Dell XPS 13 (Intel Lunar Lake) review: out with a whimper

The Dell XPS 13 was once the best thin-and-light Windows laptop you could get, with amazing build quality, good battery life, and decent port selection (and eventually, a serviceable webcam). But it peaked in 2020 and it’s been slipping since. It got OLED screen options that tanked the battery life. Then there was a baffling redesign that made the keyboard, trackpad, and port selection worse, paired with power-hungry 12th Gen Intel chips, so it still had bad battery life, and it ran too hot.

The new Intel Lunar Lake model fixes some of those issues, but improved performance and a beautiful OLED screen can’t make up for the flawed design. With a spongy keyboard, awkward function row, and paltry ports, this laptop is incredibly frustrating to use — a sad sendoff for the once-admired XPS name.

The Dell XPS 13 (model 9350), released in late 2024, is the x86 counterpart to the Snapdragon X Elite version we tested last summer. It starts at $1,399 for an Intel Core Ultra 7 256V CPU (Lunar Lake), 16GB of RAM, user-replaceable 512GB NVMe SSD, and a 13.4-inch non-touch 1920 x 1200 IPS display with up to 120Hz refresh rate. My $1,699 review unit has a 60Hz 4K tandem OLED touchscreen but is otherwise identical to the base model.

That tandem OLED screen is by far the XPS 13’s biggest highlight. It’s super sharp at its native 2880 x 1800 resolution, and its colors and contrast are incredibly punchy. The maximum 400 nits of brightness with HDR (I measured 455 nits on my review unit) is enough to be usable outside in all but the harshest of direct sunlight, and because it’s an OLED, it maintains exceptional contrast even when cranked up. It’s definitely worth the $300 upcharge.

The build quality and sleek design of this laptop are really something else. At 2.7 pounds, it’s got a little heft for its compact size, and it feels sturdy with no flex or creaking even if you apply pressure to its main deck or lid. The 1080p webcam is also a nice upgrade, rendering a sharp image (though it lacks a privacy cover). But the new XPS 13’s major accomplishment is what’s inside: an Intel processor that threads the needle of battery life and performance. Battery life has been a real challenge on previous-gen XPS 13s, but the Lunar Lake 256V chip’s eight cores (four performance cores / four efficiency cores) really deliver. It sips power when it can, easily lasting through eight- to 10-hour work days filled with dozens of open and active Chrome tabs, the occasional video call or Slack huddle, and typing up documents. It lasted over twelve hours in our battery rundown test.

That’s not as power-efficient as the M3 MacBook Air, which will get you through a chunk of your second day of work before you have to plug it in. And it’s not as long-lasting as the Arm version of the XPS 13 with a Snapdragon X Elite processor, which lasted over 15 and a half hours in our battery rundown test. But it’s a huge improvement on past models (and with an OLED screen, no less). It’s been five years since we’ve seen an Intel XPS 13 last longer than seven hours, and the OLED models we tested in 2021 and 2022 cut that to five hours. But to be fair to Dell, the pitiful battery life of Windows laptops from that era was mostly due to the shortcomings of Intel’s 12th and 13th Gen processors.

Performance-wise, the XPS 13’s Core Ultra 7 256V feels snappy — even while multitasking around apps spread across three virtual desktops. Its benchmark scores are close to those of other Lunar Lake laptops we’ve tested, like the larger Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition and Acer Swift 14 AI. In single-core benchmarks, it’s about as fast as the Snapdragon X Elite X1E80100 in the Arm XPS 13 and the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX370 in Asus’ Zenbook S 16. It can’t keep up with either the Snapdragon or Ryzen chips in multicore benchmarks, but those are both 12-core CPUs; the 256V has eight. Part of me always craves more power and more cores, but I’ve used Lunar Lake across a few different thin-and-light laptops at this point, and it’s totally fine.

