Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 (9310) Review

With cutting-edge components and a sleek, sturdy chassis available in multiple color options and screen resolutions, the late-2020 reboot of Dell's XPS 13 2-in-1 (starts at $1,099; $1,499 as tested) sets the bar for premium convertible notebooks. Intel's latest "Tiger Lake" CPU and graphics options make the XPS 13 2-in-1 a top performer in its class. The battery life is impressive, as well. The starting configuration is a bit underpowered, but the premium for the well-equipped version reviewed here is reasonable. The system snags our Editors' Choice award for best premium 2-in-1. 

A Standout in a Crowded Field

The market for premium Windows laptops is ultracompetitive, with Dell, Asus, Acer, HP, Lenovo, and other companies updating their flagship models frequently—sometimes more than once per year. The XPS 13 2-in-1 is up against similarly excellent convertible laptops with 13-inch screens, among them the HP Spectre x360 13 and the Asus ZenBook Flip S. Several of these have been updated with Intel's 11th Generation Tiger Lake Core processors or their AMD equivalents, the Ryzen 4000 series. 

I'll get into why the XPS 13 2-in-1 rises to the top of this field below, but the first question shoppers should consider is whether they need a convertible laptop or the also-excellent conventional clamshell-style XPS 13. The main difference between the two is the 2-in-1's 360-degree rotating hinge. This lets you use it not only as a laptop, but it also allows you to prop it up on your desk like an easel or tent (with the keyboard folded underneath or behind the screen), or use the system in your lap as a tablet. In these modes, your main interaction with the laptop is via its touch screen. Fingers or Dell's optional digital stylus can be used to write, draw, and manipulate onscreen elements, while the pop-up virtual keyboard built into Windows 10 serves as a means of typing. 

Not everyone needs this additional flexibility, especially seeing as the clamshell-style XPS 13 also offers a touch screen. But neither does the flexibility require many sacrifices. Both models share similar styling and physical dimensions. They're made from machined aluminum with carbon- and glass-fiber accents, and both offer sleek silver exteriors and two refined interior color options: black or white palm rests with matching keyboards. 

Both are also quite compact, fitting their 13-inch displays into an area that was once reserved for laptops with 11-inch or smaller screens. The XPS 13 2-in-1 weighs 2.9 pounds and measures 0.56 by 11.7 by 8.2 inches (HWD). The XPS 13 is slightly lighter and shallower, since it doesn't need to incorporate the extra hardware for a 360-degree hinge, but the differences are negligible—it weighs 2.8 pounds and is 7.9 inches deep. 

The XPS 13 2-in-1's dimensions are comparable to those of its HP archrival, the Spectre x360 13 (0.57 inch thick, 2.9 pounds). The Dell has a 13.4-inch display (an unusual size) in an uncommon 16:10 widescreen aspect ratio, instead of the more typical 16:9. This gives it a slight advantage over similarly sized convertible notebooks with 16:9 screens that measure 13.3 inches on the diagonal. You're not likely to immediately notice that tenth of an inch, but it does pack in nearly one million additional pixels, and its taller size can display a bit more of a vertical document like a web page. 

A Rigid and Compact Body

The XPS 13 2-in-1's compact size doesn't leave it feeling flimsy. At just under the three-pound limit that typically defines the ultraportable laptop category, it feels solid, though not bulky. It's also quite well engineered. You can open the lid with one hand, instead of needing both pry open stiff hinges. Whether you're tapping on the touch screen or on the very comfortable touchpad, the laptop responds instantly. The screen bounces very little, and the touchpad doesn't suffer from the sluggishness or cheap-feeling clicks that are common on many Windows laptops.

With an 85% screen-to-body ratio, the XPS 13 2-in-1 is also enviably modern-looking. The borders around the display are vanishingly small, unlike those of the Apple MacBook Pro, which has a lower screen-to-body ratio that results in additional space around the keyboard and display.

The convertible's screen is gorgeous. On our review unit, it offers a native resolution of 1,920 by 1,200 pixels, which is a bit higher than full HD (1,920 by 1,080) because of the panel's 16:10 aspect ratio. Picture quality seems better than most other full HD screens I've used, with more vivid colors and a sky-high rated contrast ratio of 1,800:1. Brightness is rated at 500 nits, outshining the 300 to 400 nits of many competing laptops, and that makes for easy viewing in brightly lit rooms (though not outdoors). 

