once you’re inside, the only component you’ll have access to is the battery. The RAM is soldered in and the SSD and networking cards are unfortunately inaccessible. That’s not too unexpected for an ultraportable convertible, but it does mean you’ll want to make sure you like your laptop’s configuration before you buy it.
Battery Life of Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 (9310)
The Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 is Intel Evo certified, which means Intel has verified that it has at least 9 hours of battery life on FHD screens. That held true during our testing, though the 2-in-1 faced some stiff competition from other Tiger Lake laptops.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
During our battery benchmark, which continually browses the web, streams video and runs OpenGL tests over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness, the XPS 13 2-in-1 held out for 10 hours and 52 minutes. That’s significantly longer than the 8:11 battery life of the nonconvertible XPS 13, but not quite as lengthy as the 11:07 life of the ZenBook 13 or the 13:47 ZenBook Flip S’s endurance on the same test.
Heat of Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 (9310)
The XPS 13 2-in-1 is thin and designed to be held when in use, which makes strong heat management vital. Luckily, the XPS 13 2-in-1 more than meets the task.
We took the 2-in-1’s temperature after streaming 15 minutes of video over YouTube. The touchpad was the coolest spot, at 74.7 degrees Fahrenheit (23.7 degrees Celsius), while the keyboard (between the G and H keys) was the next coolest location at 81 degrees Fahrenheit (27.2 degrees Celsius). The bottom of the laptop jumped up to a still manageable 88 degrees Fahrenheit (31.1 degrees Celsius), while the hottest location was near the print screen key. Even this just ended up being 92.3 degrees Fahrenheit (33.5 degrees Celsius), which is still plenty comfortable to the touch.
Webcam on Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 (9310)
The XPS 13 2-in-1’s 720p webcam might not match the webcam built into a dedicated tablet, but it still manages to come out above most laptop webcams, which often feel like afterthoughts.
That’s because its picture lacks any kind of noticeable grain or color inaccuracy, which means that any photos you take will appear true-to-life as opposed to distorting your picture. This extends to texture too, and the camera works well across lighting levels, able to perform well in low light and only improving more with greater ambient brightness.
The camera also intelligently swaps to a vertical orientation when using the 2-in-1 in tablet mode and holding it vertically. While your selfies aren’t bound to look as good as those taken on an iPhone, it’s good to know you can recreate that casual experience here.
The 2-in-1’s camera also has an IR sensor for Windows Hello.
Software and Warranty of Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 (9310)
The Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 packs the usual Windows bloat, like Netflix and Microsoft Solitaire Collection, but the real depth of this laptop’s pre-installed software is in the 13 utility programs Dell includes alongside it.
Some of these programs are helpful, like Dell Mobile Connect, which lets you access your phone’s functions and mirror its screen to your laptop. Dell Update, meanwhile, lets you update your BIOS and drivers. But plenty of these programs are either niche, or just hidden storefronts.
For instance, Dell Cinema Guide lets you consolidate your streaming apps into a single program, while “MaxxAudio Pro by Waves” attempts to use your webcam to make spatial audio more realistic on headphones. These might be helpful to some users, but most will likely end up skipping them. Most egregious are inclusions like Dell Digital Delivery, MyDell and “Dropbox promotion,” which attempt to get you to buy even more software.
Because these programs are so hit and miss, it’s very likely some users will ignore them entirely and thus miss out on the more helpful utilities. Meanwhile, competitors like Lenovo are making the utility experience more accessible by bundling programs like these together into one package — Lenovo’s is called Vantage.
We’d prefer a solution that lets us choose whether we want to turn on a movie or nighttime screen color mode without having to click on “Dell CinemaColor” and hoping that’s how we access it.
Configurations of Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 (9310)
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The XPS 13 2-in-1 9310 starts at $1,099 with options ranging up to $1,949, so it’s got plenty of configurability.
Our $1650 review unit packed an Intel Core i7-1165G7 CPU with 16GB of LPDDR4X memory and a 512 GB SSD. If you don’t quite need that much power, there are also Core i3 and Core i5 options that will cut your price down by a few hundred dollars, plus you can lower your memory and storage down to 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD for even more savings. Conversely, you can also choose up to 1TB of storage if you need more space.
Our review unit also used a 1920 x 1200 WLED display, but if you’re a 4K fanatic, you can also upgrade to a 3840 x 2400 WLED screen instead.
