Dell XPS 13 9343

The XPS 13 9343 follows a long line of similarly named laptops. The last time this reviewer tested the XPS 13 was in 2009, when the Dell Studio XPS 13 was a well executed 13in notebook with an SSD. Over the intervening six years, the Apple ultraportable Air became the template for 13in notebooks, while the new XPS has shed its 2.2kg puppy fat to become a 1.3kg Ultrabook. And the once 34mm-thick brick is now little more than 17mm, tapering to 15mm at the front.

Dell has raised its game in construction technology, and the XPS 13 now takes precisionmachined alloy for both top and bottom sections. Carbon-fibre composite is not new for a Dell notebook, but here we see it applied right across the middle section, making up a top deck area in nicely figured woven material, finished with a smooth rubbery coat that feels more organic to the touch.

Ports and physical connectivity options are minimal. There’s a USB 3.0 port on each flank; then DC charge inlet, Mini DisplayPort and headset jack on the left. An SDXC card slot, and what looks like a Kensington lock slot (but Dell calls a Noble lock slot) lie to the right. We understand the proprietary terms are now interchangeable.

Prising open the lid to get going could be easier, since there’s no sufficiently sized cutout in the body to push in your thumb or finger to separate lid from lower. Once you have broken in, you find an all-black deck and screen. With the display switched on, only a very small edge remains black. In fact, the bezel is 5mm along the top, and 5.4mm wide on the sides.

At time of writing, Dell UK is offering four different models with either Intel Core i5-5200U (2.2GHz), Core i7-5500U (2.4GHz) or Core i7-5600U (2.6GHz) processors. Each of these chips has integrated Intel HD Graphics 5500, with 300- to 900MHz clock speed. Note that all these ultra-low power mobile chips are dual-core only.

Memory is fixed at 8GB, with no option at present for more or less. And since it’s soldered to the motherboard, it’s 8GB for life. That ought to be enough for typical users of an ultraportable laptop, unless you run more memory-intensive programs such as creative graphics.

Storage can be any size you like, so long as you like either 256- or 512GB. Our sample had a 256GB M.2 drive from Samsung, albeit still only SATA-connected so some way behind the state of the art.

The keyboard and trackpad both worked mostly well, excepting an issue with the apostrophe/doublequote key. This would sometimes fail to print a character, or else double print when pressed harder to make any mark at all. The trackpad was better than those found on many Windows laptops. The touchscreen worked as a touchscreen, with usual flex and wobbles in use.

Performance

Simple synthetic benchmark tests quickly established the Dell XPS 13 to be a fast mover. In fact perhaps too fast, given the limited cooling strategies available to the design team with such a thin chassis.

Whether it was the integrated graphics working overtime to drive a higher number of pixels or the thermal envelope of the chip in too tight a space, we don’t know, but the XPS 13’s single fan was inclined to rev into audibility for no apparent reason. And that’s with the laptop set to its default Dell power saving mode in Windows Power Options.

One doesn’t expect to report any good news when it comes to Windows gaming on an ultraportable. But applying Intel’s new tech, the Dell XPS 13 may be the first ultraportable where we can be satisfied that gaming is possible, and beyond the usual the lowest res/ lowest detail caveat, too.

Batman: Arkham City game showed that framerates of 40fps were possible, and at High detail, playing at 1280x720 resolution. Moving up gradually to 1366x768, we averaged 35- and 39fps at High and Medium detail settings. So we ratcheted the resolution even higher, to 1600x900 and then 1920x1080, where we recorded scores of 31- and then 23fps (Medium detail).

In key respects, the 3200x1800 display passed our screen tests with flying colours. Measured with a Datacolor colorimeter, it could stretch to 99 percent of the sRGB colour gamut, and 75 percent of Adobe RGB. Colour accuracy was very good, with Delta E values between 0.62 and 5.62, averaging 3.47, in a 48-colour test.

Contrast ratio was also exemplary for a notebook screen, reaching 710:1 at full brightness. The full brightness may be a little limited for some tastes and environments though – we couldn’t get any higher than 225cd/m2. That’s bright enough for us, but some like to use their laptop outside or in very high light levels where this display might get a little swamped by ambient light.

The internal flash storage proved averagely quick for its type, hitting sequential reads and writes of 493and 238MB/s respectively. Singlethreaded 4kB random reads and writes amounted to 21- and 46MB/s, while peak IOPS was found with 32-thread reads at 88,900 IOPS.

Battery life was not bad, if well short of Dell’s 11-hour claim. We ran our MPEG-4 HD film over Wi-Fi with the screen set to 120cd/m2, where we recorded six hours 12 minutes.

Verdict

The XPS 13 9343 stands as a shining beacon in the world of Windows laptops that outdoes the competition in key respects such as screen quality and near-borderless display.