When you're viewing the screen up close, however, text can be a bit pixelated, which is common to all full HD displays. Dell does offer a 4K (3,840-by-2,400-pixel) screen option, which should make everything appear much crisper, though lighting four times as many pixels will take a toll on battery life. The 4K screen adds support for the DCI-P3 color gamut, which could result in more brilliant and faithful color reproduction, but it has a slightly lower 1,500:1 contrast ratio. 

I see only two drawbacks to the XPS 13 2-in-1's physical design. The most significant is the shallow keyboard. Both the clamshell and convertible XPS 13 models have used Dell's unique magnetic keyboard switches for the past few generations. Compared with Apple's old butterfly-style switches, which have almost no travel distance, Dell's implementation is slightly more comfortable. But now that Apple has switched to its Magic Keyboard design, with much greater travel, the XPS 13 2-in-1 offers a less comfortable typing experience by comparison. Keys are sturdy enough, but they travel just 0.7mm, and the overall sensation is more akin to tapping than typing. 

The XPS 13 2-in-1's rather anemic port selection is also a drawback, but it's less problematic than it once was. A headphone jack and two USB-C ports, each with Thunderbolt support, are all you get. The Spectre x360 13, by contrast, offers a USB Type-A port for additional peripheral compatibility. More and more of the latest peripherals, such as external hard drives, now use USB-C, though, so the lack of ports is only an issue if you have lots of legacy devices to plug in.

Dell also thoughtfully includes a microSD card reader on the left edge for easy storage expansion or transferring footage from a camera.

Tiny Webcam, Rich Audio

The XPS 13 2-in-1 shares the XPS 13's innovative webcam, which manages to fit IR sensors (for face-recognition logins via Windows Hello) as well as the 720p camera itself into the tiny border above the screen. Another password-free means of logging into your Windows 10 account is via the power button, which doubles as a fingerprint reader. The latter occasionally failed to successfully log me in, and the rectangular shape of the button made it difficult for my large fingertips to register their prints. Once I got used to placing my finger in the right spot, though, the reader's accuracy improved.

I found the webcam quality to be above average in a well-lit room, though it suffers from slightly distracting noise and pixelation in dimly lit conditions. Unfortunately, this is true of nearly all laptop webcams. 

The Dell's audio quality is rich and full, but the placement of its stereo speakers on the bottom of the laptop makes sound a bit muffled in laptop or tablet mode. There are six separate grilles along the left and right edges of the laptop's base. Four of them are used for air intake, while two deliver audio. When you're propping the XPS 13 2-in-1 as a tent (with the speakers facing you) or using it as an easel (with the speakers facing upward), the audio quality is better.

Wireless connectivity includes a Killer Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) module built into the Intel chipset, as well as Bluetooth 5.1. Dell backs the XPS 13 2-in-1 with a one-year hardware warranty, a period that can be extended up to four years for an additional charge. 

Testing the XPS 2-in-1: 'Tiger Lake' and Iris Xe on the Bench

The entry-level version of the XPS 13 2-in-1 includes an Intel Core i3 with UHD integrated graphics, 8GB of memory, and a 256GB solid-state drive. A Core i3-powered laptop that costs more than $1,000 is hard to recommend, but fortunately the price doesn't get out of hand as you add components that are more fitting for the money. Our review unit includes a Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD for a reasonable $1,499. As with the latest XPS 13, all of the XPS 13 2-in-1's processor options come from Intel's latest "Tiger Lake" family. While the Core i3 version uses UHD graphics, our Core i7-1165G7 unit features more powerful Iris Xe graphics silicon. The CPU also comes with four cores, eight threads, and a maximum boost clock speed of 4.7GHz. 

Coupled with the 16GB of RAM, this Core i7 and Iris Xe setup should provide plenty of computing power for most of the tasks that XPS 13 2-in-1 users are likely to do. I compared the laptop's performance in our benchmark tests with a few comparable machines whose specs are listed in the chart below. Most are 2-in-1 hybrid or convertible designs priced in the $1,500 range. 