Intel’s Arc 140V integrated graphics aren’t nearly as good as the Radeon 890M in the AMD chip, but the new XPS 13 can play some modern games. In Helldivers 2, at decent low-to-mid graphical settings and 1920 x 1200 resolution, frame rates averaged a respectable 40fps, though they sometimes dipped into the low 30s during hectic moments. A single-player game like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle fared slightly better — in the 50fps range with dynamic resolution scaling, though it had lots of screen tearing without Vsync activated. (Remember, folks, this is a thin-and-light productivity laptop, so even the tiniest gaming prowess is a bonus.)

Good battery life, solid performance, and a great screen are a big part of the battle. Unfortunately, they’re in the wrong laptop. If Dell had only stuck with the design it was using as late as 2023, this could have been a great laptop. Instead, the XPS 13 suffers from the redesigned keyboard and capacitive function row Dell introduced with the XPS 13 Plus in 2022 and brought to the entire XPS line in 2024.

First off: the goddamned keyboard. Its gapless layout and springy keys feel so crummy it actually makes work harder. I don’t want to type on this thing. My fingers often feel lost, my typing flow is stilted, and I make more typos than usual.

And then there’s the capacitive function row. It offers no physical feedback when pressed, and that’s where the escape key is. It’s weird as hell to have to look down or blindly hunt every time you want to use one of the functions there, especially in combination with those springy physical keys. It’s as engaging as typing on a plank of wood.

This keyboard was bad in 2022, and it should have been left for dead when Dell cut the 13 Plus model. There are much better laptop keyboards out there, on MacBooks and Windows laptops alike. I loved the typing feel of the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i and the various Asus Zephyrus gaming laptops I’ve used. Even the detachable keyboard cover of the Asus ROG Flow Z13 is more satisfying to type on.

The seamless haptic trackpad still looks stealthy and cool, but it’s inconsistent and overly sensitive, often registering accidental / extra clicks when I’m moving the cursor quickly or clicking and dragging. It’s a disappointment, especially since I prefer haptic trackpads. This one is oh-so-close to being good, but there are better examples elsewhere.

The XPS 13 still has just one USB-C port on the left and one on the right. At least they’re Thunderbolt 4, but this still feels like an outdated attempt at chasing Apple — from years ago, before Apple brought MagSafe back to the MacBook Air. The XPS doesn’t even offer a headphone jack. Apple never stooped that low on its MacBooks, not even in the Jony Ive thinness-over-everything era. It gives one less method of overcoming the XPS 13’s crappy speakers, which have barely any bottom end. (Yes, Bluetooth exists, or you could use USB-C headphones, but remember — only two ports.) Dell’s XPS 14 commits the same keyboard and function row crimes as the XPS 13, but at least it offers three USB-C / Thunderbolt 4 ports, a headphone jack, and a microSD slot. At this time, it’s still on older Meteor Lake chips and likely won’t be refreshed.

With the Lunar Lake model, Dell has done a good job of fixing key shortcomings like battery life, performance, and thermal design — though that has more to do with Intel making up for the flaws in its previous chips than anything Dell did. And the OLED screen is amazing. But it’s not enough to make up for the lack of ports or for a keyboard and function row that are actively unpleasant to use.

The XPS 13 was once the best Windows alternative to the MacBook Air. If Dell had simply stuck the Lunar Lake chipset and OLED screen into the same chassis it used for the 2022 XPS 13, it would still be in the running. As it is, the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition is a good option, unless you rely on software that doesn’t yet work with Windows on Arm. Asus’ Zenbook A14 and Lenovo’s ThinkPad X9 both look like they’re gunning directly for the MacBook Air’s style. And of course, there’s the upcoming M4 MacBook Air itself.

This is likely the last XPS 13, and it could have been a great swan song. But Dell chose to meddle with a design that worked, just like it’s choosing to replace its long-standing brands like XPS, Latitude, and Precision with generic, uninspired names like Dell Plus and Dell Pro Max Premium. These unforced errors are a tragic farewell to the XPS line, which, at the very least, was always worthy of attention. Will anyone pay attention to a Dell Premium?

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge