Dell XPS 13 (9315) Review

For many years, Dell's flagship ultraportable, the XPS 13, has been one of our most recommended laptops. This new late-2022 edition—model 9315 (starts at $999; $1,249 as tested)—leaves us feeling surprisingly let down, even withdrawing the XPS 13's perennial Editors' Choice award. It's a more minimalist take on the classic design, even trimmer at just 0.55 inch thin and weighing 2.59 pounds. That's fine if portability is your top priority, but it brings marked concessions, chiefly in the laptop's limited power ceiling despite new 12th Generation Intel CPUs—yielding performance that trails its closest competitors—and the absence of the essential audio or headphone jack. The new XPS 13 is a quiet, power-efficient portable (and it comes with a 3.5mm jack adapter that plugs into a USB-C port), but the redesign doesn't keep pace with its nemesis, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10, which we've deemed the ultimate ultraportable in 2022.

Even Slimmer, For Better and For Worse

The XPS 13 arrives again just as we know it: a super-light and compact 13.4-inch system with a premium metal chassis. To draw a simple comparison, it's the Windows equivalent of Apple's MacBook Air, and hasn't changed a great deal over the years. Dell recently tinkered with the tried-and-true build with its XPS 13 Plus, which took a few swings at the traditional design. Not all of them were successful, but we appreciated the effort, and it's a cool-looking machine.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

The long-awaited XPS 13 model 9315 model returns to the classic elements we saw in last year's 9310 OLED model. That unit added a better processor and a spiffy OLED screen to the first 2020 edition but was otherwise the same build. That makes this one the first physically altered design we've seen in a couple of years, though not greatly altered.

The changes from the 9310 to 9315 model are small compared to those of the XPS 13 Plus, but they're noticeable—for instance, the disappearance of the famous white glass fiber palm rest. You have two color options, Umber (seen in our photos) and Sky, a lighter, more silvery option. The darker, grayish Umber isn't my personal favorite, but that's more subjective than anything—it looks classy, is fairly original, and will probably be well-liked by many shoppers.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

The other obvious change is to the physical dimensions, now coming in at 0.55 by 11.6 by 7.9 inches and 2.59 pounds. That's even trimmer than the already petite model 9310, which was 0.58 inch thin and weighs 2.8 pounds. This is a super-light, ultra-thin machine that is a perfect commute or travel companion and can fit in any briefcase or bag.

One casualty of the thinner profile? The headphone jack. Yes, like many smartphones before it (and more recently Microsoft's Surface Pro 9), this XPS ditches the 3.5mm audio jack, presumably assuming you have a Bluetooth wireless headset. As noted, there's a USB-C audio adapter in the box, but this is likely to be plenty divisive, particularly in a flagship system.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

To some extent I can understand Dell's logic; many buyers already own Bluetooth headphones because many phones now require them, and the average XPS 13 shopper likely collects premium gear. That said, a lot of people still prefer wired audio, or at least like having the option to plug in, and the bundled dongle is nobody's ideal solution. Considering all that it saves you is less than a millimeter, the upside is small.

Consumers are happy to drop device weight, but after a certain point, anorexic thinness doesn't add much value. It's not like Dell is begrudgingly joining an inevitable trend—one or two Asus laptops, the XPS 13 Plus, and the Surface Pro 9 are leading the way, but the last is technically a tablet—so this is a conscious choice.

