is a reviewer covering laptops and the occasional gadget. He spent over 15 years in the photography industry before joining The Verge as a deals writer in 2021.
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Nearly one year ago to the day, Dell killed off its long-standing XPS brand name in favor of milquetoast Premium, Plus, Pro, and Pro Max monikers — but it’s back for CES 2026. The new XPS 14 and XPS 16 laptops look to win back fans of the “Extreme Performance System” with Dell’s thinnest designs to date, a row of proper function keys, improved battery life, and Intel’s new Panther Lake Core Ultra Series 3 processors. Dell even went as far as putting the XPS brand name on the lid, and finally marking the edges of its seamless haptic trackpad with subtle glass etching lines.
The XPS 14 and 16 are launching in select configurations on January 6th, with entry-level and higher-end configs coming in February. For now, the XPS 14 at launch starts at $2,049 and the XPS 16 at $2,199.99. If you’re growing increasingly Windows-averse, Dell says an XPS 14 running Ubuntu 24.04 will come “later this year.”
The sleek graphite color will come first. The champagne-like “shimmer” color is due out later this year. The latticeless keyboard returns, but it brings with it some much-appreciated trackpad boundary lines.
The new XPS laptops sport three USB-C / Thunderbolt 4 ports, 10W speakers, and weigh as little as 3 pounds / 1.36 kg (14-inch) or 3.65 pounds / 1.65 kg (16-inch). They’re set to start with 1920 x 1200 IPS displays, 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, a 512GB SSD, and Intel’s Core Ultra 5 325 chip. Both sizes can be configured with extra-bright tandem OLEDs (2880 x 1800 for the 14-inch and 3200 x 2000 for the 16-inch) that are each a little thinner and lighter, and chip options will go up to Intel’s Core Ultra X9 388H (coming later).
Neither the XPS 14 or 16 offer discrete graphics, but Dell is touting these new laptops as battery champs, thanks in part to their 70Whr cells and variable refresh displays that go from a maximum 120Hz all the way down to 1Hz when viewing static subjects like emails and photos. (Yes, even the base IPS displays can reach 1Hz.)
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