On that battlefield, Dale is coming swinging. “I will give [Apple] Credit, it’s a good product … the difference is that we’ve built something better,” Dell COO Jeff Clark told reporters during a briefing ahead of Computex.
dell xps 13 specs
The XPS 13 will come in Sky and Storm finishes (left and right, respectively).
Credit: Dell
The XPS 13 will be the thinnest and lightest XPS laptop ever made by Dell. It’s just as thin as the Neo but half a pound lighter, weighing in at just 2.2 pounds. It will be equipped with a 2.5K touchscreen, keyboard backlighting, and WiFi 7, three features the Neo lacks.
The XPS 13’s display will offer up to 500 nits of brightness and full DCI-P3 color coverage, so it should look very crisp and vibrant. It will also support a variable 120Hz refresh rate that can drop down to just 30Hz when displaying static content, thereby maximizing its battery life.
The XPS 13 doesn’t have a mesh-style keyboard or seamless touchpad, two distinctive features of Dell’s XPS 14 and 16 laptops.
Credit: Dell
Dell’s XPS 13 is rated for up to 17 hours of video streaming per charge. If it passes the test, it will reduce the Neo’s battery life by just over two hours.
The XPS 13 will launch later this month in a silver “sky” finish with Intel’s new entry-level Core Series 3 chips (“Wildcat Lake”). The base configuration comes with 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, and as of November 2, students 16 and older can purchase it for just $599. Everyone else pays $699 (the same price as a similarly configured Neo).
mashable light speed
Later this summer, Dell will add a second “Storm” finish and scaled-up variants with flagship Intel Core Ultra Series 3 chips (“Panther Lake”). Those higher-end models will have two Thunderbolt 4 ports, while the cheaper Wildcat Lake versions will have two USB-C ports. Neither will have a headphone jack, so a point on the Neo’s side.
A cheap XPS laptop? In this economy?
The XPS 13 is half a pound lighter than the MacBook Neo.
Credit: Dell/Mashable Composite
The arrival of Neo this spring unsettled many PC makers, but Clark said it had no impact on Dell’s planned features for the XPS 13, which was developed over the course of “about 30 weeks.” The company first hinted at its existence at CES in January, calling it “our most accessible XPS price point yet” in a blog post.
Dell previously sold an XPS 13 laptop from 2012 to 2024. But it was basically a compact version of its XPS 14 and 16 laptops, not a budget machine targeting a whole different user base.
The new XPS 13’s affordable price is quite an achievement amid the global RAM shortage that has forced most PC makers to raise their prices – including Dell. Last month, select configurations of its latest XPS 14 became up to 31 percent more expensive. And its new entry-level Alienware 15 gaming laptop launches at a higher price than expected.
Dell introduced a premium-feeling budget laptop to the existing market to meet the accessibility commitment it made at CES, Clark said, though it also required “a change in mindset and approach.”
Thanks to the AI Industry for Tech Value Growth: See the Full List
“We had this belief that the XPS was an incredibly premium product, which it is, and it couldn’t go below a certain floor,” he explained. “We set our sights on making the XPS experience more affordable. We wanted to share that experience with a wider range of consumers.”
So far, Acer is the only other major PC maker to announce a Wildcat Lake-powered budget laptop with availability in the US. (This August, the new Acer Swift Air 14 also starts at $699.) Other models launched in China last month.
Do you want to know more about getting the best from your technology? Sign up for Mashable’s Top Stories & Deals newsletters Today.
<a href