Bottom Line
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The XPS 13 2-in-1 is a powerful convertible with a bright screen and plenty of mobile convenience thanks to its Intel Evo certification. But its keyboard hampers its laptop usability.
When it comes to performance, it’s hard to beat the new 2-in-1. It leverages the same CPU as both other recent convertibles and other recent ultraportables to much greater effect in tests like Geekbench and Handbrake, though it can be on the slow end on file transfer speeds. Still, it’s in-app performance is impressive.
The Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 has also got a bright (if not overly colorful) screen, a more-than-decent webcam and clear audio for such a small size. Were it not for one glaring flaw, the new XPS 13 2-in-1 would be a no-brainer.
The biggest factor drawing this convertible down is the keyboard. While your experience may differ from mine, I found it inaccurate and uncomfortable, thanks to the smallest travel distance on keypress I’ve encountered yet. Typos were prevalent when I was using it, and I was a slower typist than usual.
While keeping the keyboard so flat does fit the tablet mode well, even this intention doesn’t succeed. I still found the keyboard distracting when using the 2-in-1 as a tablet, and still pressed plenty of keys when holding it as one (though keyboard input is disabled in tablet mode).
You can get around this flaw by using an external keyboard, sure, but that negates the point of the machine. As an all-in-one portable device, the XPS 13 2-in-1 is powerful, but doesn’t make for the most convenient, comfortable-to-use laptop.
If you’re willing to sacrifice some performance for a more comfortable keyboard while still buying a convertible, the
Asus ZenBook Flip S
promises 1.4mm of travel. It also has a 4K OLED screen at $1,450, while the XPS 13 2-in-1 doesn’t have 4K options until you hit the $1,950 price point.
If you just want an ultraportable, the
ZenBook 13
generally outperformed the nonconvertible
Dell XPS 13
in our benchmarks, aside from Geekbench, while costing much less and having a much larger (and faster) SSD. It’s a good choice if value is your prime concern, but the XPS 13 does have the trendy, taller 16:10 1920 x 1200 aspect ratio.
If a poor keyboard doesn’t bother you, then the XPS 13 2-in-1 is a clear standout here. It performs well and has great convenience features like strong audio and a good webcam. But if you want one device that can do it all, then you’re better off sticking to something that can support comfortable typing for longer periods.
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This is an easy review. Today, we’re looking at the XPS 13 9310, Dell’s best-in-class 13-inch ultraportable laptop. It’s identical to the Dell XPS 13 9300, which I reviewed back in April, in every way, except one: it has Intel’s new 11th Gen Tiger Lake processors.
The new XPS 13 starts at $999.99. The base model includes a Core i3-1115G4, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, Intel’s UHD integrated graphics, and a 1920 x 1200 non-touch display. But the most exciting feature of the Tiger Lake line is Intel’s new Iris Xe integrated graphics. Models with those graphics start at $1,099.99 ($1,077.99 as currently listed) and include a quad-core Core i5 1135G7 or i7-1165G7. You can go up to a $2,499.99 model with 32GB of RAM, 2TB of storage, and a 3840 x 2400 touchscreen. I tested a $1,649.99 configuration (listed at $1,616.99 as of this writing), which includes 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.
A familiar XPS 13 with a brand-new chip.
If you haven’t read my review of the XPS 13 9300 from earlier this year, go ahead and do that now because everything I said about the exterior of that machine also applies here. TL;DR: it’s really good. The chassis is made of CNC-machined aluminum, the logo is stainless steel, the screen is Corning Gorilla Glass 6; the palm rests are a woven-glass fiber with a unique texture. It’s lustrous, sturdy, and just about the best build quality you’ll find in a laptop. It’s also portable (2.8 pounds and 0.58 inches thick). The speakers are adequate, the keyboard is snappy and comfortable, and the touchpad is smooth and effortless to click. Another highlight is the 16:10 display with a 91.5 percent screen-to-body ratio, which gives you more vertical space than most consumer laptops (which are 16:9). You’ll notice the difference.
Two main downsides: the port selection is meh (two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4, a headphone jack, and a microSD reader), and the 2.25mm 720p webcam isn’t great, delivering a blurry and washed-out picture. It also doesn’t include a privacy shutter or kill switch.
Like I said, check out the 9030 review if you want to read about the laptop’s exterior in more detail. What we’re focusing on here is the new processor’s performance and whether the 1165G7 (and its Xe graphics) are an improvement over the Ice Lake generation. The answer is yes. But it’s not an emphatic or particularly excited yes.
