Meet Maggie, PCMag'sSoon after Apple rocked the laptop-buying world with its bargain-priced MacBook Neo, Dell announced an equally affordable revival of its iconic XPS 13. The $699.99 base model I tested has its compromises—just 8GB of memory, no headphone jack, and a modest Intel "Wildcat Lake" processor—but it delivers much of the XPS appeal at an aggressively low price. That's a big deal in these days of high hardware costs.
An all-aluminum chassis, a super-trim design, a 1600p touch screen, and keyboard backlighting are attractive traits in any laptop at this price. The 8GB of memory in the base model led to some compatibility issues in our benchmark testing, and it’s not the fastest system around. But it can keep up with the MacBook Neo, in many cases, for the same price. It’s easily the closest Windows PC equivalent to Apple’s cheapest MacBook, and well worth shortlisting if you're seeking a Windows-based budget laptop. It cops our Editors' Choice award for budget Windows ultraportables.
The XPS 13’s low starting price is key to its appeal, which means the base model components’ performance is crucial. The $699.99 base model comes with an Intel Core 5 320 processor, 8GB of single-channel DDR5 memory running at 7,467 megatransfers per second (MT/s), a 512GB M.2 PCI Express solid-state drive, and a 13.4-inch touch display. The panel has a 120Hz peak refresh rate and a 2,560-by-1,600-pixel (1600p) native resolution.
The processor is part of Intel’s latest addition to its Core Series 3 platform. Known as “Wildcat Lake,” it's designed for entry-level systems like this. Wildcat Lake is a low-power platform made for everyday computing, matching well with students, younger users, and mainstream shoppers who just need a totable notebook for basic tasks.
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Read my dedicated Wildcat Lake testing piece for a deeper dive into how this class of chip performs. Dell intends to add more powerful Core Ultra Series 3 “Panther Lake” processors to the XPS 13 line later; the Core 5 320 is the only CPU option at the time of publishing this review. You can’t even pick among other Wildcat Lake chips for this laptop right now. The Core 5 320 features six total cores (two Performance cores and four Low-Power Efficient, or LPE, cores) and six threads that can run at up to 4.6GHz.
For now, with just the one Wildcat Lake chip available, upgrade options are limited to memory only. You can upgrade the XPS 13 to single-channel 16GB DDR5 RAM at 7,467MT/s, but that alone pushes the cost to $899, pushing it out of budget-laptop territory. Even setting the low-power processor aside, the 8GB memory capacity in the base model stands out and may put you off entirely. We’ve recently demonstrated just how memory-hungry Windows 11 can be, and certain apps may run noticeably better with 16GB of RAM. This amount of memory also allows many apps and functions to run in the first place, like Photoshop and Microsoft Copilot. While $899 is still cheaper than many premium Windows PCs out there, that price opens Dell to a range of different comparison systems. As I’ll show in the testing section, the 16GB version of this XPS 13 (which I also tested) and its modest processor don’t look like a particularly good deal compared with an alternative like the HP OmniBook 14.
We received both the 8GB and 16GB XPS 13 models for testing in time for this review, which helped us illustrate the differences between these configurations. This review and its score apply to the 8GB XPS 13, but in the benchmark-testing section later, you can see how the 16GB version fares and decide whether it’s worth the extra bucks.
The 16GB upgrade is the current maximum memory available, with no other component upgrades available from Dell. That includes storage. Later, the Core Ultra model will include up to 32GB of memory and a 1TB SSD.
I should also note that the competing MacBook Neo originally launched at $599, $100 less than the XPS 13’s eventual starting price. However, just months after the Neo's March launch, Apple announced a $100 price increase due to the 2026 memory supply squeeze, matching Dell’s $699 price. Right now, costs and availability are highly subject to component supply. Both the XPS 13 and the MacBook Neo are available to students at $100 off, so check whether you qualify or can apply the discount. (Note: Dell’s XPS 13 laptop education discount lasts only through Nov. 2, 2026, while Apple’s discount is a standing policy.)
Additionally, you have to look at the XPS 13 with 16GB differently at $899. At $900, the slate of comparable laptops is a different set, including some I’ve used as comparison systems in the testing section later. The eventual Core Ultra chips with 16GB will almost certainly drive the XPS 13's price to or above $1,000, again changing its alternatives to even more capable systems.
