Dell has quite a reputation when it comes to notebooks, often appearing beside its higher-priced companions the MacBook Pro in the design stakes and in its own class for productivity and performance. With models such as the Latitude, Vostro and Optiplex showing that performance and build quality can also sit beside reliability, Dell pretty much has the enterprise notebook world nailed. The XPS 13 certainly doesn't lack any of these accolades and as one of our top picks for an enterprise notebook, fitting perfectly into both the consumer and business categories, the latest version doesn't discontinue this trend. 2017's XPS 13 had to go down as a notebook leader and with a slightly updated design and more powerful processor, 2018's update had us ticking even more boxes, even against the extremely capable MacBook Pro. Sure, Apple's Touch Bar-toting, ultra-thin and ultra-light MacBook Pros may look and feel the part, but the XPS 13 is an even fuller package. Dell's thin, light and minimalist design certainly gives Apple's flagship a run for its money and although it may not be as desirable as Cupertino's finest, for the enterprise, non-creative sector, you should certainly look into the XPS 13 as a Windows alternative to the Apple.

So let's dig a little deeper and see exactly why this is such a high-performing notebook. Dell XPS 13: Design The design of the XPS 13 has remained more or less unchanged for the last several years, and that's very much a positive - it's one of the best-looking notebooks around, and Dell is smart to avoid messing around with it. As before, the chassis is finished in a gorgeous anodised aluminium with sharp, angular corners, while the keyboard surround uses the XPS range's signature carbon fibre-effect finish. Despite the fact that this is basically the same aesthetic that Dell has been using since 2015, it hasn't really aged all that much - in fact, it still looks downright excellent. The few changes that have been made are largely positive. For example, it's thinner than ever before, measuring 11.6mm at its widest point, and it's 80g lighter, too. For reference, that's noticeably slimmer and lighter than Apple's outstanding MacBook Pro. There have been some sacrifices made to achieve such a thin profile though (which we'll cover in more detail later) but the XPS 13 truly earns the ultraportable moniker. Along with the classic silver and black colourway, the new XPS 13 is also available in a white and rose gold option. This colour scheme is, alas, hideous. Rose gold looks tacky enough at the best of times, but combined with the white keyboard, it makes the XPS 13 look cheap and ugly. We're also be concerned about the potential for discolouration and staining. Dell XPS 13: Keyboard and trackpad The keyboard itself, much like the visual design, is more or less identical to previous generations. It's still using the same backlit chiclet keys and responsiveness and feedback is still nice and crisp. However, we're increasingly finding ourselves missing MacBook-style keyboards and their almost seamless spacing. What's more, Dell is still infuriatingly fitting the XPS 13's keyboard with half-height left and right arrow keys, with the page up and page down keys directly above them. While we applaud its efforts to maximise space, we frequently found ourselves hitting the wrong key and jumping to a completely different browser tab or document section, which is mightily annoying. The trackpad is really nice. The petite chassis means there's a limit to how big the trackpad itself can be, but Dell has made good use of the space - although we would have preferred it to be a little wider. One particularly nice touch is that the right-click function is only activated by clicking the bottom right corner of the touchpad - everything else registers as a left click. This is surprisingly intuitive and ensures that accidental right-clicks are minimised. Dell XPS 13: Display As is the case with pretty much all Dell XPS laptops, particularly the latest generations of the XPS 15 and XPS 13, one of the major highlights of is the beautiful display. And this was made even more stunning in the range's last update, thanks to the InfinityEdge display.

This edge-to-edge glossy screen, coupled with hair-width bezels seem to give the 13.3-inch display more presence than its size would suggest and makes it perfect for viewing any video content on, photos or vibrant graphics. Our review model was the 1080p IPS version and although there's a higher-end 4K touchscreen iteration also available, the quality of this lower-resolution display is perfectly acceptable - in fact it surpasses most of its similarly-priced competition. In fact, we'd even suggest you don't consider the higher-end model unless you have a real need for a touch display because the extra cost, coupled with extra strain on the battery life, does not make for a particularly worthy upgrade. Dell has claimed that its screen achieves a 100% coverage of the sRGB colour spectrum, but in our tests, it was significantly lower than this, achieving 90%. Although the 4K model may indeed have this range, we are unable to confirm it in our tests. That's still an excellent result, mind you and certainly nothing to be sniffed at. We've seen more impressive coverage from rival machines like the MacBook Pro, but it's still more than credible, and certainly good enough for basic design work and video playback. The same is true of the average Delta-E score of 2.49. Brightness is also excellent, and the peak brightness of 454cd/m is more than high enough to work outdoors in bright sunlight with no issues. In a departure from previous XPS models, the screen hasn't been treated with the usual matte anti-glare coating, but it has had some form of anti-reflective treatment applied to it. We experienced no viewability problems even under harsh lighting, and as an added bonus, the slight muting of colours that an anti-glare treatment usually results in is no more. Dell XPS 13: Specs and performance Dell is usually fairly quick off the mark to adopt the latest components, so it's no surprise that the latest XPS model is sporting Intel's latest 8th-generation processors. It's available in Core i5 and Core i7 varieties, and the model on review is fitted with a 1.8GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-8550U processor coupled with 16GB of LPDDR3 2133MHz RAM.