It ships with a USB-C to USB-A adapter.
It’s also one of the first systems to be verified through Intel’s new Evo program. By giving a laptop an Evo badge, Intel claims to be certifying that it offers a number of benchmarks for “premium” thin-and-light laptops — Tiger Lake processors, Thunderbolt 4, Wi-Fi 6, all-day battery life, fast charging, quick boot time, and, perhaps most importantly, solid real-world performance.
In day-to-day tasks, the 1165G7 certainly measured up. It was never overwhelmed by my legions of Chrome tabs, apps, and occasional Spotify, YouTubing, and Zoom calls overtop — no slowdowns or delays. I never once heard the fans spin up during daily use and never felt any heat either. If you’re using this configuration for work or school, you shouldn’t experience any performance issues.
I saw a slight improvement in content creation as well. The 9310 took 10 minutes and 43 seconds to complete our real-world media test, which involves exporting a 5-minute, 33-second 4K video in Adobe Premiere Pro. That’s a bit faster than any laptop with Ice Lake CPUs and integrated graphics completed the task. The MacBook Pro 13 with Iris Plus graphics took 11 minutes and 26 seconds, and the Surface Laptop 3 took just over 15. It’s also better than we’ve seen from other 1165G7 systems. Asus’ ZenBook 14 was about a minute slower.
Have your pick of a Core i3, Core i5, or Core i7.
Here’s the thing: when it comes to productivity, this XPS is good. It’s an uptick over its predecessor (and I’d be very worried if it wasn’t). On the other hand, the 9300 (and other Ice Lake systems) were already quite good. The difference in Chrome tab loading speed and Premiere Pro export time isn’t earth-shattering enough that I can see it making a difference in the lives of the average XPS 13 user. If you already own a comparable Ice Lake system or are considering buying one to cut costs, I won’t urge you to upgrade.
Content and media creators can opt for a 4K 3840 x 2400 display.
Folks for whom it may be worth upgrading are those who want to play some light games. On titles with lighter textures (the only ones you’d want to run on a laptop like this), the XPS 13 did a noticeably better job than its predecessor. It averaged 111fps on Rocket League’s maximum settings without dipping below 100; the 9300 put up 70fps with a minimum of 41. The 9310 also won out on League of Legends, averaging 205fps while its predecessor averaged low 160s. (Of course, the XPS 13’s screen is only 60Hz, so your experience in these games won’t change. You’ll see 60fps on either machine.) And it beat its predecessor on Overwatch, averaging 48fps on Ultra settings to the 9300’s low-40s average — a 10-ish percent increase.
More good news for Intel: those results also put Tiger Lake slightly ahead of AMD competitors when it comes to gaming. The IdeaPad Slim 7, with AMD’s eight-core Ryzen 7 4800U, averaged 46fps on the same Overwatch settings. (You won’t notice a difference that small while you’re actually playing.)
Unfortunately, demanding games in 1080p are still out of reach for this machine. The 9310 chugged through Shadow of the Tomb Raider at an average of 22fps. That’s a respectable increase from the Ice Lake XPS, which averaged 17fps on the same title, but you can’t really play the game (at native resolution) on either machine. So while Tiger Lake will give you a better experience with some of your titles, it probably won’t expand the range of games you can play. (We do expect gaming performance to get better over time.)
I think this form factor is also close to the limits of what it can cool. Throughout my gaming session, the CPU hit 100 degrees Celsius at a few points and spent a lot of time in the high 90s. (The keyboard was toasty throughout but not quite uncomfortable.) That’s hotter than I’d like to see, and I worry that if Dell continues with this design and Intel’s chips don’t make substantial gains in efficiency, the XPS 13 is going to hit a wall when it comes to performance.
The 52Whr battery is integrated and not replaceable. RAM is also soldered.
Finally, battery life was a pleasant surprise. I got nine hours and 15 minutes using this XPS as my primary work driver at around 200 nits of brightness. That time doesn’t top the category, but it does mean this should comfortably last you a full work or school day. The caveat is that I had all the various battery-saving things on — the Windows Battery Saver profile, Dell’s Battery Extender, Intel’s Display Power Savings, etc. When I ran a trial on the Windows Better Performance profile with Battery Extender off, I could expect closer to six hours. I didn’t notice a performance difference between those two scenarios when I was just doing office work and streaming, so I recommend that you do the battery-saving stuff if you want all-day juice.
