Dell XPS 13 Review – Matte full-HD screen and long battery life

Cons

• Auto brightness cannot be turned off

The XPS 13 is one of the most attractive ultrabooks out right now, thanks mainly to its very compact size combined with a 13.3″ screen. In February we reviewed the high-end model of the XPS 13, which has all the bells and calling, such as a touchscreen, a 3200×1800 pixel resolution, and a Core i7. That laptop made a very positive impression on us, but the presence of high-end components also led to a high price, while the high resolution meant that the model did not excel in terms of battery life.

In this review, we discuss the version of the XPS 13 with Core i5 and full HD screen. We mainly discuss the parts that deviate from the model we previously tested. For an extensive discussion of, among other things, the design, the sturdy housing and the connections of the XPS 13, we refer to the previous review: Dell XPS 13 Review – Ultrabook with a golden edge .

Screen

The most notable change concerns the screen. The thin screen edges have remained, to which Dell seems to have the exclusive right for the time being, but this laptop does not have a touchscreen. About the usefulness of oneYou can discuss the touchscreen on a laptop for a long time, but it is certainly not a must-have. There may be many apps that use the touchscreen when the universal app platform with Windows 10 has crystallized, but that’s looking at the coffee grounds.

Touchscreens are accompanied by glossy screens, but the omission of the touch-sensitive layer allows the use of a matte screen. Personally, we are a fan of matte screens, but we don’t see them much anymore. The advantage of matte is that you don’t see any reflections when you look at the screen, so you can focus on a computer image that is unobstructed by reflections. We prefer working with a matte screen, especially for multimedia use, but that does not apply to everyone. According to some, a mirrored screen produces a more sparkling image and it is therefore nicer to watch movies in the dark, for example. Since this is not a multimedia laptop, we can safely say that the matte screen is preferable for most usage scenarios of the XPS 13.

Of course, a lower resolution than 3200×1800 pixels does not automatically produce a blurry image with a 13.3″ screen.The resolution of 1920×1080 pixels will suffice for most people and as an added advantage does not lead to scaling problems. That said, 3200×1800 pixels produces an image so sharp that you can’t make out the pixels even up close. You can do that with this full-HD resolution.

With the previous XPS13 model we tested, we had trouble with the automatic brightness adjustment. Again, the brightness in our test is much lower than desired: 228cd/m ². When displaying dark areas on the screen, the XPS reduces the brightness itself, which affects our test results. Dell stated that it was investigating whether a manual adjustment update was possible, but to our knowledge it has not appeared and it is unclear whether this will happen. The model from this test also does not let you determine whether the full brightness is switched on, and that remains a downside. For comparison: with a completely white screen we measure an excellent brightness of 356cd/m ².

The average gamma value of the Dell’s screen is slightly too low and the average color deviation is too high. The color reproduction of the 3200×1800 screen of the more expensive Dell XPS 13 is better, but not much better.

Trackpad

Another issue, which we didn’t experience as much as many users did, was with the trackpad. Many users indicated that the mouse pointer could jump considerably and often reacted too slowly to touches. Dell has since released a firmware update that seems to address this. In any case, we did not experience it, even after prolonged use. There is, however, another problem; scrolling with two fingers works smoothly with Windows and Internet Explorer, but slightly less with Firefox and Chrome even stutters occur. In other programs, such as those from Adobe, scrolling with gestures works smoothly again. So maybe it’s the browsers. Since it is a Microsoft precision touchpad, settings are only possible within Windows 8.1 and are limited, but Windows 10 promises improvement in this area.

Processor

Another difference with the high-end XPS 13 is the processor. Instead of the Core i7-5500U, there is the Core i5-5200U. This is a dual-core of the Broadwell generation with a clock speed of 2.2GHz and a turbo boost to 2.7GHz. We look at the difference in performance between the two.

The Core i7 of the XPS from the earlier test has more L3 cache, higher clock speeds, and a GPU that can run just a fraction faster. That means that model still achieves a considerably higher score in our Photoshop test. Compared to the other competitors, the Core i5-XPS achieves an excellent result, but these are laptops with Haswell processor or slower Core M. As more competitors appear with Broadwell chips, this XPS 13 will take a place in accept the middle class. In combination with the 8GB DDR3 memory and the 256GB Samsung PM851 SSD, the laptop at least runs all applications smoothly enough. The Broadcom 802.11ac network card provides fast wireless internet.

In terms of hardware, it is also worth mentioning that Dell has rolled out bios updates that prevent the fan from running at full speed at unexpected times. Some users complained that the fan would sometimes fill up out of nowhere.

Battery life

Because the laptop has a lower resolution and a somewhat slower processor than its high-end brother, we wondered whether a positive effect on the battery life could be measured. In addition, we registered a slightly higher battery capacity of 53Wh.