The one exception is the HP Envy x360 13, which is a step down from the Spectre x360 13 and is priced just under $700. I chose this machine in part because we haven't yet tested the latest "Tiger Lake" version of the Spectre, and in part because the Envy comes with an AMD Ryzen CPU instead of the more common Intel Core ones. The latest Ryzen 5 laptops have been rivaling the performance of more expensive Core i7-powered ones on some tasks. (See how we test laptops.)

That turned out to be the case with the XPS 13 2-in-1, whose performance in the PCMark 10 productivity benchmark proved slightly inferior to that of the Envy x360. The margin is not significant, but the test is important, because it measures web browsing, word processing, and light multimedia editing, all of which are the XPS 13 2-in-1’s bread and butter. 

Meanwhile, all of the laptops' speedy SSD boot drives performed roughly equally in our PCMark 8 storage subtest. (That is typical of late-model SSD-equipped laptops.)

In workflows that are more demanding, such as rendering a 3D image using the CPU, the XPS 13 2-in-1 is slightly superior. It scored 890 to the Envy's 841 in the Cinebench rendering test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads.

Cinebench is often a good predictor of our Handbrake video-editing trial, another tough, threaded workout that's highly CPU-dependent and scales well with cores and threads. In it, we put a stopwatch on test systems as they transcode a standard 12-minute clip of 4K video to a 1080p MP4 file. It's a timed test, and lower results are better. In this case, the Dell convertible was slightly slower than the Envy x360 and the Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Yoga, but not meaningfully so. 

We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark. Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image. We time each operation and, at the end, add up the total execution time. As with Handbrake, lower times are better here. The Photoshop test stresses the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can also take advantage of most GPUs to speed up the process of applying filters, so systems with powerful graphics chips or cards may see a boost.

The XPS 13 2-in-1 turned in an exceptional score in the Photoshop test, taking a bit more than two minutes to complete all of the filters and effects. This is not far behind the Asus' time, but significantly faster than any of the other three competitors. 

Decent Gaming Performance

Integrated graphics processing has improved by leaps and bounds in the past two years, as Intel and AMD have significantly upgraded the capabilities of their Iris and Radeon silicon. In our 3DMark and Superposition gaming graphics tests, the laptops equipped with Iris Xe and Radeon graphics significantly outperform the ThinkPad X13 Yoga and Microsoft Surface Pro 7, which are both equipped with older UHD or Iris Plus Graphics. 

3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike, which are suited to different types of systems. Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and made for high-end PCs to strut their stuff. The results are proprietary scores. Unigine's Superposition benchmark also pans through a detailed 3D scene, using a different rendering engine for a second opinion on each PC's graphical prowess.

The XPS 13 2-in-1 is the clear winner in both of these tests, but the real achievement is not the small gains over the ZenBook Flip S or the Envy x360 13 but the nearly three-fold improvement over the Iris Plus and UHD systems. Hardcore gamers won't find much of interest here, since even a score of 16 frames per second in Superposition's 1080p preset is hardly representative of silky-smooth game play. But if you're a casual gamer content to play at lower resolutions and graphics detail settings, the XPS 13 2-in-1 could serve as a capable platform. 

Class-Leading Battery Life

Lasting for more than 14 hours of video playback at 50 percent screen brightness, the XPS 13 2-in-1 offers a few extra hours of unplugged time compared with its rivals. This is an excellent result that suggests that the laptop will last through a full day of light work without visiting a power outlet. The Dell's 51-watt-hour battery charges quickly, taking a bit more than an hour to go from a 5% to a 90% charge in my testing. 

While 14 hours is impressive, it's no longer in the vanguard. Several ultraportable laptops we've tested recently have topped 24 hours of battery life, including the Apple MacBook Air and the Lenovo Flex 5G. 

Still Pole Position Among Convertibles

A few generations ago, the XPS 13 was nearly flawless, earning a five-star review. Both the 2-in-1 and the clamshell versions remain exceptional, offering class-leading performance and battery life in a sleek, compact, and sturdy chassis. But competitors have closed the gap significantly, even with models that cost less. This is especially true when it comes to performance, as is clear from the Ryzen-equipped Envy x360 13. The Dell's shallow key travel is also more of an issue than it once was, now that Apple has implemented a more comfortable keyboard design in its MacBook lineup. 

Nevertheless, though it's not perfect, the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 is the best premium convertible you can buy. It easily earns our Editors' Choice award.

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