This XPS has a performance edge over what we’ve seen so far in 2020. The Tiger Lake processor is a respectable step forward, particularly in graphics performance. People who work with graphics and video will probably find the increase most useful. For everyone else who’s mostly using the XPS 13 for school and office tasks, both Ice Lake and Tiger Lake systems should be fine — upgrading isn’t essential. Gaming performance clearly varies widely by title — gamers may see a substantial difference or may see very little. But if you mostly play lighter fare that Ice Lake was already tearing through (which is probably the case for a good chunk of folks who are gaming on the XPS 13), you won’t see the improvement on this screen.
So overall, the XPS 13 is still an excellent laptop. It’s still one of the best you can buy. But I’m not as starstruck as I was at the beginning of this year, because the competition is creeping up. Zenbooks, Swifts, Yogas, Envys, and Spectres have all made strides in design, build, nifty features, and performance this year — and there are ARM-based Macbooks on the way. There are quite a few releases on the horizon that are looking more and more like the XPS 13.
This is the best laptop of 2020 with the fewest compromises and the fewest risks. But Dell will need to stay creative if it wants to keep XPS at the top of the stack in 2021.
In summary The HP Envy 15 is a high-end laptop with fast hardware that delivers good performance. The housing is sturdy and you will notice that while typing, for example. The strongest point of the Envy is the OLED screen with an enormous contrast and good calibration in three gamuts: sRGB, P3 and Adobe RGB. The battery life suffers from the OLED screen and comes out to only six hours at low load.
When it comes to high-end laptops with a good screen, there is a lot of choice. Dell has its XPS laptops, Lenovo has its expensive ThinkPad series and HP has the Specter line… Or is it Envy? Initially, HP positioned its Specters above the Envy laptops, which in turn are above the well-known Pavilions. That has changed, because for the fastest hardware in a 15 “- jacket you have to go to the Envy series and in that series HP sells even a model with OLED screen and a resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels. The most expensive model has a Core i9 processor, 32 GB of memory and an RTX 2060 on board, and we look at that variant in this review. we of course to the speed of the laptop, but especially to that beautiful OLED screen.
The Envy 15 in its cheapest appearance with OLED screen costs 2000, which is a lot of money, but if you take the laptop out of the box, you get the feeling that you also get something in return. The housing is made of sleek silver-gray aluminum and looks beautiful. Not just to look at – that is also quite personal – but especially in terms of workmanship. The parts of the housing fit together neatly and all seams tap and straight. The laptop also feels like a sturdy block of aluminum and the housing cannot be impressed in any place. It is also a very thin laptop when you consider that a Core i9 processor with a tdp of 45 watts and an RTX 2060 – video card.
The only criticism on the housing is the screen. The hinge could have offered a bit more resistance, especially because it is touch sensitive. If you operate the screen manually, it can wobble back and forth and that’s a shame. Furthermore, the screen construction is quite sturdy. The back of it is also made of aluminum and offers sufficient strength.
At the top of the screen is the 720 p-webcam, which is not equipped with facial recognition on the Envy. It does have an electronically operated ‘privacy slider’, which on many other laptops is just a plastic slider that has to be operated by hand. The designers of the Envy 15 apparently didn’t want to see an unsightly slider on the high-end laptop, but they did want to give people the certainty that the webcam is physical covered. There is therefore a button on the keyboard to physically cover the webcam. A fingerprint scanner is available for biometric authentication, which is located next to the arrow keys on the keyboard.
The connections are on the sides of the housing and on the left there is a conventional USB connection. with a maximum transfer speed of 5Gbit / s, HDMI 2.0, two Thunderbolt 3 and a microSD card reader. If you’re using the laptop for image editing, we would have thought a fast SD card reader would be more appropriate, but it seems HP was keen to save space in the case and therefore opted for microSD. The right side has a cooling opening, with a headphone jack and a second USB 3.0 connection next to it.
The Envy’s speakers are facing upwards and give the best for a laptop. a good sound, so that conversations are fine. For that you should not have too much ambient noise, because the maximum sound production of the speakers is not too high.
Keyboard and touchpad Since there are speakers on either side of the keyboard, there is no space for a numeric keypad on the Envy. The keyboard has a backlight that can be dimmed in two positions and the keys seem to have quite a lot of travel, especially considering the thinness of the housing.