I covered the XPS 13 announcement before seeing it in person at Computex 2026 in Taipei, so this was not my first opportunity to assess this laptop. That’s plenty of time to think about this system, which is attempting a difficult tightrope walk. Dell's big idea? Hit as close to a budget price as possible, while keeping key aspects of Dell’s pricier XPS laptops intact, and while cutting extraneous features that aren’t 100% needed on a budget system.
The MacBook Neo makes this system all the more intriguing. Apple’s affordable machine was a price standout as a premium-build laptop at well under $1,000, but it wasn’t long before Dell announced this alternative. I won’t frame everything as a head-to-head comparison between the two here—macOS versus Windows, alone, may decide it for you—but it is an interesting battle. Some of you (or your kids) will no doubt have to choose between these two systems.
The alluring price is the main attraction, but only because it includes an all-metal build, a touch screen, and other appealing features. The Wildcat Lake processor platform is a major factor in achieving that low starting price, but it’s far from the whole story. Here’s what Dell included—and omitted—from the XPS 14 and XPS 16.
First, the build. Maintaining the all-metal chassis was smart, arguably a must to compete with Apple’s similarly priced all-metal MacBook Neo. The aluminum body feels slick and high-quality, especially compared with the usual plastic you see in this price range. That alone makes it stand out, giving the impression of a pricier machine. It’s something college students would enjoy taking to class, or mobile professionals would be happy grabbing for the commute. Dell offers both a "Sky" color scheme (a fun, light-blue tone) and a standard silver it dubs "Storm.”
The XPS 13 is also impressively compact and portable, an easy grab-and-go. It measures 0.5 inch thick and weighs just 2.2 pounds. Both laptops are small, but the XPS 13 is actually half a pound lighter than the MacBook Neo, which you’ll feel at this size.
It does not fully mirror the larger XPS systems, however. Over the last couple of years, the XPS 14 and 16 have adopted designs with a seamless haptic touchpad built into a soft-touch wrist rest and a keyboard with flush, edge-to-edge key caps. These modern-looking inclusions are stylish (though a bit divisive, too) and add cost to these already-premium systems.
Instead, the new 13-inch model harkens back to a more basic XPS build. The seamless touchpad and flush keyboard look cool but are not necessary, and that approach extends to most of what was kept on this system. The keyboard has a simple lattice design that is comfortable enough, and its more traditional layout may even be to your preference. The keys also include backlighting. That sounds like a given for most systems these days, but it's actually one of the features cut from the MacBook Neo—score one for Dell.
The touchpad is basic but effective. It’s hardly roomy on a laptop this size, but it’s large and responsive enough. Sure, the fancy glass haptic touchpad on the larger laptops feels cool, but the XPS 13 touchpad is just fine. A budget laptop should focus on the essentials, and the XPS 13 can have only a few important, carefully selected extras. These items don't rate that, and leaving them out was a smart choice.
It’s a literal "small thing," but further supporting the portability is Dell’s redesigned charger. This small square adapter is 65 watts, but it looks more like a phone power brick. It fits into virtually all outlets and is even easier to carry around than other compact adapters.
On the whole, this is a highly portable laptop that will be at home in college classrooms, cafes, airports, and anywhere you need to do quick, light work. The aluminum chassis is pleasant at this price, and the inputs are serviceable.
The XPS 13’s 13.4-inch display maximizes screen real estate within the small body, thanks to Dell’s extra-slim bezels. This panel is also slightly larger than the MacBook Neo’s screen, which comes in at 13 inches even. Dell’s screen displays in a sharp 1600p resolution, which is better than the 1080p resolution found on many budget systems. That’s roughly equivalent to the Neo’s 2,408 by 1,506 resolution, but the XPS 13’s 120Hz refresh rate is also superior to Apple’s 60Hz display.
Dell’s screen looks pleasing up close, though the matte finish dulls things down a tad. I also found the XPS 13 screen to be fairly dim; maximum brightness is OK, but it’s on the dark side at 50%. You can check my brightness testing numbers further down, but by eye, I found it insufficient much below 100%. Even at maximum, I find myself wishing I could push it a few ticks higher when using it in bright areas.
