I liked the Dell XPS 13 an awful lot when I reviewed its initial Broadwell-based iteration last year. The keyboard and touchpad felt good, the high-resolution screen looked great, and the whole package was stylish, with its super-thin bezel and soft-touch interior. The only major flaw was the webcam placement driven by that thin bezel. Some other publications also felt that battery life wasn't what it should be, but in our testing it seemed decent even if it fell short of Dell's own estimates.

Almost everything in that review holds true of the new device, and that's a good place to start. The XPS 13 got all the important basics right. Once again our review model has the beautiful 3200×1800 IPS touchscreen and the same extremely narrow bezel.

This is as eye-catching as it ever was, and I'm a little surprised that other manufacturers haven't leapt on the same hardware. The XPS 13 is quite a bit smaller than systems with comparable screen sizes, or if you prefer, its screen is quite a bit bigger than that of systems with the same footprint. To quantify that: the XPS 13 is 11.98 inches wide. The 11-inch MacBook Air is 11.8 inches wide, and the 13-inch MacBook Air is 12.8 inches wide. Similarly, the XPS 13 is 7.88 inches deep; the Apple systems are 7.56 and 8.94 inches deep. This Dell with its 13.3 inch screen is much closer in size to the Mac with an 11.6 inch screen than the one with a 13.3 inch one.

That diminutive size means more room on your airplane tray table, more room in your backpack or briefcase. It's even slightly less heft to carry around; at 2.7lbs (without touch) or 2.9lbs (with touch), it's a touch lighter than the 13-inch MacBook Air.

In spite of the size, the keyboard remains competent and the touchpad remains first rate. Key travel is good for a laptop, the backlighting is effective, and overall the layout is reasonable. My personal preference would be to have a few more keys. Home/end and page up/down are doubled up onto the cursor keys, for example, and in an ideal world they'd have a dedicated button. There's also no way (or at least, no obvious way; it's possible that there's some unlabeled shortcut) to type the "break" key, which is an annoyance. But such are the norms of modern laptop keyboards.

The touchpad has a smooth glass surface, great accuracy, and Precision Touchpad support for the full range of Windows 10 gestures and shortcuts.

Surrounding all this is a palm rest covered in "soft touch paint." This feels extremely comfortable. Last year I was concerned that the paint may deteriorate, but I've since heard from others that it stands up well. It certainly feels better than the bare metal that some other laptops use for their interiors. The inside of the XPS 13 is, however, a tremendous fingerprint magnet. Even with alcohol wipes I failed to get it pristine.

The position of the webcam (again, driven as it is by the narrow bezel) remains awkward to the point of near-unusability. With no room at the top edge of the screen, it's placed instead at the bottom, creating a peculiar worm's eye view that tends to point right up your nose. It does technically work, but there is no circumstance in which I could ever see myself using it.

I'm also a little disappointed that Dell hasn't embraced Windows Hello biometric login. Although the webcam positioning would almost surely rule out facial recognition, a fingerprint sensor on the keyboard would have been good. HP's comparably priced Envy 13 manages a fingerprint reader on the keyboard, for example.

One eye on the future

The new parts to the XPS 13 are all on the inside. The processor is now Skylake generation, and with this comes an increase in supported RAM—now up to 16GB—and Intel's Alpine Ridge controller.

Alpine Ridge provides two things: the infuriatingly named USB 3.1 generation 2—which means 10 gigabits per second rather than five—and Thunderbolt 3. These are delivered over a USB Type-C port on the machine's left-hand side, replacing the mini DisplayPort of the Broadwell model.

This port does just about everything, assuming you have something to plug into it—generation 1 and 2 USB, DisplayPort 1.2, 40 gigabit per second Thunderbolt 3, and even charging (though the XPS 13 does not use this for charging by default; it has a dedicated charging port and charger to match). This can drive one of the handful of new USB Type-C monitors directly, and with converters it'll drive DisplayPort and HDMI screens. Dell also has an adaptor that provides Ethernet, VGA, HDMI, and USB Type A ports, and more of these port replicators/docking stations are likely to materialize.

On a whim I plugged it into the Microsoft Display Dock used for the Lumia 950 phone. While it was detected, it didn't appear to actually work, suggesting that USB Type-C may have an undesirable dark side. Devices may appear to be superficially compatible with one another, but they won't actually do anything when connected.

While it once looked as if Thunderbolt was never going to catch on, it now looks like the capability is going to become much more widespread—primarily thanks to USB. As we noted at last year's CES, USB Type-C is going to spread everywhere thanks to the support for higher speeds, power delivery, and the ability to use it for non-USB data (such as DisplayPort or HDMI) via the Alternate Modes feature. Thunderbolt 3 is just another Alternate Mode.

That alone wouldn't be enough to ensure Thunderbolt's spread; the second element in play is Alpine Ridge. While Intel's chipsets all have integrated USB 3 support, this is currently only generation 1 support, running at 5 gigabits per second. To get the faster generation 2 support requires the use of an external USB controller. Intel's Alpine Ridge isn't the only generation 2 controller around, but being an Intel chip, good operating system and driver support are all but inevitable, making it appealing to OEMs. And it just so happens that Alpine Ridge isn't just a USB 3.1 generation 2 controller: it's also a Thunderbolt 3 controller. Add Alpine Ridge to a system to get best-in-class USB support and you get Thunderbolt 3 coming along for the ride.

The multi-protocol nature of the port means that the port is inevitably going to be useful for something. Maybe it'll be useful for connecting USB devices; maybe it'll be useful for connecting monitors. Maybe, if the array of Thunderbolt hardware expands, it'll be useful for more exotic things such as external video cards.

Whatever it turns out to be, support for both USB 3.1 generation 2 and Thunderbolt 3 means that the XPS 13 is meaningfully future-proofed. But unlike the Type-C-only Spectre x2, Dell hasn't forgotten about the present; there are two regular USB 3.1 generation 1 ports on the XPS 13, too, so today's hardware is also well-supported.