We have the travel measured and it turns out to be relatively large indeed. The BTO, in comparison, is a fairly chunky gaming laptop with a keyboard with quite a bit of travel. The XPS 15 and MacBook Pro are slimline appearances like the Envy, but when it comes to travel, the Envy does the best. In addition, the keyboard ticks pleasantly due to the sturdiness of the housing. The keyboard does not spring in any way when you hit the keys, which makes tapping the Envy very pleasant.
On the touchpad, especially the way what you press it on, HP also seems to have paid quite a bit of attention. The click you make when you press the touchpad is fairly ‘deep’ and has pleasant feedback. The surface of the touchpad is made of glass, which is the standard for high-end laptops, but it is good to see that HP has not cut back on it.
Noble 17 – inch notebook: Dell XPS 17 (9700) With 16: 10 – screen under test Graphics cards: UHD, GTX, RTX Conclusion and test table Article in c’t 23 / 2020 read The manufacturers treat notebooks with 17 – inch screens have been neglected for several years. Cross-class trends such as flat housings came from 16 – Customs always last; even with innovative screens such as those with thin bezels, other aspect ratios than 16: 9, OLED panels or high refresh rates, the large notebooks were always later – or even not.
For all those users who still have a portable PC system with a large screen estimate, Dell is daring a new attempt: For the first time in around ten years, the XPS 17 (9700) again one 16 – Zöller in the noble series. As with the smaller models XPS 13 (9300) and XPS 14 (9300) the special screen dominates: Dell uses panels with very slim edges on all four sides, which benefits immersion.
As there, Dell has decided from the narrow aspect ratio 16: 9 adopted and sees instead 16: 10 in front. The plus in image height is just as helpful when reading websites as it is in large Excel spreadsheets or when editing images. Depending on the requirements, there are two panels to choose from: There is a matt display with 1200 × 1200 points (called Full HD + by Dell ) or, as in the test device, a reflective touchscreen with 3840 × 2400 points (UHD +). Only the latter covers the AdobeRGB color space.
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This laptop was a pain in the neck to review. That’s because the battery life is so gargantuan that our traditional rundown test was next to useless. I’ve praised the battery life of several thin-and-light systems this year — Lenovo’s IdeaPad Slim 7 is a monster. But nothing — and I mean nothing — that I have ever used comes close to topping the lifespan this device has.
This is the Dell Latitude 9510 2-in-1. As is often the case with premium, convertible business laptops, there are about a million different configurations with a variety of processors and other specs. The base model, currently listed at $1,848.99, comes with a quad-core Core i5-10210U, 128GB of storage, and 8GB of RAM; our test model, priced at $2,937, comes with a six-core Core i7-10810U, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. It has the same Intel UHD integrated graphics and 15.6-inch 1920 x 1080 touch display that’s available across the line.
Right away, $3,000 seems like a lot to ask for those specs. It also makes the Latitude an unrealistic option for many consumers. Business laptops tend to run more expensive than popular consumer laptops, and they often include a number of advanced security and remote management features to justify the price. (Plus, companies that buy these things in bulk aren’t usually paying sticker price.) Unfortunately, this laptop costs more than most of those without offering drastically better benefits for most people — so I’m only comfortable recommending it to a very specific swath of business users. That said, it’s a remarkable piece of technology.
Starting with the outside: I’m a huge fan of the peripherals on this thing. The keyboard is one of my favorites that I’ve used all year. It’s hard to explain why, since I actually clocked in below my average typing speeds — the keys are just really smooth and comfortable, with excellent travel and an absurdly satisfying click. I did hear the occasional squeak from the spacebar and backspace keys.
The 4.5 x 2.6-inch touchpad is also great, with a really nice, smooth glass and an effortless click. Windows Precision gestures worked as advertised. For other inputs, the 9510 has a very serviceable port selection including an HDMI 2.0, two USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports, a microSD slot, and an optional SmartCard reader on the left, as well as one USB-A, one headphone jack, and one wedge lock on the right side.
The USB Type-A supports PowerShare. The USB Type-C ports support Thunderbolt 3, Power Delivery, and DisplayPort.
