It oozes style and has plenty of substance. The $1,354 Studio XPS 13, the 13.3-inch sibling to the XPS 16, has an attractive design, complete with leather details, white LED lights, and responsive touch controls, not to mention strong performance and switchable graphics to match. The short battery life will give highly mobile users pause, but you can easily upgrade to a 9-cell battery.
Design
Like its predecessor the XPS M1330, the XPS 13 has a wedge shape that’s both good-looking and easy to carry. However, at 4.8 pounds (versus 4 pounds), it’s nearly a full pound heavier. The black lid has a classy gloss finish that picks up fingerprints easily. On one end is a metal strip that separates the plastic from a patch of black leather, which is easily the most luxurious detail on this notebook.
Then the design takes a funky turn. That metal strip extends onto the lower corners of the bezel, turning into hinges with visible screws. On the plus side, most of the other details hit the right notes: the touch-sensitive multimedia control panel, which glows white, was impeccably responsive, even to the slightest tap. Rings on the hinges also glow white, as do the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth LED indicators on the front side of the notebook. Even the keyboard is backlit, although it doesn’t have an ambient light sensor like Apple’s MacBook line (this would adjust the backlighting depending on the surrounding light). And the screen, which is only 0.2 inches thick, is edge-to-edge glass.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The black keyboard has a wonderfully soft finish that feels comfortable. Dell makes good use of space: the keyboard extends almost from one end of the 12.6-inch-wide chassis to the other, so there’s ample space for your fingers. The panel felt sturdy and didn’t flex as we typed away. Best of all, the keys barely make any sound.
Our pet peeve is stiff touch buttons, so we appreciated how easy these were to press. Some might consider these buttons mushy, but we like them. Although the mouse buttons were large enough, the 2.5 x 1.6-inch touchpad, which had little friction, felt small. At the least, Dell had room to make it wider.
Dell Dock
Like other consumer Dell notebooks, including the Studio 15, the XPS 13 has the Dell Dock, a panel of large launch icons that looks eerily similar to the Apple dock. Unlike Apple’s dock, however, which is also a repository for minimized documents, Web pages, and other windows, Dell’s Dock only allows you to launch commonly used programs. To its credit, it’s intuitively organized by task. When you click on the Photos icon, for example (which looks like a camera), you’ll have the option of viewing and publishing photos or snapping stills.
Users can also customize the color and location of the dock, as well as drag and drop shortcuts into the dock. When you do so, the shortcut will disappear from your desktop, which has the effect of cleaning up your workspace. We recommend moving the Dock away from the top of the screen, its default location: it kept popping up as we tried to type in the address bar of our browser, or click on tabs.
Display and Sound
The 13.3-inch (1280 x 800), LED-backlit display looked bright when we watched an episode of Mad Men on DVD. Despite having a glossy finish, the screen has versatile viewing angles. We were able to tip the lid far forward and still watch comfortably, which bodes well for travelers who want to watch a movie while resting their laptop on the seat tray. We were able to watch from pretty oblique side angles, too, though at 180 degrees the screen became too reflective.
The stereo speakers are decent, delivering plenty of volume for watching a movie by ourselves in a quiet room. The music we listened to—Radiohead, Bruce Springsteen, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs—was sufficiently loud but a bit tinny. Still, the system supports Dolby 5.1 surround sound, which comes in handy for connecting the XPS 13 to a home theater system.
Ports and Webcam
The XPS 13 has many of the ports you’d expect from a high-end notebook: HDMI, DisplayPort, VGA, FireWire, and a USB port that doubles as an eSATA connection. There’s also an Ethernet jack, one mic, and two headphone jacks. The problem is, there’s only one other USB port, bringing the total to two. Even on a more basic system of this size, one would expect at least three. It also has an ExpressCard/54 slot, an 8-in-1 memory card reader, and a slot-loading DVD drive.
The 1.3-megapixel webcam took bright, nicely colored still photos and videos. The VGA video had loud, accurate sound, with good brightness and colors. We noticed very slight latency around our mouth, but it wasn’t distracting. In general, the Webcam Central software made the webcam easy to use (and the Dell Dock’s Movies icon made it easy to find). The tabbed interface allows users to switch quickly between photo and movie mode, thumbnails of captures you’ve just taken appear on the bottom, and the resolution options appear in a drop-down menu.
