It wasn’t too long ago that your laptop couldn’t even last the length of a single film when away from the mains. Now Dell’s latest flagship XPS 13 thin-and-light can marathon an entire season of 24 – and still have enough juice to find out what happens to Jack Bauer in the next.
Due at the end of September, the new XPS 13 will use Intel’s just-revealed Core Ultra 200V chips, previously known to tech insiders by their Lunar Lake codename. They promise more CPU muscle, better AI performance from an uprated NPU, and the most powerful integrated graphics of any ultraportable processor. But it’s the efficiency gains that should help it stave off rivals Qualcomm and AMD.
Dell’s battery tests saw the XPS 13 last an impressive 26 hours of Netflix streaming at 1080p, with brightness locked at 150 nits. That’s up from 18 on the previous gen model, and much more in line with what Snapdragon and AMD Strix Point-powered laptops can manage.
That test was done using a laptop with a Full HD resolution screen; there will also be QHD+ LCD and 2880×1880 OLED panels on offer through Dell’s online configurator once the model launches.
The refreshed XPS 13 is otherwise identical to the Snapdragon X Elite version of the machine launched earlier this year, right down to the dimensions. (I happen to be writing this story on one – stand by for a full review of the Qualcomm-powered model). That means the illuminated row of function keys returns – for better and worse – and connectivity stays the same with two Thunderbolt 4-friendly USB-C ports. It’ll be available in the same Graphite and Platinum colours, too.
There’ll be three choices of Intel’s new silicon, each with eight CPU cores, eight CPU threads and support for up to 32GB of RAM. Expect up to eight GPU cores depending on the spec. It won’t just be Dell, either – pretty much every ultraportable laptop maker will announce their own Core Ultra Series 2 machines in the coming week or so.
The new XPS 13 will soon be available to pre-order directly from Dell.