Gadgetory

hey guys and welcome back to hardware unbox bit of a change of scenery here I've just moved house in my new set isn't quite ready for you so win my office too now and we're gonna be taking a look at the brand new Dell XPS 13 you might not be able to tell from the outside but this version of the XPS 13 is actually upgraded compared to the model that launched towards the end of last year only in one single way though and that's the move to new Intel eighth generation KB like our processors even though this is just a simple CPU swap it's a pretty big upgrade for the XPS 13 considering the performance difference between the dual core cabinet processors used previously and these new quad core parts we're saying now some testing I did for tech spot a few months ago showed performance gains near 50% but of course we'll explore that more later in the video to start with I wanted to discuss the design of the XPS 13 which has changed very little in the nearly three years since the first Broadwell model launched we have seen some minor additions over time like the inclusion of a fingerprint sensor for Windows hello and the USB C port but the basic design with its ultra slim bezels has remained pretty much the same I have seen some reviews floating around that suggests the design of the XPS 13 is a bit stale and needs to be updated to remain relevant up against other modern ultra portables why do agree the design is a bit stale actually don't think it needs to be updated when the XPS 13 first launched in early 2015 the design was quite far ahead of its competitors delivering a massive display in a smaller than normal chassis a couple of years later and the XPS 13 design isn't the standout it once was thanks to other OEMs you know lifting the head game but it's still pretty good and hold its own against the competition in fact we're still not at the point where all other laptops are maximizing the screen real estate and minimizing bezels though you know we are I guess slowly getting there if you haven't seen an XPS 13 before the build uses aluminium on the lid and underside Plus soft touch carbon-fiber around keyboard and trackpad the two-tone design looks fantastic and it feels great to hold when shut thanks to the matte metal finish the keyboard Paris does accumulate fingerprints rather easily though it feels great when typing devil isn't super concerned with making the slimmest all lightest laptop which is why the XPS 13 sits up to 15 millimeters thick and 1.3 kilograms for the touchscreen model this is a good choice anyway as allows them to cram in a large 60 watt hour battery and keep the overall footprint small the Xpress 13 is still one of the smallest 13-inch notebooks you can buy the slim bezel experience with the XPS 13 it's still great though you will have to put up with the less than ideal webcam placement you also have to choose between the 1080p non-touch and qhd+ touchscreen display options which is the same as early models the high resolution display comes with a battery life hit though obviously it's a fair bit sharper and the keyboard and trackpad remain unchanged both of which offer a decent experience some of the modifier keys are a little smaller than other keyboards though this doesn't hurt usability too much and the feel to each key is fairly average these days for a laptop the track that is excellent though and you won't have any problems using it guess what the i/o it's also unchanged in a surprise to no one two USB 3.0 ports on either side Thunderbolt 3 port with just 2 PCIe lanes and a 3.5 ml headphone jack and an SD card slot unfortunately the XPS 13 still charges using a proprietary connector rather than USB see rather see an additional USB C port add to the device for charging which could double as handy connectivity when not being used for charging now my review unit came with the 13.3 1080p IPS LCD which is the base option available I prefer this over the qhd+ model even though the higher res model comes with a touchscreen mostly because 1080p is perfectly fine for a 13.3 inch display and you can eke out extra battery life at a lower resolution brightness from this display is excellent exceeding 415 it's at peak when viewing an all-white screen viewing angles are also very good and use a matte finish rather than gloss helps to reduce reflections and improve visibility however while the display does look pretty good from a casual standpoint it's not the best for creative professionals that demand color accuracy the XPS 13 implements dynamic contrast which adjusts brightness and other parameters on the fly in an attempt to improve the experience as far as I can tell it's impossible to disable this setting and that leads to poor color performance as a result the XPS 13 display is poor from a color calibration standpoint the display is tinted blue with an average temperature around 70 100 K and grayscale performance is weak but it gets worse when looking at saturation in color checker results which pushed past a Delta II average of 8.0 this is very inaccurate and unsuitable for those who want to create images or other things accurately with that said it is hard to accurately measure the performance of a display that dynamically adjusts as the composition of an image can affect how each individual color is displayed for my test i measured its steady-state color performance