An Edge-to-Edge Panel That Maximizes Screen Space

The display has traditionally been another of the XPS 13's strong points. This model follows in the 9310's footsteps with a slightly taller 16:10 instead of 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, increasing the full HD pixel count from 1,920 by 1,080 to 1,929 by 1,200 resolution. Surprisingly, only touch and non-touch versions of this panel (both rated at an ample 500 nits of brightness) are available at press time; Dell has mentioned a 4K option, but it hasn't reached the company's website yet. The 9310 offered both 4K IPS and 3.5K OLED screens.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Our review unit had the touch display option (a $100 upcharge). The edge-to-edge, nearly bezel-less screen (InfinityEdge in Dell lingo) is a treat to look at; the picture is sharp, clear, bright, and as roomy as possible on a device this size. It can't match the brilliant colors and sky-high contrast of OLED technology, but we guess we'll see one or two upgrade options later on.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

The keyboard hasn't changed much from the prior edition, and falls into the “good, not great” category. The thinness of the device means there just isn't much room for key travel, and while there is some bounce while typing, you don't have to press hard to feel the keys bottom out. It's not a bad experience, but not especially praiseworthy. The buttonless touchpad (a conventional one, versus the invisible pad of the XPS 13 Plus) tracks smoothly and responds well to taps and presses.

Connectivity and Extras

Since a headphone jack won't fit on this chassis, you won't be surprised to learn larger ports can't either. The XPS 13 has only one USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 port on each side of the laptop, both with support for DisplayPort video output and power delivery. Either port will work with the compact AC adapter. Many ultraportables (but notably not the X1 Carbon) have similarly abandoned USB Type-A and HDMI ports, obliging users to carry dongles or adapters. The XPS 13 comes with a USB-C to USB-A adapter as well as the audio jack gadget in the box.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

A host of other features round out the XPS 13's offerings, some more hidden than others. For wireless connectivity, the laptop supports Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth. A fingerprint reader is built into the power button and the webcam supports Windows Hello facial recognition, giving you two paths to quick and secure sign-in without having to type passwords.

The webcam's resolution is only old-school 720p, however, which is disappointing in a premium product. With videoconferencing more important than ever, we've seen many high-end and even some midrange laptops step up to 1080p or even higher-resolution cameras, such as the 5-megapixel unit of the HP Spectre x360 13.5. The difference in clarity is usually quite drastic.

To its credit, the Dell's is nicer than the cheapest 720p webcams we've tested, though I still found it noticeably grainier than 1080p laptop cameras. If you just hop on a video call from time to time, it's not a big deal, but if you want to impress on camera or attend many virtual meetings, its somewhat pixelated picture and inability to deal with low lighting conditions won't be to your liking.

Finally, for such a small laptop, the XPS 13's speakers put out big sound. Even at a distance, the ultraportable has no problem filling a room (or spilling loudly into the next room) at max or near max volume. If you're watching a video, giving a demonstration, or just want to blast music at home while you do chores, the Dell can do the job. The sound quality is pretty good, too, only a touch buzzy or tinny at full blast.

A Closer Look: Component and Configuration Options

We've run through the physical changes, so let's get to the big addition under the hood: Intel's 12th Gen “Alder Lake” processors, replacing the 11th Gen chips used in the 9310 models. Specifically, the new XPS 13 can be equipped with either our review unit's Core i5-1230U or a Core i7-1250U, each containing two Performance cores, eight Efficient cores, and 12 threads. Naturally, the Core i7 offers a bit more speed for performance-minded users.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

With the Core i5 chip, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB NVMe solid-state drive, our touch-screen test unit came to $1,249. In addition to the Core i7 (a $200 upgrade), you can order up to 32GB of memory and a 1TB SSD, as well as the non-touch display and Sky color if you like. All models utilize Intel's Iris Xe integrated graphics; as with most ultraportables, there's no discrete GPU option.

The “Alder Lake” mobile CPUs have generally impressed us, winning back the performance crown from AMD's Ryzen 5000 and 6000 series. There is a bit of a cap to the gains for laptops this small, which use Intel's more battery-friendly U series instead of the higher-wattage P and H families. The CPUs in this laptop are configured at 9 watts but can maintain a thermal load of around 12 watts. This is actually down from the 15-watt “Tiger Lake” chips of the previous XPS 13, but Dell weighed the pros and cons of a smaller cooling solution for a trimmer laptop with a bigger battery. With all these factors accounted for, it's time to find out how it all paid off.

