GoKawiilDell’s last XPS 13 was meant to be a farewell before the company sunset the entire XPS brand. But it was a bitter ending, and an overpriced one as well. Earlier this year, Dell resurrected the XPS name with the excellent (and very expensive) XPS 14 and 16. And now, it’s reinvented the XPS 13 as a much more affordable thin-and-light to take on the MacBook Neo.
Call it another comeback.
The 2026 XPS 13 has the nicest hardware you’ll find in a new $700 laptop outside of Apple’s Neo. The core components — the screen, keyboard, trackpad, and speakers — are all great or excellent. It’s an exquisite package in a sleek and very thin ultra-portable.
And unlike other Windows 11 laptops that struggled to get by with 8GB of RAM, the XPS 13 feels competent even with that limited memory allocation. But even though it’s great that there’s an 8GB Windows laptop in 2026 that’s not dead on arrival, you’re still going to want the 16GB version (which I’ve also been testing) for $1,000. And sadly, no configuration of the XPS 13 includes a headphone jack.
I’ve been testing two XPS 13 configurations with the same six-core Intel Core 5 320 “Wildcat Lake” processor and 512GB SSD. Their singular difference is memory: The base $799.99 model has 8GB of RAM and the $999.99 one has 16GB. I’ve been working off this pair quite a bit for a couple weeks, and the hardware is brilliant. When I got them, that 8GB / 512GB configuration was the base model and cost $699.99. But in early September, Dell created a new $699.99 base model with just 256GB of storage, and raised the price of the 512GB models by $100 each. Sadly these kinds of pricing shenanigans are commonplace in our ongoing RAMageddon nightmare.
Component report card Screen: A
Webcam: A
Keyboard: B
Trackpad: B
Port selection: D
... continue reading