The 9510 won’t be winning any beauty pageants, but it’s sturdy and feels exceptionally well made in the way I’ve come to expect from Dell. The chassis is aluminum with a professional silver finish. There’s no flex anywhere. I would put this in a suitcase, briefcase, or backpack — I could use it on the bus or bring it on a hike. And there’s also no wobble in the hinge when the laptop is in tablet or tent mode, which is sometimes an issue with thin-and-light convertibles.
On the flip side: At 3.7 pounds, I do find this laptop a bit too heavy to use as a tablet. It’s just a lot to hold steady with one hand while navigating with the other. I was often wobbly, and got tired pretty quickly. Despite how hefty it feels, though, it’s on the small side for a 15-inch laptop — Dell claims it’s the world’s smallest 15-inch business PC.
The 13.4 x 8.4 x 0.55 inch chassis has a smaller footprint than the company’s other 15-inchers like the XPS 15 (13.57 x 9.06 x 0.71) and the Precision 5550 (13.56 x 9.07 x 0.30). It’s decently thin as well — even thinner than some 14-inchers for which portability is a major selling point, like Dell’s Latitude 9410 (0.49 inches) and HP’s Spectre x360 14 (0.67 inches).
Dell Optimizer improves battery life by adapting settings (brightness, Bluetooth, etc.) to your power consumption and charging behavior.
Portability is really the goal of this Latitude, because there’s no way you’re buying this if you don’t plan to take advantage of its absurd battery life. This thing lasted me an average of 14 hours and 40 minutes. That was with an office workload (around a dozen Chrome tabs and Slack), a couple Zoom calls, and some Spotify and YouTube streaming, with the screen at 200 nits of brightness, the Quiet thermal profile selected, and Dell’s Battery Extender on. (Battery Extender lower’s the CPU’s power, but it didn’t impair performance in my real-world use).
Note that this was with continuous use; I didn’t let the laptop go to sleep or dim the screen. If you’re giving this thing breaks, you’ll probably make it two days without needing to touch a charger.
The lightest 2-in-1 configuration starts at 3.3 pounds (1.5 kg).
To put that in context: Generally with this workload, which is very consistent between tests, I get seven to nine hours out of good Windows laptops that aren’t running a GPU. I got 11 and a half hours out of HP’s Elite Dragonfly, the gold standard for premium business laptops. The only other laptop I’ve tried this year that’s come close to this result is Lenovo’s IdeaPad Slim 7 — and the Latitude beats that by a good hour.
Another unusual point of praise: The audio was good. The Latitude takes advantage of what Dell calls a “smart amp” to improve bass and reduce distortion, as well as tuning from Waves Maxx Audio software. I could actually hear the bass in music (a rarity) and percussion was particularly strong.
The microphones (there are four) are also quite good, and picked up my answers perfectly in voice-recognition tasks where other laptops sometimes have trouble. The webcam, though, is bad — people in my Zoom meetings commented on how dark and grainy I looked.
Inside, the Latitude has a new cooling system that includes two heat pipes, carbon fan blades, and an insulating gel that Dell says was also used in Nasa’s Stardust probe. These claims are sometimes marketing gobbledygook, but I never felt much heat here (even in parts you’d expect to get toasty, like the area around the hinge).
This laptop doesn’t have the latest processors from Intel (business laptops probably won’t be getting those until next year, when vPro SKUs are released) but the six-core 10th-Gen i7 works great. It handled my workload without any slowdown or fan noise. It does have integrated graphics (Intel’s UHD), which means it’s not a good choice for gaming or creative work, though.
The Latitude took 28 minutes to export a five-minute, 33-second video in Adobe Premiere Pro. That’s slower than last year’s XPS 13 with a Core i7-10710U (and UHD graphics), which took 24 minutes to complete the same task. It’s also, of course, much slower than 11th-Gen systems equipped with Intel’s latest integrated graphics like the Asus Zenbook Flip S, which finished the task in just over 11 minutes. Again, not an unexpected result, but at this price point it would be nice to see some sort of discrete graphics option for folks who need to work with media from time to time.
Finally, the Latitude comes with a number of customization options via its Dell Optimizer software. There’s ExpressResponse, where you can select your most frequently used applications for the Latitude to “optimize” for better performance based on your usage patterns. With Intelligent Audio, you can toggle video-call features like noise cancellation and volume with presets based on your setting: “Quiet Room”, “Noisy Office” etc. There’s ExpressCharge, which is said to speed up charging and extend battery life based on your usage, but I couldn’t test this because it takes two weeks to learn your behavior.