Performance Testing Dell's and Intel's Latest

For our benchmark charts, we matched the new XPS 13 against four competing 13- and 14-inch ultraportables in roughly the same price range. The Acer Swift 3 is a close competitor at $1,229 as tested, but its slightly heftier design makes room for a beefy H-series processor and an OLED display. The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon is a worthy AMD Ryzen-based competitor, while the HP Spectre x360 13.5 is a premium convertible alternative. Finally, the aluminum elephant in the room is Apple's M2-based MacBook Air ($1,899 as tested); it's not in every chart below since it can't run our Windows benchmarks, but it's an obvious rival to include here. The XPS 13 9310 would have also been a fitting comparison, but we've changed our test suite since we reviewed that system.

Productivity Tests

The main benchmark of UL's PCMark 10 simulates a variety of real-world productivity and content-creation workflows to measure overall performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet work, web browsing, and videoconferencing. We also run PCMark 10's Full System Drive test to assess the load time and throughput of a laptop's boot drive.

Three other benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs' Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).

Our final productivity test is workstation maker Puget Systems' PugetBench for Photoshop, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe's famous image editor to rate a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.

The XPS 13 easily cleared the 4,000 points in PCMark 10 that means it's fine for everyday apps like Word and Excel, but there seem to indeed be some drawbacks to going all in for thinness. The Core i7 model would surely be moderately quicker, but the low CPU wattage wouldn't change.

While the charts reflect tests run in the My Dell utility's default power mode (a setting buried within tabs in the software), we reran some benchmarks in the Ultra Performance mode and saw a minor bump, but not enough to change any conclusions. The Cinebench CPU score improved the most, to 6,421 points (still last place, but tied with the MacBook Air). The HandBrake time shaved off about 20 seconds, still much slower than the other laptops, though fan noise was more noticeable.

Graphics and Gaming Tests

We test Windows PCs' graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). We also try two OpenGL benchmarks from the cross-platform GFXBench, run offscreen to accommodate different display resolutions.

As we've seen with almost all ultraportables, integrated graphics don't pack much of a punch. Apple's highly touted M2 chip does outperform the Intel and AMD silicon by a considerable margin, but That can be said for all of these laptops, falling well short of a discrete GPU. Those generally aren’t seen at laptops this size, but you may at least note Apple’s highly touted M2 chip does outperform the Intel and AMD graphics solutions by a considerable margin.

Still, these systems are better for casual games or video streaming than graphically intensive titles; you'll probably only be able to play modern games on their lowest settings, and forget about workstation-class 3D rendering or video editing. The Dell's Ultra Performance mode again made only a minimal difference, boosting the Night Raid score by fewer than 700 points.

Battery and Display Tests

We test laptops' battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100% until the system quits. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.

We also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).

The XPS 13's battery life proved solid, but nothing special in this category (and actually shorter than the 15 hours we saw from the XPS 13 9310). Considering Dell's emphasis on the larger battery and power-sipping CPU wattage, we expected better; the new design is a touch thinner and lighter but no faster or longer-lasting than the old. By contrast, the display testing results are mostly positive; the IPS screen can't match the color coverage of deluxe OLED panels but is the brightest by a sizable margin.

Verdict: Prioritizing Portability at a Cost

The updated Dell XPS 13 is a classy all-around ultraportable, but this edition is more divisive than we'd expect from this longtime flagship line. Its premium metal design remains a conversation piece or item of envy, but its envelope-pushing thinness doesn't fully pay off.

You can find more power and a sharper OLED screen without spending much more money, though we look forward to future display options. The XPS 13 remains a fine choice for everyday productivity tasks, but the lack of a headphone jack and the 720p webcam are underwhelming.

For the first time in a long time, it feels like the XPS 13 is behind the curve rather than raising the bar. It's still an appealing laptop and a fine daily driver, plus the base model offers good value with top-notch build quality, but the Dell is no longer the leader of the pack.