Dell XPS 13 9310 review: Still the Windows 10 ultraportable to beat Review

Previous year ZDNet gave the mid-2020 version of Dell’s 13.four-inch XPS 13 a glowing (9/ten, ‘Outstanding’) overview, and chose it as the best laptop computer for awareness workers requiring an all-spherical combination of structure, features, general performance, battery lifetime and usability. How to enhance on that? The latest 9310 product doesn’t make any radical adjustments, merely updating the Intel Core processors to the latest 11th-technology (Tiger Lake) and incorporating a variant with a three.5K OLED touchscreen. 

We appeared at a Core i7 product with a 4K+/UHD+ IPS touchscreen, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. 

The XPS 13 9310 stays an outstanding ultraportable, but of program there is a good deal of competitors in the 13-inch place — not only from Windows-centered rivals, notably from Lenovo and HP, but also from Apple’s M1-centered MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. 

Design 

Style and design-smart, the XPS13 9310 appears to be like similar to final year’s product, with a compact footprint (295.7mm vast by 198.7mm deep) and a slender profile (14.8mm at the back, tapering in direction of the entrance). The excess weight, as prior to, ranges from one.2kg for non-contact types up to one.27kg for variants with a touchscreen. 

My overview unit experienced a silver aluminium chassis and a black carbon fibre composite substance surrounding the keyboard and touchpad. This has a woven complete and is beautiful, tactile and long lasting. There is a 2nd colour selection: ‘Frost’ on the outdoors, arctic white on the within. 

I have only a small criticism of the XPS13’s structure, which is that it can be a little bit uncomfortable to open. There is no indent on the keyboard area at the entrance (as you obtain on a MacBook, for example), so it can be difficult to get a buy amongst the lid and keyboard sections with your finger – primarily as the hinges are sound (as they ought to be). Usually, it can be attractive and compact, and the construct good quality is outstanding. 

Features 

Prime ZDNET Assessments

As famous previously mentioned, the major adjust in the XPS 9310 is the enhance to 11th-technology (Tiger Lake) Core processors with built-in Iris Xe Graphics. In the US you can get preconfigured variants with Core i3-1115G4, Core i5-1135G7 or Core i7-1185G7 processors, starting at $949 (Core i3, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, FHD+ non-contact display) and rising to $one,799 (Core i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, UHD+ IPS touchscreen). Various configurations give different customisation solutions for the display screen (contact, non-contact, IPS, OLED) and SSD (up to 2TB), but RAM doesn’t go previously mentioned 16GB. 

In the United kingdom, price ranges commence at £1,064 (inc. VAT) for a Core i5 product with 8GB RAM, a 512GB SSD and an FHD+ non-contact IPS display, rising to £1,949 with a Core i7, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and a UHD+ IPS touchscreen. My overview unit, just to be uncomfortable, ran on a Core i7-1165G7, which no longer appears to be obtainable in either the United kingdom or the US. 

The display screen has minimal bezels (that’s why Dell’s InfinityEdge branding), resulting in a claimed display screen-to-entire body ratio of 91.5{d11068cee6a5c14bc1230e191cd2ec553067ecb641ed9b4e647acef6cc316fdd} — although our measurement puts it at (a however-amazing) 88.seven{d11068cee6a5c14bc1230e191cd2ec553067ecb641ed9b4e647acef6cc316fdd}. The 720p webcam, which sits in the prime bezel, supports Windows Hello facial recognition but, not like some rivals, doesn’t have a privateness shutter. Biometric authentication is also obtainable by means of the fingerprint reader, which is built-in into the electrical power button in the prime suitable corner of the keyboard. 

My overview unit experienced the greatest-resolution display obtainable — 4K+/UHD+ (3840 by 2400 pixels, 338ppi). The IPS touchscreen, which is safeguarded by Gorilla Glass 6, features 500 nits greatest brightness, is licensed for DisplayHDR four hundred, and supports 100{d11068cee6a5c14bc1230e191cd2ec553067ecb641ed9b4e647acef6cc316fdd} of the sRGB colour gamut and ninety{d11068cee6a5c14bc1230e191cd2ec553067ecb641ed9b4e647acef6cc316fdd} of DCI-P3. In spite of an anti-reflective coating, it can be reasonably shiny, but I wasn’t troubled by reflections in the course of tests in my home workplace, where by a sixty{d11068cee6a5c14bc1230e191cd2ec553067ecb641ed9b4e647acef6cc316fdd} brightness setting was perfectly enough, even close to a window. Though the 13.four-inch display screen is just not huge, its sixteen:ten element ratio provides some extra depth when compared to a ‘consumer’ sixteen:9 device when you might be functioning with paperwork or spreadsheets — whilst not as a great deal as a three:two display screen, as uncovered on Microsoft’s Surface Laptop computer four, for example. 