The feature I find most useful is called Proximity Sensor — it automatically locks the laptop when you’re away from it, and wakes it back up when you return. If you set up Windows Hello face recognition, it can instantly sign you back in as well. This worked very well during my testing period. It doesn’t do much for privacy when the laptop is in use, however, which can be important for business users. At this price point, I’d hope to see something like HP’s SureView Reflect (which tints the screen such that you can’t snoop over someone’s shoulder) or the software on Lenovo’s IdeaPad Slim 7 that blurs the display when you’re looking away.
The Latitude includes four top-firing speakers and four noise-canceling microphones.
Speaking of the screen, that’s really the one part of this laptop that I found disappointing. The Latitude borrows the InfinityEdge borders that Dell has been touting on its XPS models, and while the top and bottom rims are more visible than they are on the XPS 15, the display still looks quite wide. But it only reaches 332 nits of brightness — that’s bright enough for most people, sure, but we’d hope to see more from a business flagship. Today’s Dragonflys, Thinkpads, Expertbooks, and Elitebooks offer 1000-nit options. The Latitude is also 16:9 with 1920 x 1080 resolution; I’m surprised not to see a 4K option at this price, and the 16:9 aspect ratio can be cramped when it comes to multitasking in multiple windows.
Overall, the battery life is the star of the show. The Latitude is top of its class there, and the solid build quality, AI features, and stellar keyboard and touchpad are nice to have as well. There are some customers for whom this laptop might make sense: People for whom the 17-hour battery life is a must-have at all costs, and companies who have need for Dell’s specific security features and enterprise ecosystem.
It’s built (and priced) like a premium business convertible.
For consumers and small-business customers, the Latitude might be a great buy at a discount. But without a 4K screen, discrete graphics, or a standout screen, it’s not worth sticker price. Anyone who doesn’t need those components should be just fine with the Elite Dragonfly or Asus’s ExpertBook B9540, both of which are comparable to the Latitude in most areas (and better in some) while also being $1,000 cheaper.
Photography by Monica Chin / The Verge
Correction: This article originally said that our test model is priced at $1,848.99. The model is priced at $2,937. We regret the error.
(Pocket-lint) – We’ve got a lot of love for the Microsoft Surface Laptop. Indeed, both the original and second-generation models won the Best Laptop category in their respective Pocket-lint Awards. No pressure for the Surface Laptop 3 then, eh?
Which is the best Microsoft Surface laptop or tablet for you?
The third-gen laptop is more a nip and tuck take on the previous generation, bringing more power, a larger trackpad, and finally adding a USB-C port (but not at Thunderbolt 3 speeds, which seems odd). There’s also a larger 15-inch model available, but we’re reviewing the standard 13.5-inch model here.
Design & Connectivity
Dimensions: 308 x 223 x 14.51mm / Weight: 1.25kg
Finishes: Sandstone, Black, Cobalt Blue, Platinum
Alcantara on Cobalt Blue & Platinum
Metal (aluminium) on other finishes
Ports: 1x USB-A, 1x USB-C, 1x 3.5mm jack
Power: proprietary Surface Connector
Full-size keyboard (1.3mm key travel)
Trackpad 20% larger than previous
Windows 10 Home
The design of the Surface Laptop 3 is sleek and standout – especially in this black finish (which first appeared for the second-gen model). There are lots of finish options – you’ll see Sandstone as gold and Platinum as silver, really – with the Cobalt Blue and Platinum options retaining the Alcantara microfabric-finished interior keyboard wrist rest, which is both comfortable and eye-catching.
The Laptop 3 has boosted the trackpad size by 20 per cent compared to the second-gen model, which is a welcome adjustment. Large trackpads are king and it’s very on trend for 2020. The keyboard above makes for comfortable typing over long periods, with the 1.3mm key travel ample to get decent feedback.
Most important to the design, however, is the addition of a USB-C port to the side. This joints the full-size USB-A port. But other than a 3.5mm headphone jack that’s your lot – and for a laptop such as this we think more ports would make a lot of sense. Oh, and an additional downside: the USB-C isn’t capable of Thunderbolt 3 speeds, for whatever reason, which is a disappointment.
