Dell XPS 13 9300 (2020) - Full Review with Pros and Cons

The XPS 13 is one of the most popular Windows ultrabooks in the market. Its Dell’s flagship 13” Laptop and the new XPS 13 2020 or the XPS 13 9300 is much refined and polished to make it one of the best laptops available.

Build & Design

Straight up, the new XPS 13 looks awesome with its super thin bezels and compat design. The aspect ratio of 16:10 and a very high screen to body ratio helps it to fit in a 13” display in a relatively compact body. The all magnesium exterior body makes it premium and sleek. The soft touch carbon-fibre interior is durable and one of the best laptop interiors in the business. Also Dell has finally included a one hand lifting hinge to further its good engineering. This sleek design with the 1.29 kg weight makes it a great travel companion.

Ports and I/O

This is the area where the XPS 13 has not much to offer with its 2 thunderbolt 3 ports, a headphone jack and a micro SD card slot which means you have to carry your dongles to get work done.

Maintenance

XPS devices are quite easy to maintain. The build quality is great and Dell’s customer care, support and offline service is one of the best. Talking about upgradations, only the SSD can be changed as the RAM is soldered on.

Input Devices

Keyboard

The keyboard is the new XPS is great with good travel, a good click, and has a great layout. The keyboard as last year is again one of the best in the laptop industry.

Touchpad

The trackpad is a touch sensor with windows precision drivers. The size is a little bigger than last year but it’s no MacBook. Their accuracy is on point with tactile but less noisy clicks.

Display

The display in the new XPS 13 is amazing as you would expect. There are options for 13.4” 1080p and 4k with or without touchscreen and all the options have HDR (High Dynamic Range) support. The 1080p model for example is highly colour accurate going up to 97% RGB and 72% AdobeRBG with 480nits of brightness. With its high screen to body ratio and super thin bezels it gives a very immersive and good visual experience.

Performance

The lineup starts with the 10th gen Intel core i3 with only 4 GB of RAM which is not recommended so this review will focus on the 10th gen core i5 and i7 models with 8 to 16 GB of RAM.

Both the quad core i5 and the hexa core i7 are cooled surprisingly well considering the size of the chassis of the laptop. Daily activities like browsing, watching videos or using Excel is a breeze. Heavy tasks like high quality photo editing or 4k Video editing are also handled pretty well with good render times.

The 13” version of the XPS line is not really aimed for gamers as the graphic duties are done by the integrated graphics. It can play e-sport titles like FIFA and CS:GO but it is not a gaming machine by any stretch of imagination.

Overall this Laptop is one of the best productivity oriented laptop and does performs the best among all the ultrabooks in the Industry.

Storage

The base model comes with 256 GB SSD and there are options of having 512 GB , 1TB and 2TB and all of them are plenty fast with no complains.

Speakers

The speakers on the XPS 13 are also a great improvement over the last year’s model as it includes 2 watt speakers. They are not MacBook good but they are close and way better than other Windows laptops. They are loud, bassy and have a good punch to the highs as well.

Battery Life

Battery life in the new XPS 13 is great carrying the previous years records. Its gets a solid 10 hours of battery life and can easily last a full working day with moderate usage on the 1080p model. It basically gets one of the best battery performance in the industry and considering its weight and compact body it can be a great travel companion.

Beautiful compact industrial design.
Amazing magnesium build with soft-touch carbon fiber interior
Improved 10th gen hexa-core Intel core i5 and i7 processors.
Great battery life
Great keyboard and touchpad
Great display with super thin bezels