Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Despite its foibles, Dell’s 2015 redesign of its XPS 13 Ultrabook was our favorite PC laptop for a long time. Its super-thin bezel was visually striking and dramatically reduced its footprint, and it was solidly built. It had a good keyboard, Microsoft Precision Touchpad, included USB-C/Thunderbolt 3, and it performed well to boot.

But all designs age. For premium laptops like these, longevity is less about nailing the basics and more about offering all the bells and whistles you can. As we’ve gotten deeper into the Windows 10 era, we’ve come to expect more from PCs that approach and surpass the $1,000 line.

That’s why HP’s Spectre x360 convertible edged out the Kaby Lake version of the XPS 13 as our favorite Ultrabook late last year. HP made big, beneficial updates to the original design to reduce its size and weight. It had a handy convertible hinge, it supported Windows Hello authentication, it could handle up to 16GB of RAM, and it didn’t put the webcam in a dumb place (the tradeoff was that it had a largish top bezel, but it’s a forgivable concession to physics). The latest XPS 13 is still using 2015’s design, which is perfectly adequate, even if it’s no longer at the top of the heap.

Enter the XPS 13 2-in-1. This convertible shares its name and a general aesthetic with the standard XPS 13. Otherwise, the XPS 2-in-1 is its own machine.

Look and feel

Specs at a glance: Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 (as reviewed) Screen 13.3-inch 1080p IPS touchscreen OS Windows 10 Home (64-bit) CPU Dual-core 1.3 GHz (3.6GHz Turbo) Intel Core i7-7Y75 RAM 8GB 1866MHz LPDDR3 (non-upgradeable) GPU Intel HD Graphics 615 HDD 256GB PCIe SSD (upgradeable up to 512GB) Networking Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.2 Ports 1x Thunderbolt 3, 1x USB Type-C, microSD, headphone jack Size 11.98" x 7.8" x 0.32-0.54" (304 x 199 x 8-13.7mm) Weight 2.7 pounds (1.24kg) Battery 46WHr Warranty One year Starting price $999.99 Price as reviewed $1,299.99 Other perks 720p webcam, backlit keyboard, Microsoft Precision Touchpad, fingerprint sensor

The XPS 13 2-in-1 keeps the same basic design as the regular XPS 13, including the materials used. The lid and the bottom of the laptop are metal, and the palm rest and keyboard tray are a soft-touch rubberized material that feels good even if it’s prone to picking up the oil from your hands (the human body is pretty gross, when you think about it). The design pattern on the palm rest, which rests somewhere between “checkerboard” and “chain mail," and the laptop's thin display bezels give the XPS most of its character, and they keep it from looking like a straightforward MacBook or Yoga clone.

The chief difference between this new XPS 13 and the standard model is that the convertibles use low-power Y-series processors from Intel. These lose some performance and give off less heat, which enables noise-free fanless laptop designs with no moving parts. The more complex convertible hinge adds some weight and complexity.

But the removal of the larger heatsink and fan assembly and the smaller battery that Dell can get away with by using lower-power processors make the laptop thinner (0.54 inches at its thickest point, compared to 0.6 inches for the regular XPS 13) and noticeably less deep (7.8 inches, down from 9.25). It's thicker, but it has the same approximate footprint as Apple's 12-inch MacBook despite having a larger screen. The 2.7-pound convertible XPS is a little lighter if you’re comparing it to the 2.9-pound touchscreen version of the original XPS 13. The non-touch XPS 13 weighs the same 2.7 pounds as the convertible, though.

The regular XPS 13 already has a pretty small footprint for a 13-inch laptop. So the fact that the convertible version is even smaller is impressive. It should be handy on planes or in other spaces where you don’t have much room to maneuver.

Dell ships two different screen options with the XPS 13 convertible. The default is a 1080p IPS touchscreen, which is what our review unit shipped with. It’s missing the wider DCI-P3 color gamut that high-end laptops like the recent MacBook Pro refresh or the XPS 15 both offer. But DCI-P3 is still a niche feature, and the Dell display is still colorful and sharp. The second display option is a not-quite-4K 3200×1800 panel, available as an add-on for a handful of models.

