The first day of CES 2022 was packed with multiple major companies like Intel, Dell, AMD, Nvidia, and others announcing new products.
Among the newly introduced gadgets, Dell unveiled the XPS 13 Plus ultrabook with a redesigned keyboard and touchpad. Dell’s XPS lineup has only had iterative updates these past few years, which is why this radical change seems a bit odd.
We’ll be discussing its specs in detail below.
Design & Display
The XPS 13 Plus comes with a fresh new design that conveys a rather futuristic look. Although if you compare it with last year’s XPS 13, you’ll spot radical design upgrades. This time around, Dell has replaced the function row on the keyboard with capacitive touch buttons. The keyboard now extends all the way to both the edges of the base, and there’s almost no space between the keys.
Even the touchpad is now completely seamless with the chassis, so you won’t find a cutout or even buttons for that matter. It’s like one smooth slab of aluminum, and you get haptic feedback (vibration) to simulate clicks.
When compared to its predecessors this new model doesn’t come with a dual-tone design, and the two color options available are platinum and graphite, with each model only having one prevalent color, giving it an overall smooth look.
The display is rather beautiful with noticeably thin bezels, the same as the 2021’s XPS lineup. The upper bezel also houses a Windows Hello camera for facial recognition as well as a fingerprint reader in the power button and an ambient light sensor for backlight control.
With the XPS 13 Plus, Dell has managed to improve the webcam a bit, but not quite in the way one would expect. Rather than raising the resolution to 1080p to compete with the Ultrabooks in the market right now, Dell instead implemented a split IR camera and light sensor, which improves the webcam’s low-light performance at a resolution of 720p.
Weighing only 1.24kg, the Dell XPS 13 Plus is thinner and lighter than before. While this does save one the effort of fitting the laptop into bags, it comes at the cost of cutting out a fair share of features that might’ve proved handy otherwise.
Keyboard & Touchpad
The XPS 13 Plus comes bearing a rather distinctive keyboard and touchpad area when compared to its predecessors. One glance at the keyboard and you’ll think there’s no touchpad, at all! Well, it’s still there, technically, though it follows the underlying mechanism of haptic feedback now. Like the MacBook Pro and Surface Laptop Studio, the laptop uses actuated motors to simulate the feeling of a click.
Another major change is with the touchpad. Now, users are greeted with a seamless glass ForcePad with haptic feedback on the palm rest area. The ForcePad provides a thinner touchpad with pressure-sensitive scrolling and zooming, and press-to-click capabilities anywhere on the surface, allowing the users to get the most out of it.
With the XPS 13 Plus, Dell has substituted the top row function keys with a capacitive touch bar that is backlit. As per the company, the removal of the physical upper function keys helps to offer more room for improved cooling.
This change seems to be inspired by Apple’s defunct Touch Bar, including one of its worst traits, which is a lack of haptic feedback.
The keys themselves follow a minimalist look, with slightly larger keycaps and less space between the keys.
Hardware & Performance
According to Dell, the “Plus” in the laptop’s name primarily suggests better performance than its predecessors. Under the hood, the XPS 13 Plus features the latest 12th-gen Intel processors, allowing the buyers to configure the XPS 13 Plus with the Core i5-1240P, Core i7-1260P, Core i7-1270P, and Core i7-1280P options. The new chips offer significant performance upgrades over their 11th-gen counterparts.
As per the company claims, the XPS 13 Plus now offers up to 55% better airflow without increased noise, but this claim is yet to be tested. The upgraded processors also bring support for LPDDR5 RAM, which is expected to be much faster than before. The SSD has also been upgraded to PCIe 4.0, offering higher transfer speeds.
In terms of port options, you get two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, and a USB Type-C to Type-A adapter that ships in the box, in case you need to plug in a wired peripheral. However, unlike the standard XPS 13, you won’t find a 3.5mm headphone jack or a microSD card reader.
Additionally, we do get an upgraded audio setup with the XPS 13 Plus. It features quad speakers this time with two top-firing ones beneath the keyboard supported by two bottom-firing ones at the base. That gives them a total output of 8W and makes for one of the loudest and most immersive speaker setups in a 13-inch laptop. Though it remains to be seen how it competes with the industry’s best (Apple’s MacBooks).
Storage & Availability
The XPS 13 Plus starts at $1,099 for the configuration that includes a Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of SSD storage. This configuration also comes with a non-touch 1080p screen.
As of now, the company hasn’t provided any specific release date for the XPS 13 Plus, but recent statements hint that it will be available for retail in the first quarter of 2022.