with solid colors though in practice performance could be better or it could be worse who who really knows with dynamic contrast let's move on to talk about the big change in the Dell XPS 13 the upgrade from seventh gen to 8th gen u series processors from Intel unlike previous generations which only brought minor improvements over their predecessors Intel's 8th gen parts managed to grow from 2 cores and 4 threads to 4 cores and 8 threads in the same 15 watt TDP and was a relatively similar power consumption Intel's even managed to increase peak clock speeds with 8th gen parts looking at the core i7 8550 you compared to the core i7 7500 u single and dual-core turbo speeds jump to 4.0 gigahertz from 3.5 gigahertz while the 8550 you can hit 3.7 gigahertz on all four cores however base clocks do drop from 2.7 to 1.8 gigahertz and during sustained workloads and all cores you'll see lower clock speeds on 8th gen starting with a look at shorter workloads which are what most people do on an ultraportable the core i7 8550 you in my Dell PS 13 review unit stuck sup well in some cases like the Excel Monte Carlo workload the 8th gen cabe you like our part is twice as fast as the last gen KB like CPUs other times like in MATLAB gains are a more modest of 30% though that's still pretty impressive and you can also see strong improvements in PC mark which feature a collection of short and longer workloads however there are some interesting things to note here the Dell XPS 13 does not always reach the same levels of performance as the inspire on 13 7021 and I've long product name but I did look at that laptop a couple of months ago and the Express 13 Falls up to 23% behind in some cases like WinRAR this appears to be due to a combination of less time at maximum boosts clocks and around 15% less memory bandwidth and some of these benchmarks are fairly memory heavy the good news is that the XPS 13 compensates for this through excellent sustained performance in 3d rendering workloads like Cinebench and video rendering like x264 encoding the XPS 13 was as much as 17 percent faster than the inspire on 13 7000 which uses the exact same cpu the I 78550 you also holds a commanding lead against the last gen 7500 you in Cinebench multi-threaded it's 82% faster while you also get single threaded gains of 16% thanks to those higher clock speeds the KB like our CPU is also capable of rendering x264 video around 62% faster which is an enormous gain in a mobile form factor graphics performance has also improved though it's not by nearly as much as CPU performance in the heaviest graphics workloads cable a car sees gains in the 5 to 10% range though in more CPU demanding games or less intensive titles the CPU performance does improve things a bit more than that for storage the XPS 13 uses a samsung PM 961 SSD at least in my review 'not with the 256 gig drive this is a fairly common drive for high and ultra portables like this so it's performance isn't surprising excellent sequential reads and writes that exceed one gigabyte per second with very solid round performance well it's not going to blow you away considering its popularity amongst the Ultra portables but it is very fast for everyday usage it's also worth mentioning battery life because this is one of the outstanding aspects of the XPS 13 that's 60 what our cell manages to us an incredibly long time for an ultra portable topping the charts in most situations so you definitely won't be disappointed with the Batchelor life especially consider you get that extra boost to performance thanks to the 8th gen parts so the refreshed XPS 13 won't blow you away with new features or a revamp design but it does improve in one critical area and that's the performance the inclusion of new hg n intel kami like our processors does see an enormous gain on its predecessors producing performance up to twice as fast as the an equivalent seventh gen CPU and it gets better if you're jumping from say an original Broadwell XPS 13 with performance more than 2.4 times greater at times pricing for the XPS 13 remains the same as last year though at the moment only some XPS 13 models come with the 8th gen cpus if you're after the base $800 model all the thousand dollar model you'll be looking at 7th gen part so I'd avoid those for now the variant I review costs 1149 which is OK for a core i7 8 gig of ram and a 256 gig SSD but it's not the cheapest out there and Aussies can expect to pay around 1,800 dollars for this model when it becomes available there right now you can grab a core i5 equivalent for $1,600 which is a pretty reasonable price considering the design still holds up well and the XPS 13 is one of the most portable 13-inch devices on the market I'd still recommend it for those wanting a pure laptop if you want a 360 degree hinge or other fancy features though the familiar design of the XPS 13 won't be for you that's the beauty of having so many great choices on the market these days anyway that's it for this review of the new Dell XPS 13 there's links in the description below if you're interested in checking out the current prices of this laptop through Amazon and be back very soon to finally take a look at those rising mobile ap use that many of you guys have been asking ambi has finally hooked me up there so check back soon on the channel for that until then I'll catch you next time you