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XPS 13 (2018) Review - The World's Smallest 13" Laptop!

2018-01-05
hey how's it going Dave 2d here and this is a review of the brand new XPS 13 for 2018 so this thing's been redesigned it's got a fresh new look and the original XPS 13 or I should say the previous generation of XPS 13 that style has been around since 2015 it's been around for a while the design has got a little bit old and they finally refresh the whole thing so this thing now comes in a new design it's thinner it's lighter and it's significantly smaller than the previous generation I think it something like 24 percent smaller than the previous generation which is very noticeable see on camera or just if you look at it and pictures and stuff like that you can't really tell but when you hold it in person especially we compare it with the old one right beside it it's a very noticeable difference in weight and in size and I think it's a really nice looking device so one of the best things about the XPS lineup is that they don't copy MacBooks they just kind of make their own thing and it's distinctly a very XPS looking machine and I think it looks quite good the big change though in terms the aesthetics is this new glass fiber weave and it looks awesome so the original XPS 13 and 15 had this black carbon fiber material that looks really good honestly I think this looks better so the one difference though is that this material is it doesn't have that rubber finish that the XPS 13 and 15 had from last generation it was almost like a soft touch material this feels just kind of like a regular I want to say plastic that's not plastic but it feels kind of like a smoother and harder finish which isn't as inviting to use it's more of a technical material but it does look really good now this material does have some kind of stain resistance to it I tried putting some pen on it it doesn't stain like you can just wipe it off pretty easily it's supposed to look fresh and it does I think it looks really really good so they've matched the white interior with a rose gold metal for the top surface they call it rose gold but it's much less pink than a lot of rose gold materials from other companies and I'm rocking at d-brane skin on mine because seriously this looks Superfly marble top gold trim white interior I mean this is fresh AF one of the few complaints ahead about the previous XPS 13 was that the power supply so this finally uses a USB C port to charge it I know the old one could use use PC but it included a barrel plug as like AC adapter I like use BC much more for 2018 now the rest of the USB ports are all USB C as well and they have a micro SD I like the u species and they include an adapter for USB a connections but I don't love the micro SD slot I feel like it's something that a lot of people will use but it is there in case you want it now in terms of the Thunderbolt 3 ports they support four lanes of PCIe and it's something that bothered some people with the previous generation they only supported two lanes of PCIe for external GPU connections now you get all four the webcam on this laptop has been updated and now supports Windows hello for secure logins now it's still located at the bottom so the camera looks up your nose and the image quality isn't amazing or anything is kind of your standard webcam for an ultrabook but it does keep the bezels really thin one thing I don't like though is that the white trim like on the white model that black camera cut out is a bit of an eyesore so if you don't use your camera very often or if you just want a more secure camera thing you can get some privacy stickers from dbrand cover it up and it looks a lot cleaner the bezels on the previous XPS 13 are already really thin these are even thinner I think it's like 23% thinner it's just a more immersive experience when you're using this screen the screen itself is covered in Gorilla Glass 4 and I'm running a 1080p panel and it's bright with decent color accuracy it does come in a new 4k panel with a hundred percent srgb if you need something for color accurate work now the performance on this thing is good as you expect because in 8th gen CPU for multi-core applications these 8th gen CPUs can fly I tried to run Intel XTU on this laptop it does throttle it's kind of expected considering the size and everything on this laptop but I had big dreams so the thermals on this system have been changed so this is now running a new thermal management thing called Gore thermal material and I'm not sure exactly what it is but it supposed to be some advanced material that they use in space programs and stuff it's a good thermal solution but it's not amazing like if you're hoping to go full turbo on all four cores for an extended period of time it's not going to happen it will throttle the good thing is that the fans are really quiet on idle and on full load gaming performance isn't amazing it's running an Intel HD 620 so we're gonna get some pretty mediocre frame rates unless you're playing some really light games the keyboard feels really similar to the previous generation to me it's a little bit different visually like the keys are a little bit larger and Leo's changed a bit page up page down have their own keys but the typing experience feels really similar to the old one I think a lot of people will enjoy using this keyboard the trackpad is I think it's identical either they might be using the exact same one it feels good witness precision glass surface it's a good trackpad okay let's take a look at the internals it's a fast Drive PM 9 6 1 user replaceable the Wi-Fi card looks to be built on board but it can run the Intel 1865 so if you want a good Wi-Fi card I'd go with that one the battery is 52 watts it's smaller than before the previous generation had a 60 watt battery but remember it's a smaller chassis you kind of expect it to have a smaller battery as well but the good thing is though the battery life is still really really good I'm getting around 11 hours of battery life on this thing with the screen of 215 it's alright the speakers they're mounted on the side so they're positioned reasonably well I prefer them to be kind of on the keyboard facing up but this is a decent location it does have new software but I feel like the actual audio quality and clarity sounds pretty much exactly the same as a previous generation which is good but not great the coil whines so people that are interested whether or not this thing has coil line I have one unit it's reviewing it so the this unit did not have it but the responsible thing for me to say is that I can't tell yet I feel like I would need hundreds of XPS 13 to be able to tell you whether or not this thing has an issue or not but this particular unit did not have it overall great laptop I think that Dell did a really good job this year and honestly there's so little to dislike about this thing but there's one thing I want to get off my chest this was a redesign they had an opportunity to make something completely brand new in aesthetics and in appearance and they went with something that is just it feels too familiar to the old one so the old one was a good design but if you didn't know that this was a new version and you had the black version particularly like the black and silver version of this you wouldn't be able to tell immediately that was a new version there was a new updated version of the XPS 13 because it looks so similar it is thinner smaller lighter all that stuff but I mean you could have done something crazy Dell you could have made something like completely fresh now I know Dells more conservative company they're kind of like business oriented enterprise oriented so I get it but me personally I would love to see something just completely different visual but it's a fantastic product if you're looking for a thin and light laptop this thing should be near the top of the list okay hope you guys enjoyed this video thumbs be liked it subs you loved it see you guys next time
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