On the opposite side to those ports is a small opening, but it’s not an SD card slot, it’s Microsoft’s Surface Connector – which is used for power. We like that it doesn’t use up a port, like so many other laptops do, but at the same time we’d much rather it was a second USB-C port – so you had the choice of how to use it. Really this proprietary connection isn’t a great idea any more – although as it magnetically connects, you won’t drag the laptop off the side of a desk should you walk into the cable by accident.
On the software front the Laptop 3 has Windows 10 Home as standard out of the box. Gone is the more limited Windows 10 S install of the very first Surface Laptop. So there’s no limit to application file installs here, which is great news for productivity – if you want full-fat Photoshop then you can have it (well, if you can afford to pay for it).
Display & Stylus
13.5-inch ‘PixelSense’ touchscreen display
2256 x 1504 resolution
3:2 aspect ratio LCD
Gorilla Glass
Works with Surface Pen (sold separately)
The Surface Laptop 3’s ‘PixelSense’ display is unchanged from the original and second-gen model’s displays. But as the saying goes: if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
That means the Surface family trait of having a 3:2 aspect ratio screen – rather than the 16:9 ratio you see in many other places – still takes pride of place. We think this is great, as it works well for document-based work, but is less designed for widescreen multimedia use. That ratio is also why this is a 13.5-inch screen on the diagonal, not a 13.3-inch one – as is typical in the competition.
The panel is high resolution and has excellent colour and contrast. No, it’s not quite as pixel-dense as the new MacBook Air’s panel, but it’d be splitting hairs to suggest it would actually makes a genuine difference in use between either device.
Like in the Surface Pro, the Laptop 3 uses a slightly reflective coating which is its only notable display drawback. It’s not mirror-like in its reflective qualities, but you’ll catch a glimpse of your own face more often than not when there’s surrounding daylight sources. Fortunately there’s ample brightness to cut through any potential issue this could cause when using the Laptop 3 outside. This has always been a criticism we’ve had throughout the Surface Laptop’s three generations, though, so it’s a shame it’s not been addressed yet.
Being a Surface device there’s also excellent touch capability – something the aforementioned Apple lacks entirely – while you can use the Surface Pen stylus with it and, therefore, Windows Ink. The Laptop 3’s screen bends back to around 45 degrees, which is just ok for stylus input – but it’s not great for precision work because it will move. So we think the other Surface devices in the range might make more sense for stylus use. Anyway, the stylus doesn’t come in the box, so you’ll have to buy that as an extra if you decide it is the accessory for you.
Microsoft has opted for Intel’s 10th Gen Core i processors for the third-gen Surface Laptop. The key choice, we think, is the Core i5 – there is also an i7 model available, but we would expect the impact on battery life to be negative and without too huge a processor boost, especially as it’s all just running Intel integrated graphics anyway.
The chip is the i5-1035G7, which is a quad-core with eight threads, as opposed to the dual-core lower-voltage chip in something like the MacBook Air. That makes for respectable performance, which in a like-for-like spec setup to the excellent Dell XPS 13 puts Microsoft in a very strong position.
With the base configuration of the Surface Laptop 3 you get 8GB RAM and a 128GB SSD. For our money you need 256GB in a laptop like this, but if you store a lot in the cloud then that might not be necessary – especially as upping the SSD adds 27 per cent to the asking price.
In terms of battery life we put the Laptop 3 to its streaming test, with a YouTube clip running non-stop at full resolution, full screen, and three-quarter brightness, and the laptop managed to reach the seven hour mark. That’s slightly down on its predecessor. However, you won’t spend every second of your life streaming content – so when we’ve been using the Laptop 3 for our day-to-day tasks we’ve found it to last out longer.
HP’s summer sale has oodles of bargains – check out these stunners! (promo)
Verdict
Overall the Surface Laptop 3 is a sensible upgrade to the already stellar series. The introduction of a USB-C port, larger trackpad, and more power from the latest Intel chipset options, all add plus-points onto its impressive score sheet.
However, there’s no Thunderbolt 3 speeds from that USB-C port, which is an oddity. And there aren’t that many ports either – which is why we think Microsoft should do away with the proprietary Surface Connector and replace that with an extra port or two. Oh, and that slightly reflective screen coating has been a thing since day one in this series and could be bettered.
Having won awards and accolades in its past guises, the Surface Laptop 3 is showing no signs of this series slowing down. This is one sleek and sophisticated laptop – both in looks and performance – that will give even the Dell XPS 13 a good run for its money.
Writing by Mike Lowe.
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