You really don’t assume an ultraportable to be overburdened with ports and slots, but even so, the XPS 13 9310 has a rather minimal – if up-to-day – assortment: two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, just one on each aspect (either of which can charge the 52Wh battery), a MicroSD card slot on the left aspect and a three.5mm combo audio in/out jack. For wireless connection, there’s Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650 and Bluetooth 5.one, but no mobile broadband selection. 

Performance 

My Core i7-1165G7/16GB RAM/512GB SSD overview unit felt snappy in standard use, primarily when jogging regular awareness-worker workloads these as document creation/modifying, spreadsheets and photo modifying. Graphics general performance, driven by Intel’s integrated Iris Xe Graphics, was creditable much too, and a unique improvement on the Iris As well as Graphics in the previous-technology product. 

Nevertheless, CPU general performance, as calculated by the cross-platform Geekbench 5 benchmark, doesn’t match Apple’s tempo-setting M1 SoC, lagging eighteen{d11068cee6a5c14bc1230e191cd2ec553067ecb641ed9b4e647acef6cc316fdd} at the rear of on solitary-main and 57{d11068cee6a5c14bc1230e191cd2ec553067ecb641ed9b4e647acef6cc316fdd} at the rear of on multi-main scores. 

The XPS 13 acquits itself superior in the Cinebench R15 OpenGL check, where by its Iris Xe Graphics propel it to 101fps when compared to the M1 MacBook Air’s 85fps. Bear in head, while, that the MacBook Air was jogging this check using Rosetta 2 translation rather than as a indigenous M1 application. 

To get an all round photograph of the XPS 13 9310’s general performance, we turned to PCMark ten, which provides an all round score alongside with subsidiary scores for different types of workload — Essentials (application commence-up, web browsing, movie conferencing), Productiveness (writing, spreadsheets, photo modifying) and Digital Content Creation (movie modifying, rendering & visualisation). Right here are the XPS 13’s scores along with these that PCMark suggests as a ‘good’ score: 

Dell’s ultraportable clearly exceeds the suggestion in all groups, producing it a specifically suitable platform for awareness staff. It will deal with reasonably graphically demanding purposes much too, but electrical power buyers and creators will require to search elsewhere. 

Battery life 

Battery lifetime for the previous-technology XPS 13, centered on a Core i7-1065G7 with a 4K+/UHD+ display screen, came in at about twelve.5 several hours on a food plan of mainstream productiveness workloads. 

SEE: Windows ten Start off menu hacks (TechRepublic Quality)

With a similar blend of workloads – periodic operates of PCMark ten, some idle time with Wi-Fi on, and some media streaming – we recorded battery lifetime of just beneath 9 several hours. Screen brightness was established at 50{d11068cee6a5c14bc1230e191cd2ec553067ecb641ed9b4e647acef6cc316fdd} and the default electrical power system (‘Dell’) was applied. All-working day battery lifetime may perhaps be possible with the substantial-resolution display, relying on what you might be undertaking, but only just. If this is a trouble, you may perhaps want to search at a product with a reduce-resolution FHD+ (1920 x 1200) display screen.

Usability 

As soon as general performance and battery lifetime are taken care of, a laptop’s usability mainly revolves close to its display screen and keyboard, and the placement of its ports. We’ve included the substantial-resolution, minimal-bezel 4K+/UHD+ IPS touchscreen, which is a satisfaction to work with, and a great deal the very same can be stated of the keyboard. 

The keyboard is backlit, toggled by means of a key in the Fn row, and has a substantial-good quality sense and a responsive action, with out being much too loud in operation. We are used to heaping deserved praise on Lenovo’s ThinkPad keyboards, but this is up there with the very best of them. There will constantly be some facets of a laptop’s key format that irritate men and women, at the very least until finally they get used to it right here it may perhaps be the area of the electrical power/fingerprint sensor in the prime suitable corner, which edges the Delete key just one place to the left. The touchpad is a decent size, and works very well much too. 

Laptop computer speakers used to be a little something of an afterthought, but no a lot more. With a lot more remote staff investing time on movie phone calls, and needing to take it easy with streaming media in the course of downtime, a good audio subsystem is a will have to for a usable laptop computer these days. The XPS 13 9310 provides a good deal of volume provided the compact chassis, whilst bass is inevitably considerably less loaded when compared to systems with a lot more physical volume to work with. The bundled MaxxAudio Pro software provides you the controls to make the most of the audio subsystem. 

Conclusions 

Dell’s XPS 13 has lengthy been a really regarded ultraportable, and the Intel Evo-branded 9310 variation, centered on eleven-technology (Tiger Lake) Core processors, is no different. It is not ideal, while: there is a trade-off to be created amongst display screen resolution and battery lifetime, CPU general performance has been overtaken by Apple’s M1 SoC, and there are just one or two small usability niggles.

Over-all, while, the Dell XPS 13 9310, like its predecessor, receives an ‘Outstanding’ suggestion from ZDNet.

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