New to this XPS 13 is a Windows Hello-compatible static fingerprint reader. This is not the swipe reader we’ve seen on a handful of other PCs. It’s positioned on the right side of the palm rest, and after registering my two index fingers, I rarely had problems unlocking the laptop—on the rare occasions when the laptop didn’t recognize me, moving my finger slightly and pressing it down on the sensor a second time was always enough to get me in. Fingerprint or camera-based biometric authentication is increasingly a must-have feature on high-end laptops for us. I liked seeing it on the Dell.

Like the original XPS 13, the soft-touch material on the palm rest makes the laptop comfortable to type on. While the chiclet keyboard feels ever-so-slightly shallower than the version used in the larger XPS 13 or the XPS 15, it’s still firm enough and deep enough to be comfortable. A white backlight always looks better with dark keys (pairing a white backlight with silver keys is one of the few seriously questionable design decisions HP made with the Spectre x360). Slightly squashed keys on the right and left sides of the keyboard don’t keep the Dell’s layout from being excellent.

The laptop’s trackpad is substantially wider than it is deep, a side effect of the convertible’s smaller footprint. But like the other XPS laptops, it conforms to Microsoft’s Precision Touchpad specifications. This means finger tracking, multi-finger swipes, and other gestures work quickly and well. By conforming to theses specs, the XPS 13 also continues to understand new Windows 10 trackpad gestures automatically as they’re added in updates. The trackpad is just a tiny bit on the cramped side when you’re doing three- or four-finger swipes, but I had no problem adjusting.

The convertible XPS 13 does give up some ports. You lose both of the USB-A ports and the full-size SD card reader from the original, though thankfully Dell ships a USB-C to USB-A adapter in the box as a standard feature. The laptop has two USB-C ports, one on each side of the laptop. Both can be used for 5Gbps USB 3.1 gen 1 connections, driving displays and charging the laptop. But only the left port supports Thunderbolt 3 and 10Gbps USB 3.1 gen 2 speeds.

I wish Dell had been able to fit two Thunderbolt ports into this thing. But the ability to plug the laptop in from either side is unquestionably valuable, and there are understandable technical reasons for not going with Thunderbolt on both sides. Thunderbolt ports need to be located near their internal Thunderbolt controllers to work properly. Putting Thunderbolt ports on both sides of a laptop would affect both the cost and the extra motherboard space for a second controller; this is what Apple does to drive the Thunderbolt ports on both sides of the new MacBook Pros.

The laptop also includes a lock slot, headphone jack, micro SD card adapter, and a battery life indicator light.

The chief oddity of the XPS 13 design remains—the webcam is still mounted below the display instead of above it. The webcam remains usable-but-awkward, giving whoever is on the other end of the conversation a view straight up your nose. It also intensifies your inability to meet the eyes of the person you’re talking to, since you’re always looking at your screen instead of at the camera. But instead of appearing to stare down at your chin, people chatting to you from an XPS 13 will always be looking over your head.

I haven’t mentioned the laptop’s convertible hinge yet because there’s not a lot to say. It’s an unremarkable 360-degree hinge that lets the laptop’s screen fold all the way over until it touches the back and becomes a bulky tablet (the keyboard doesn't physically lock into place as it does on some laptops like this, but keyboard and trackpad input is disabled when in tablet or "tent" mode). The Windows app ecosystem continues to be poorly suited for pure tablet use, but the hinge is useful for putting the laptop into a screen-forward tent mode for video chatting and watching video. (Tent mode, incidentally, makes it so that the camera is “above” the screen as it normally would be.) Using the laptop in portrait/tablet mode also helps its Windows Ink-powered pen support shine, though a nearly three-pound laptop is a bit too heavy to be comfortable for extended use as a portable notepad.

There’s one thing to be careful of as you use the laptop, particularly if you regularly reach out to interact with the touchscreen. The laptop’s base is so thin and light that tapping the screen makes the laptop wobble. If you want the XPS to stay stable as you interact with the touchscreen in laptop mode, you’ll want to be sure to keep one of your hands on the palm rest to anchor it.

Listing image by Andrew Cunningham