Dell XPS 13 Plus 9320 Laptop Review - The XPS 13 now has a Touch Bar

[Redaktion]

The XPS 13 has been a very good subnotebook for years and Dell now offers two versions, which are not only different in terms of CPU selection. How does the new XPS 13 Plus with the 4K panel, frameless touchpad and completely new keyboard including touch bar perform in our review?

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-XPS-13-Plus-9320-Laptop-Review-The-XPS-13-now-has-a-Touch-Bar.635773.0.html

[LL]

Touch bar another gimmick to justify more costs. Even with less information than a button.

[Lorry]

I imagine a combination of "4K display + Intel P-series chip + tiny 55Wh battery" is absolutely devastating for battery life. Using at 300nits brightness with ~10 different apps open, we're probably looking at 3h at best.

While the current 13" MacBook Pro gets over 10h on the same settings..... Oh how low the once-popular XPS series have fallen.

[Steve Schardein]

For what it's worth, I have owned an XPS 13 Plus (FHD+, i5) and I reliably achieve 8+ hours on a charge with many (dozens of) browser tabs open.

It's a pretty terrific laptop overall if you ask me.

[Russell]

For what it's worth, I have owned an XPS 13 Plus (FHD+, i5) and I reliably achieve 8+ hours on a charge with many (dozens of) browser tabs open.

It's a pretty terrific laptop overall if you ask me.

People try to be happy with what they got so as not to feel stupid over paying dell tax and intel tax.
Even when you could have something faster, with better battery life at a lower price, maybe even a better screen.

The question was never if it were a good laptop, but how it compares to other laptops and if it's giving you the worth for what you pay for.

A tigerlake i3 is always gonna be good enough and it's much better in everything compared to a kabylake i7.
So if you're a casual user, if you put it in a pretty laptop and say it's good enough, then of course it is. They could even re label it as i7 again to make you feel comfortable about the decision to purchase it.



But it doesn't change the fact that you could've gotten something much better at the same price point, if you actually cared.

Tech reviews are actually for people who care, not the one's who're apparently content with anything they 'believe' is good enough.

[Lorry]

@Steve Schardein

It probably does, but 2K (FHD) doesn't really cut it for me because of how grainy and rough the text looks in low resolution. I'd consider 2.5K to be the bare minimum for 13-15" size displays, and a good compromise between font clarity and battery life.

It's a shame the XPS lineup abandoned QHD resolution a decade ago.

[Omid]

7 years after invention of touch bar by apple and almost 2 years after apple realized it was a gimmick and stupid design in general, the pc world now has a new laptop they brag about with touch bar, hilarious 😆

[Earthrise]

but 2K (FHD) doesn't really cut it for me because of how grainy and rough the text looks in low resolution.

So you think that 4K at 27" also looks grainy and rough, since it has even less PPI than FHD+ at 13.4". What a nonsense.

[Lorry]

So you think that 4K at 27" also looks grainy and rough, since it has even less PPI than FHD+ at 13.4". What a nonsense.

You're not staring at a monitor with your nose up to the display like you often do with laptops.

Many of us here including myself have been using HiDPI on laptops for over 10 years, even before Apple came out with Retina. Today that FHD "base" option mostly exists to balloon prices of higher-resolution display options. If it weren't for that marketing strategy, FHD would be long gone, as it should be.

[rubenLP]

I personally prefer FHD. I have a 4K laptop and a FHD and there is no grainy issue in any but the 4k has very tiny text and icons and consume a lot of battery

So you think that 4K at 27" also looks grainy and rough, since it has even less PPI than FHD+ at 13.4". What a nonsense.

You're not staring at a monitor with your nose up to the display like you often do with laptops.

Many of us here including myself have been using HiDPI on laptops for over 10 years, even before Apple came out with Retina. Today that FHD "base" option mostly exists to balloon prices of higher-resolution display options. If it weren't for that marketing strategy, FHD would be long gone, as it should be.

[Jmsy]

I had the 1280p version with 32gb of ram.

 I had to return it because it throttled to 0.4ghz constantly. This happened during initial setup and I could reproduce it by opening  Word, PowerPoint and Spotify at the same time. From reading various forums,
this is a common issue.   It's too bad because I loved the design.

[Wow]

I don't know how they're able to make a worse intel macbook

[Alejo]

"In addition to two FHD models with and without touchscreen (the non-touch unit also has a glass layer and there is no matte option)"

I'm confused you just posted another review of the entey level model with entry levem display and it is matte. Does the review require updating?

[J A]

I cannot believe anyone wants an invisible touchpad. Also anyone complaining about text being rough on anything over 1920x1080 is, quite simply, whining. I DO NOT WANT THAT MANY PIXELS ON A SCREEN SMALLER THAN 17"-19". Then you just have to scale everything up 150% to make it readable instead of just reading stuff at a normal resolution. Still very happy with that resolution on a 24" or even 27" monitor; surely everything would appear to be made of individual pixels when you only have 2 MILLION of them. You must think I'm just over playing with Duplos.

[Abc]

Also anyone complaining about text being rough on anything over 1920x1080 is, quite simply, whining. I DO NOT WANT THAT MANY PIXELS ON A SCREEN SMALLER THAN 17"-19". Then you just have to scale everything up 150% to make it readable instead of just reading stuff at a normal resolution. Still very happy with that resolution on a 24" or even 27" monitor; surely everything would appear to be made of individual pixels when you only have 2 MILLION of them. You must think I'm just over playing with Duplos.

But if you're scaling it back to 1080p levels anyway, why have the GPU do the extra work to compute them and have the screen waste extra energy to display them? Just so you can claim 'my 4k display is more gorgious than your 1080p?' This is assuming all apps scales nicely, and I know a lot of legacy apps don't.

People should find whatever is satisfactory to themselves. There is no need for you to tell someone they are wrong about what suits them. If your eye sight is above average and you're not satisfied with 1080p on a 13 inch screen, then buy the 4k for yourself and no need to tell the internet about it.