Gadgetory

it's an unseasonable warm winter so what better time to go out to the park to demo and talk about one of our favorite new laptops of 2018 and that's this guy right here it's the new Dell XPS 13 it's been redesigned and reimagined for 2018 and it's a nice evolution from the system that we reviewed each of the last couple years that frankly stayed the same for the last few years now there's a reason why this was always one of our favorite laptops and that's because this is one of the first models to decide to following the footsteps of the big TV manufacturers and get rid of the bezel that's that big thick border that was one of the first guys to try to get rid of it a few other laptop makers have done the same since and even today now you have edge to edge screens on phone so clearly getting rid of the bezel is a top priority for a lot of people you can see just a little tiny border around the two sides and the top of the laptop and that lets you basically see a lot more screen and a lot less plastic or glass or metal or whatever is around the side now even though we've always liked the XPS 13 the design kind of stayed the same for the last few years while other laptops got thinner and smaller and lighter and maybe fancier looking so it's definitely time for an update this is the updated version you can see it's a little bit smaller they managed to squeeze a little bit of the volume out of it largely by improving the cooling inside which means that you don't need to have as much air inside for air circulation so they've managed to get rid of some of the half there even though it's still a little bit on the heavy side another big thing that they changed was they got rid of something I liked a lot which was the soft touch dark gray black wrist rest was kind of almost a rubbery feeling material I just thought was very cool and said now it's a white fiber white glass fiber even though it's white Dell says it's very stain resistant I still like that dark soft touch feel but this is very nice too of course it's white on the inside on the outside you see it's got this rose gold coloring out that's actually an extra $50 option you can just get I think basic you know silver instead but you know everybody's got a rose gold product now why not here and of course that helps frame the screen very nicely and now that the bezel around the screen is why did almost fades into the background even when we had the black bezel before now of course because there's no space here in their space here what do you do with the webcam well it's this little guy right down here and that is one of the classic problems with the XPS 13 line everyone's had since they viewed this basic dental free design several years ago it's you put the webcam down there what do you have you have an up the nose shot basically nobody looks good with it it's kind of weird if you're a professional youtuber I guess or you do a lot of skype video meetings all day long this may be a deal breaker for you I don't use webcam that much if you don't then that I wouldn't worry about it a heck of a lot it does have the the two lenses there so you can do things like Windows hello facial recognition log in but it is definitely one of those quirks about this particular line that everybody always says why do they do that and they did it again it's also harder to fit a post-it note down there if your privacy obsessed and you're one of those people we like to put a post-it note over your webcam now I don't want you to think I don't like this laptop a lot because I do but I am going to tell you about one other thing that's bugging me and that is the configuration option you can get a perfectly fine high-end configuration with this core i7 4k screen touchscreen but if you get the base model which starts in $1000 still a very premium price you don't get the touchscreen with that it's not for managing people spending money on what they think of as a very premium laptop and not having that touchscreen it's not something you use all the time in Windows 10 but every once in a while you're really gonna wish you had it and frankly anyone under a certain age is just trained from birth think of every screen as a touchscreen now with the possible exception of a matte book so I really think that even the lower end versions which are still $1000 should have a touchscreen on this I'd also say just watch out this new version has gone to USBC only for all of its ports so if you have a lot of stuff you want to plug into it make sure you have all the right dongles and connections I frankly think we're in the USBC age already now and that's what the Mac books have and that's what a lot of other laptops have but if you're gonna do a lot of outputting by HDMI you want to plug in your old memory sticks just be warned about that so those small quirks and annoyances aside this is actually a fantastic laptop and still one of my favorite 13-inch laptops in fact it's one of the ones in our testing lab that I go back to again and again and I pick up whenever I need to use a laptop for something the keyboards fantastic the touchpad is very good the screen this is the 4k touchscreen version looks great great performance from the core i7 processor and of course just a really sharp design isn't enough to take everywhere and it's also got one of those features that that's an intent over I like a lot which is that it's unique looking so when you go to the coffee shop for some bits and you pull out people are really gonna notice it well that's what I think of the Dell XPS 13 what do you think let us know in the comments below thanks for watching you