Dell chose to keep touch capability on this display despite its budget-friendly goals, another advantage over the MacBook Neo. A touch screen ventures beyond the “essentials” tier and, like the metal build, into the “premium” category. Some buyers have little interest in touch screens—Apple has yet to introduce them on any laptops—but they’re convenient. If I’m using a clamshell laptop with a touch screen, it’s not as if I’m always tapping and scrolling on it, but sometimes a quick screen poke is easiest. It can be helpful if you’re holding the laptop while trying to show someone something on the screen, too.
The XPS 13 also includes a 1080p webcam above the screen, which is becoming more common, but 720p is still often found on budget laptops. The picture is not as sharp as other full HD cameras I’ve tested, but it’s serviceable. It’s an IR camera, so it supports Windows Hello, as well.
For such a small system, the speakers pump out dense sound. Even 50% volume is plenty audible, and maximum volume is outright loud. While it doesn’t have the pronounced bass of a larger setup, it's passable, and the speakers produce full-volume sound without becoming distorted or tinny, too.
This XPS laptop’s ports are one main area of compromise. It’s not uncommon for a slim or budget laptop to leave out some common port types, and the XPS 13 is both of those things. Thus, this is a USB Type-C-only laptop, with one 10Gbps connection on each side. On the Intel Core models, these ports support charging, power delivery, and DisplayPort 2.1. On the coming Core Ultra models, they will also support Thunderbolt 4.
Not only will you find no discrete HDMI or USB Type-A ports—not too uncommon on an ultraportable—but Dell cut the audio jack, too. It’s always divisive when major devices come without a wired headphone jack, and I think it’s a mark against the 2026 XPS 13. Laptop makers have removed, then re-added, physical audio ports over the years, but most still include them today, including the Neo.
That said, many of you already use wireless earbuds or headphones and have no need for the physical port. Some might, and you can find adapters to solve this issue, but it is an increasingly thin slice of people bothered by this decision. I personally used wired in-ear monitors at my desk, but carry wireless earbuds for on-the-go phone and laptop use 100% of the time, so it’d be a stretch to say it inconveniences me.
The laptop also includes Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, which beats the Neo’s Wi-Fi 6E but matches its device-to-device connectivity.
So Dell (mostly) nailed the build, but what about the speed? While I knew roughly what to expect from Wildcat Lake heading into testing, the 8GB memory capacity remained a question mark: How would it fare against the 16GB model? To gauge their performance, I ran both versions of the XPS 13 through our test suite and compared the results with the following systems.
This group includes the competing MacBook Neo and the HP OmniBook 5 14 ($899.99 as tested), our Editors’ Choice pick for mainstream midrange laptops. Our $1,269.99 Dell 14S review configuration is a step up but still short of today's true premium options. It comes in a quality chassis, but more important, it will demonstrate what a Core Ultra 3 Series chip can do instead.
Before examining the results, note some significant gaps in the scores. The 8GB XPS 13 could not complete several tests due to insufficient RAM (more on that as we go through them), the Arm-based Snapdragon chip in the OmniBook doesn’t support UL's PCMark 10 test, the Dell 14S had a conflict with Cinebench, and the MacBook Neo doesn’t support PCMark, either. In short, if a score in the charts below is missing, it’s due to incompatibility or insufficient memory—such is life when testing budget laptops.
Our primary overall benchmark, UL's PCMark 10, puts a system through its paces in productivity apps ranging from web browsing to word processing and spreadsheet work. Its Full System Drive subtest measures a PC's storage throughput.
Three more tests we rely on are CPU-centric or processor-intensive: Maxon's Cinebench 2024 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene; Primate Labs' Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning; and we see how long it takes the video transcoder HandBrake 1.8 to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution. Finally, workstation maker Puget Systems' PugetBench for Creators rates a PC's image-editing prowess through a variety of automated operations in the seminal photo editor Adobe Photoshop 25.
We’ll get to the tests the 8GB model couldn't run in a moment, but for what it could run, the XPS 13 performed modestly. Its numbers were not fast by objective standards, but in the context of this budget field, its performance was reasonable. It traded blows with the MacBook Neo—faster in HandBrake, slower in Geekbench—and trailed the 16GB XPS 13 by consistently noticeable, but not massive, margins. The Dell 14S and the HP OmniBook maintained sizable leads across most tests.
