During the month of July I had the pleasure of testing out one of Dell’s new Ultrabooks, the XPS 13… and I’ll jump right to the point; it was awesome! Several months back I ran into our Dell rep and he mentioned that it had just come out and I should look into it. I of course asked for a demo (that’s how I roll) so I could potentially talk about it on the news if it was worth mentioning. We got the wheels in motion and at the end of June I had it in my hands.
As I mention in the video below, the laptop is a 13” laptop, however the screen size is what you would typically find on a 14” laptop because they’re using up more of the available space up top. The keyboard may look small in that case, but I compared it to the keyboard on my standard sized Latitude and they are the same… so you’re not giving up anything there. Speaking of my Latitude, the XPS 13 actually has the same processor in it, the Intel i5 (you can get an i7 as well), and has a decent amount of RAM at 4GB. The first two weeks of July my wife and I were in Europe and I took this guy along with us so I could edit pictures and video for a project I’d be working on there. The laptop had plenty of horsepower to do anything I asked it to and rendered my 7 minute HD video (watch it here if you’d like) in an acceptable amount of time… AND without turning up the fans to supersonic speed.
The laptop came loaded with Windows 7, but I of course had to load it up with Windows 8 (more on that at a later date) to see how it would perform running Microsoft’s latest and greatest. Have I mentioned yet that I loved it? Seriously… I want one. The form factor of the XPS 13 is PERFECT. It is light and sleek and feels extremely well built with its aluminum top and carbon fiber bottom and it LOOKS good too. I’m super happy that all the other manufacturers have finally taken note of what is going on over at Apple and are shamelessly ripping off their designs.
For more information on the device, checkout my review below on the Fox Mornings show!
–Dan Thompson