Dell XPS 13 2-in-1
The gold standard of convertible Ultrabooks will be tough to beat this year.
While some of the XPS 13 2-in-1s offered by Dell are overpriced, there seems to be a rolling deal on the most popular i7, 16GB, 512GB SSD, FullHD+ model, which lands at a more competitive $2,399.
At this price, this 13.4-inch FullHD+ convertible laptop offers a solid pedigree that’s expressed in sophisticated materials like an insulating carbon fibre keyboard surround, minimal exposed air vents and delicately weighted, fully-rotatable hinges. The keyboard isn’t particularly deep, but it has a signature clicky feel and sound that is appreciated by many and makes for a nice overall typing experience.
While some performance benchmarks pegged this unit around the middle of the pack, others suggest that the XPS 13 2-in-1 was tuned to go as fast as it could, showing up to 30 percent improvements over Evo averages on media encoding and CPU rendering tasks. Some of these performance gains continued into graphical capabilities, scoring a 41fps average in The Division 2 on 1080p low, but it does come at a cost of battery life. Lasting only five hours and 48 minutes in 1080p movie playback, it was one of the most fleeting here. The Evo spec means you should be able to get a full work day’s battery life if you dial down performance, but we suspect this will temper any performance benefits.
The screen is vibrant and the slightly taller 16 by 10 proportion is a nice touch. If you do want 4K+ resolution then expect to add $1,300 to the overall price tag. FullHD+ was enough to comfortably work on and looks good during playback, so there’s no real need for the upgrade.
Still one of the best-built 13-inch convertibles you can buy, with some models offering better value than others.