My review of the XPS 13 - 2018 (9370)

Gealach · July 31, 2018

After much consideration and many hours watching many reviews of laptops, I decided to upgrade from my pre-owned 2012 Razer Blade. My choice ended up being the XPS 13, because I'd heard of issues with the hinge of EU/UK models of the Spectre X360 and was given a good deal on an XPS 13.

My model is a 1080p, i7 8550U (Quad core hyperthreaded, 8th gen mobile processor) 16GB RAM, 512GB PCIE SSD, with a 54 wH battery.

For this review I'm gonna cover all the stuff that Linus didn't in the LTT review. This is gonna include software specific stuff, so if you're gonna install a clean version o

The first thing out of the box that you notice is the beautiful chassis. It feels similar to a MacBook, but slightly rougher. It's not sandpaper by any means, but it gives it an extra bit of grip to the machine when you're picking it up. Further aiding the non-slip-grip of the laptop is the interior. I'm not sure what the hell this stuff is, but it feels like latex. It's sticky and warm (in the least gross way imaginable) such that running a finger along it provides more resistance than running a finger across skin, but not so much that it's a pain. I much prefer resting my wrists on this laptop than on my desk at work. I'm not sure how it would hold up for gaming however, as I've been using a mechanical keyboard for that.

The first time I touched the power button however, I was disappointed. It feels sticky and I worry constantly that it's gonna get stuck. The button itself houses a Windows Hello compatible fingerprint sensor. It's worse than Apples Touch ID Gen 1, and Touch ID Gen 2 runs circles around it, with the XPSs fingerprint sensor struggling to validate my fingerprint the first time a large portion of the time. In fairness, I have really curvy fingers, so part of the blame likely lies with my hand placement, and the sensor is very rapid. I'd estimate that in 97% of cases it's quicker than typing my password.

Dell really fucked up Windows 10, specifically their implementation. Wireless card power options locked down (which is a pain with Killer wifi) requiring a registry edit, not aided by the non-replaceable wireless card. The Dell bloatware crap is pretty easy to uninstall and is kept to a minimum for 2018, but I would've liked to see a clean install. The exception here is with the fantastic "Dell mobile connect" app which links directly to your phone and allows you to make and receive calls and texts. Wonderful. With an android device, you can also do screen sharing and control the device from your laptop, but this feature is missing from iOS (a surprise to nobody).

The sound drivers for this machine are shite. None of my headphones would work until I disabled all three of Dells audio solutions from starting on startup (in task manager) and restarted the damn thing. Such a strange quirk but that was my solution.

The Thunderbolt 3 ports are both 4x PCIe compatible, and provide lightning fast 40GB/s transfer speeds, while the USB C port on the other side is standard and works as expected. I had trouble getting both of the thunderbolt ports to behave with thunderbolt devices, but all three ports are capable of charging the device.

Speaking of battery, at first mine only lasted three hours on a full charge using the internet. Subsequent charges have perhaps "broken in" the battery, which is sitting at 53 wHs effective size. There have been reports of as low as 42 wH batteries being shipped with XPS laptops, but for me at least this is not the case. Charging can take up to 2 hours but once you're charged, you can easily get 9 hours out of this thing in word and chrome if you adjust some settings.

As for fans, they don't really kick in until roughly 60 degrees, which I believe to be acceptable. I live in a cold country, so my thermals are a bit better than usual, but I maxed out at 76C while gaming on the iGPU. I'm impressed.

Speaking of iGPU gaming, it sucks. But it's bearable. Fortnite can hit a solid 60fps at 480p (no I'm not kidding please send help) while League of Legends can run at high at 120fps. I've not gotten around to testing other games on this iGPU, but I'm sure very few of you will actually use the iGPU for anything more than 3D web pages, which can actually tax this poor laptop REALLY hard, so be careful what you're looking at on this thing.

Finally, I'll mention the BOS. You can disable Dells auto colour thing here and I would immediately recommend that to anyone who values their sanity. Honestly this setting is dumb. Turn it off and forget about it. It's pants. The rest of the BIOS is standard laptop stuff.

All in all, there are some kinks to iron out with this machine, but you get a beautiful laptop with a stunning (and bright!) display, excellent battery life and a superb keyboard. It's not the "MacBook" of PCs, and not in a bad way, but I would expect for a £1500 machine that those wrinkles would've been removed (or at least hidden...)

I like it, but the X360 is less pricey for a 4K touch model and there are machines with higher performance. For me, the blazing fast CPU, strong battery life and amazing keyboard make up for the shortcomings of this computer, and I would recommend it to anyone looking to spend this kind of money on a laptop (or even a desktop for some workloads)

Edited August 1, 2018 by Gealach
Watt-hours not Kilowatt hours lmao