Then we have the tests that the XPS 13 could not run. While most of you aren’t likely to benchmark this system, these results represent potential application issues you might experience with insufficient RAM. Adobe Photoshop is a key example here, as our script of tests couldn’t complete due to insufficient memory, which you might experience with certain Photoshop operations in real-world use. (Mind you, the program did launch and run.) The Cinebench tests, similarly, would not finish, attempting to run before eventually failing. We’re sure the memory is to blame, since the 16GB XPS model completed all of these tests, giving you a sense of both performance and compatibility differences between these models.
Outside of benchmarking, I found the 16GB model to be a bit snappier than the 8GB model overall for general use and navigating Windows. The latter is hardly unusable—you’ll get by for light work just fine—but you'll encounter more moments of “hesitation” as apps open or tasks execute. If you’re set on the base model's basement pricing and intend to do mostly low-demand tasks such as note-taking and web browsing, I still think the 8GB model can do the job, but you should read a cautionary tale on this topic in our separate analysis.
We challenge all systems’ graphics with a quintet of animations or gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark test suite. The first two, Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K), use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. The next pair, Steel Nomad's regular and Light subtests, focuses on APIs more commonly used for game development to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. Last up, we turn to 3DMark Solar Bay to measure ray-tracing performance. (Neither XPS 13 system would run Solar Bay, so that chart is omitted below.)
Similarly to the productivity tests, the 8GB XPS 13 couldn’t hack a few of these tests. The app stated the hardware was insufficient to run Steel Nomad and Solar Bay. This is a taxing ray-tracing test beyond the capabilities of these weak integrated graphics chips.
For the tests that did finish, the results were about expected. The Core Ultra 7 chip inside the Dell 14S was markedly more powerful than the others, with the MacBook Neo and OmniBook next in line. The XPS 13 in either form is not equipped for graphics-intensive tasks, and you should look elsewhere for any degree of 3D work or moderate gaming.
We test each laptop and tablet's battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.
To gauge display performance, we also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its 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 battery uptime was long for this system, lasting more than 20 hours in our test. (I did not test the 16GB model separately.) That will support a highly mobile lifestyle, so the battery is not a compromise you have to worry about. The screen posted respectable color coverage, broader even than the MacBook Neo’s panel. If anything, I was surprised by how high the brightness reading was. It looks dimmer to me in practice, which might be thanks to that matte coating.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Dell XPS 13 (2026)
- 5.0 - Exemplary: Near perfection, ground-breaking
- 4.5 - Outstanding: Best in class, acts as a benchmark for measuring competitors
- 4.0 - Excellent: A performance, feature, or value leader in its class, with few shortfalls
- 3.5 - Good: Does what the product should do, and does so better than many competitors
- 3.0 - Average: Does what the product should do, and sits in the middle of the pack
- 2.5 - Fair: We have some reservations, buy with caution
- 2.0 - Subpar: We do not recommend, buy with extreme caution
- 1.5 - Poor: Do not buy this product
- 1.0 - Dismal: Don't even think about buying this product
Read Our Editorial Mission Statement and Testing Methodologies.
Set aside a few caveats, and the XPS 13 succeeds swimmingly from two angles. It’s a toned-down XPS laptop that maintains just enough of the brand’s signature features while coming in at a significantly lower cost. Put aside your XPS expectations altogether, and it’s still an attractive budget laptop that stands above most. Its position as the clear MacBook Neo alternative for Windows users, from its feature set to the build quality, is earned.
The caveats? The processor is middling, Dell dropped the headphone jack, and 8GB of memory in the base model will leave you short in some scenarios. The 16GB option is worth considering if you especially like this laptop’s build, but you can find better values at its higher price.
It's all about that $699 starting price. If that is the hook that catches you, Dell's base model will do fine for everyday tasks—and you’ll be hard-pressed to find an all-metal build, a touch screen, a 512GB SSD, and longer battery life for the same money. For racking up all of that for the price, the 2026 XPS 13 earns our Editors’ Choice award. The MacBook Neo remains our top budget MacBook pick; this is the leading Windows ultraportable alternative. Well played, Dell.
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About Our Expert
I’ve been a consumer PC expert at PCMag for 10 years, and I love PC gaming. I've played games on my computer for as long as I can remember, which eventually (as it does for many) led me to build and upgrade my own desktops to this day. Through my years at PCMag, I've tested and reviewed many, many dozens of laptops and desktops, and I am always happy to recommend a PC for your needs and budget.
