Gadgetory

hey how's it going Dave QD here so recently Dell released this the two and one XPS 13 and have been a huge fan of the original XPS 13 but this new version seems better on paper it's thinner it's more versatile because it's got that 360 hinge and it's similarly priced let's take a look it has the same design language aluminum top and bottom panels with soft touch carbon fiber on the deck all very rigid and properly fitted true to the whole XPS name this thing has great build quality the hinge looks solid it allows you to rotate the screen all the way around and you can kind of one hand open it from the side but because the bottom half is so light you have to wobble it a bit to get it open for ports we have micro SD and audio jack and a pair of USB sea ports one of them supports Thunderbolt 3 there are no use ba ports which is how the device is so sin but they include an adapter so I'm happy the screen is a 1080p panel color gamut is great color accuracy out of the box wasn't amazing but calibration made it much better it does get pretty bright and the super send dozens on the XPS line are always welcome there's also a qHD version available if you want the keyboard is a little disappointing for me so the keys themselves are actually bigger than normal there are a couple millimeters wider than normal XPS 13 or XPS 15 keys it doesn't feel too different from the regular XPS 13 keyboard it's still a short travel stroke maybe a little spongy err but similar enough but my biggest gripe are the page up and page down Keys located here so I've been using this thing for two weeks and I still accidentally hit them when I'm trying to press left or right so if you're a database user or a spreadsheet user or just if you frequently use the arrow keys this might be an issue the trackpad is good it's the same shape and size as the regular XPS 13 Windows precision drivers good tracking the click mechanism is solid overall it's a good trackpad there's now a fingerprint sensor it works quickly with Windows hello location is good and tactile you can instantly find it in the dark and there's also the classic XPS webcam it look up your nose but this one has an infrared can support Windows hello once Microsoft certifies it when you open up the bottom panel the RAM is soldered on but the nvme drive up here is user replaceable it's the same toshiba drive as the XPS 13 so speeds are pretty good the 46 watt hour battery takes up a huge footprint and we're getting very good battery life i'm comfortably getting eight hours with it and it charges up using a 50 watt youth pc charger it's running Intel y processors which are famous they're normally 4.5 watt TDP chips but if the thermal management is good enough they can go up to 7 watts and that's what Dell does here the performance is surprisingly good for such a low wattage chip it feels very snappy for single core stuff like work and light web browsing heavier tasks will still bog the system down so anything that uses both cores for extended periods of time like heavy photo or video editing can get sluggish the regular XPS 13 with the Core i5 or the Core i7 CPU those will handle heavier tasks better gaming on the 2 & 1 XPS 13 isn't great even compared to the regular XPS 13 you can play some really light stuff like csgo it does however have a Sun about three port that uses four lane PCIe it doesn't officially support external GPUs but with a couple drivers it can connect up now keep in mind it's a famous dual-core CPU so CPU dependent games are still not amazing but some games can do pretty well your exact frame rates will depend heavily on the graphics card you use and pretty expensive to set this up for a core Y processor but it works there's no fan noise because there's no fan and thermo still aren't bad there's an obvious warmer cluster on top where all the good stuff is but it's a very comfortable device to use so the speakers when it's in laptop mode the speakers are good they sound very similar to the XPS 13 speakers but because of their location when you have an intent mode you lose a ton of audio clarity the sound bounces around behind the screen and you kind of lose the stereo effects it actually sounds like a mono speaker and the same thing happens in presentation on in fact it's actually worse in presentation and the thing is these alternative configurations like these non laptop positions these are the positions that people often use when they're consuming media where you want your audio quality to be the best but that's just not the case now when you have it in tablet mode the speaker positioning is fine as long as you're not covering it with your hand I want to talk a bit more about the tablet mode of this device because this is a feature that kind of separates the Joule 1 XPS 13 from the regular XPS 13 and the bottom line I don't enjoy using as a tablet so when you fold the screen over remember the super thin bezels I love them on a laptop but as a tablet because of these thin bezels there's very little room to hold the device without accidentally making contact with the touchscreen and then there's the issue of ergonomics I just don't find it comfortable to hold and this is a problem that almost every single folding 2 & 1 convertible has when the keyboard is flipped around you can feel the keys they're deactivated they don't register keystrokes but it just feels weird and there's also that uncomfortable edge when you're holding it the soft touch material is nice to hold it's grippy but holding a 2.7 pound tablet for extended periods of time is just not enjoyable and there's no hardware buttons for audio controls you have to do with new software so over the past couple of weeks I've been trying to use this thing as often as I can as a tablet and I got to be honest every single time I try just end up reverting back to using it as a laptop because it's just so much more comfortable to use as a laptop and I get it this thing was designed as a laptop first and a tablet as like a secondary option if you want to you can use it as a tablet but I'm just saying the tablet experience is not my favorite and that leads me to my last point this thing starts at $1000 so the pricing is not that different from the regular XPS 13 this is still a good device but unless you really want that tablet mode or the different screen positions I would stick with the original XPS 13 this thing is awesome this is still good we are treating performance for this hinge and unless you really make good use of the hinge I'd skip it that's you know this video hope you guys enjoyed it thumbs we did subs if you loved it see you guys next time you