During CES 2022 Dell announced the brand new XPS 13 Plus, which overhauls the design and it looks pretty slick. They've confirmed that Ubuntu 20.04 will also still be a supported option, on their Developer Edition.
"Our most powerful XPS 13 was redesigned from the ground up to be our highest-performing flagship ever, so users can do everything they love faster. New modern and simplified interiors are beautiful and provide a seamless touch experience for customers. Stunning displays and enhanced audio bring your content to life. Crafted of machined aluminum and glass in Platinum or Graphite." — Dell.
It's small, thin and light and with the redesign it's about the same size as before with a few major differences.
The one you can notice right away is the new capacitive touch bar above the keyboard, allowing you to switch between function and media keys. It looks fantastic but, I'm always a little wary of these special touch bars. It's not as fancy as the one on the MacBook, which would hopefully mean it would have less problems. At least the new edge-to-edge keyboard looks like it has decent spacing for comfortable typing.
They've also stretched-out the fans to the outer-edges, which they say gives "up to 55%" more airflow allowing it to be more powerful while also keeping the size and without increasing noise or temperature.
The screen sounds rather nice too. With it you're getting a 13.4-inch 16:10 aspect ratio OLED "InfinityEdge" display, they say it gives "7.4 million pixels are individually lit, turning off completely for black, so dark areas are true black or perfect black, so content comes alive with breathtaking detail especially in dark areas".
Specifications depend on what model you go for, options include:
| Processor |
12th Generation Intel Core i5-1240P (12MB Cache, up to 4.4 GHz, 12 cores) |
| RAM |
8GB LPDDR5 128-bit Dual Channel at 5200MHz |
| Storage |
256GB PCIe 3 x4 SSD, 512GB PCIe 4 x4 SSD, |
| Graphics | Intel Iris Xe |
| Display |
13.4-inch 4K UHD+ (3840x2400) InfinityEdge touch display; DisplayHDR 400, 500-nit, 90% |
| Battery |
55WHr battery (built-in) |
| Ports |
2x ThunderboltTM 4 (USB Type-CTM) with DisplayPort and Power Delivery |
| Wireless |
Intel ® KillerTM Wi-Fi 6E 1675 (AX211) (2x2) + Bluetooth 5.2 |
| Size & Weight |
Height: 15.28 (0.60”) x Width: 295.3mm (11.63”) x Depth: 199.04mm (7.84”) |
When will it be available? That's not entirely clear, they say sometime worldwide this "Spring" starting at $1,199.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Apple removed it from latest hardware and they admit to mistakes… never.
pleasereadthemanual Jan 7, 2022
I do have a few old Dell laptops from a decade ago that I like, though; the keyboards are much better.
It's a great laptop - probably only challenged by Dell's own business Latitude range. I guess I haven't used many non-Dell laptops in the last two or three years though, so take that glowing report with a pinch of salt.
1. with such a low screen to keyboard ratio, don't your hands/knuckles get in the way of the screen when gaming ( okay, this maybe not a gaming machine but you could still play a lot of games on this thing outside of AAA ). Like, aren't your hands constantly in the way of the lower part of the screen when typing in any case ? Or is it just a perspective thing.
2. Dumb question, but it's been irking me.. Semi-unrelated but are the threads on the new Alder lake CPU's all the same power across the board ? Some of these new Alder lake CPU's are shipping with 8P + 8E (16 Cores) / 24 threads .. So are the threads on the E cores slower or are they separate and effectively the same as a traditional AMD CPU where there is just regular cores + regular threads and all threads are the same power. Would you get 24 full power threads or just lets say 12 full power on the 8 performance cores and 12 half power threads on the economy cores.
thx
Yes, it's a bit tedious. But no, I probably wouldn't change it, since the alternative would be (I suspect) super-ugly.
I'm on my second XPS13 (2015 and 2020) and while I love them I'd warn people to stay away from this new one if it has the AX500 wireless chip in it. Bluetooth isn't working and the wifi drivers are extremely unstable.See, this strikes me as an example of the advantage of outfits like System76: They're actually going to test the setup on Linux and not use hardware that plays badly with it.
Fakeman_Pretendname Jan 8, 2022
Seriously, what was wrong, in any way whatsoever, with having a touchpad for moving, scrolling, zooming and having two or three clickable buttons beneath it for left/right/middle click?
Have I just reached the age where anything I don't understand looks like "new-fangled rubbish"?
I thought the fairly new buttonless touchpads were a pain in the ****... but that's a whole new level of "What's even going on there?" Is it a touchpadless touchpad? Is it touchscreen & keyboard only? Does you need an external mouse to even use it, or is it somehow hidden? Does it light up to show you where it is, or is the entire frame of the laptop a touchpad... or do you just sort of guess where the touchpad is each time you use it?
Seriously, what was wrong, in any way whatsoever, with having a touchpad for moving, scrolling, zooming and having two or three clickable buttons beneath it for left/right/middle click?
Have I just reached the age where anything I don't understand looks like "new-fangled rubbish"?
The Verge noted this too. They said
Dell has outfitted the XPS 13 with what it calls a “haptic ForcePad.” As is the case with MacBook touchpads, this one doesn’t physically depress when you click; it just reproduces the sensation of depressing. I imagine there might be some learning curve to figuring out where you can and can’t click, though Dell thinks muscle memory will make that a non-issue.
I really, really don't like that. Anything that sacrifices the user experience for aesthetics can absolutely do one. What a stupid decision.
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