Dell XPS 13 (2026) review: So close to perfection – but a victim of timing

Sometimes even the best tech launch has a sting in the tail. When I saw the new XPS 13 unveiled at Computex in Taiwan this year, I couldn't quite believe my eyes or my hands. This gorgeous little compact laptop was being positioned directly against the MacBook Neo, and had every shot at outstripping it, from what I saw and was told.

Now, a couple of months later, the first version of the XPS 13 is available, and I've tested it over the last week to see if it can match that incredible early impression. While I'm still in love with its design, the harsh reality of the pricing crisis we're all enduring in computing has made the XPS 13 far more complicated to assess than I was hoping it might be. Here's why:

Price and Availability

Dell's new XPS 13 was unveiled earlier this summer, and it's now available to order in most places, with a caveat. Right now, every version of the laptop on offer comes with a Series 3 Intel Core 5-320 processor – which is not a Panther Lake chip; a version is coming down the line with Intel's newer chip, but it's not here yet.

Anyway, here in the UK the XPS 13 starts at £899, a massive chunk more than the $699 being asked in the US (that's about £515 by conversion, just to add to the sting). In the EU, the laptop starts at €1,149 (so even more expensive again), while in Australia it's $1,399.

In the UK, students can get it for £699, while in the US they'll qualify for a $599 price. That ought to quickly mark it out as one of the best laptops for students from the off.

Those spell out some pretty big regional pricing differences, to be honest, and only the US sees a price that comes close to being in the region of what I was hoping for – and, indeed, in a MacBook Neo ballpark.

Design and Features

The good stuff is pretty front-loaded in the new XPS 13, in my view, because the moment you unbox it and get your hands on it, I think you're likely to fall in love with its design.

This 13-inch laptop is smaller than the majority of the competition in the same size bracket – it's incredibly compact and skinny, with no major ornamentation or flourishes to catch the eye. It's built entirely out of metal, for a really premium hand-feel.

On the back of the laptop's display, there's an XPS logo, which is nice and subtle, while the bottom of the laptop has a Dell logo, some vents for airflow and some rubberised treads for stability. Opening it up, you'll find a tenkeyless keyboard that runs almost the whole width of the machine, above a nice and wide touchpad.

Above it, there's a 13.4-inch display with impressively tiny bezels. It features a really eye-catching anti-reflective coating that does wonders for the laptop in bright conditions – and is one of the more pronounced versions I can remember seeing in recent years. Above that, there's the webcam setup.

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It bears repeating that the new XPS 13 is a seriously gorgeous little laptop – I've found its size almost hard to remind myself of at times when it's been in a backpack or drawer. There have been thinner machines, but I love the decision to avoid a wedge or taper in the design, and it's built really solidly, too.

This quality does mean that it weighs in at almost exactly 1kg, where we all know that more plastic could bring the weight down further, but I still find it to be hugely portable. In fact, I can't think of many recent laptops that would fit better into a flexible working pattern.

Back to the specs side of things, though. That display is a full multi-touch one, so you can swipe and tap if you like, and it comes with a 2560 x 1600 resolution, so it's extremely sharp given the size of the display. It can pull a refresh rate from 30Hz to 120Hz, so smoothness isn't an issue either.

The system is powered by a Series 3 Intel Core 5 Processor 320, as mentioned before, and this is paired with 8GB of RAM – which many people would agree is a slightly eyebrow-raising spec in 2026 on Windows. In the UK, upgrading that spec to 16GB costs a whopping £200 at the point of purchase, too.

You get a 512GB SSD for your file storage, meanwhile, and there's not even an upgrade path to make this 1TB, for instance, which underlines just how mad the pricing situation is becoming in computing.

Performance and Display

To keep going with the positives, I'm really impressed by the display that Dell has squeezed into such a tiny laptop. It's extremely crisp, and the lack of bezels on the left, right, and bottom really does make it feel expansive for the size of the laptop you're actually using.

Brands sometimes talk about "fitting a 13-inch screen into a 12-inch laptop" in a way that can feel slightly disingenuous, but if Dell used that sort of language for the XPS 13 I'd have no issue. The screen-to-body ratio is so impressive here that it really just underlines how impressively light and small the whole XPS 13 feels overall.

I also like the keyboard Dell chose, which is different from the one in the XPS 14 that I raved about earlier this year. Rather than all the keys being right up against each other, this time they're more spaced out and are basically more traditional rather than being chiclet style. I don't really mind either style, but I certainly have no complaints about the typing feel on the XPS 13.

The trackpad, similarly, didn't give me anything to specifically write home about, but in a good way – it's unremarkable but perfectly effective.

Where things do get a little more iffy, though, is when we turn to the XPS 13's actual power. We knew from the start that there would be non-Panther Lake versions of the laptop before the beefed-up versions arrive, but I didn't anticipate the compromises that have been made to get this XPS 13 version out the door.

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There's no two ways around it – the Series 3 Intel Core 5 Processor 320 and 8GB of RAM just don't make for as snappy-feeling a Windows experience as I'd expect. And it's certainly a combination that feels like it should be on a cheaper machine. The market for components is absolutely brutal right now, so this might be another example of it claiming a victim.

It's not that you'll feel the pain while web browsing or word processing, necessarily, which does mean that for the majority of simple tasks the XPS 13 will be more than enough for you. It's more of an issue when you start to multitask with more complex workflows.

So, if you're editing image files and connecting external storage, while also leaving Chrome open with a host of tabs, expect some of the multitasking to occasionally feel sluggish, and for the laptop to be fairly maxed out much of the time.

We know that versions using the Panther Lake Core Ultra 7 355 are on the way, and they should be transformative, given the huge uplift in power that chip brings (although it won't have the game-changing graphics of the most powerful Panther Lake chips). Still, I hesitate to wonder what sort of price they'll bring – it can't possibly be a sensible one.

When Dell first showed me the XPS 13, it openly compared it to the MacBook Neo, and at the time it probably had good reason. Even after the Neo's £100/$100 price hike, though, the XPS 13 still comes in looking pretty suspect when it comes to price, and that makes it an awkward laptop to recommend from a specs perspective.

Verdict

I can't remember rooting for a laptop like I was for the XPS 13 before testing it – the hands-on time I had in Taipei at Computex impressed me so significantly that I thought we could have a true all-time great on our hands. In a world where memory prices weren't spiking because of AI, that might have been the case, too.

The XPS 13 is, undoubtedly, the most attractive compact Windows laptop on the market right now from a design standpoint. It's built sturdily and is incredibly sleek and well considered, with every aspect of the laptop feeling premium and careful.

Simultaneously, though, it's overpriced and underpowered. That's close to kryptonite for a laptop of this sort, and I'm sure Dell still has daydreams about being able to launch it with a genuinely competitive price against the MacBook Neo (which also, awkwardly, had to up its price after just 3 months on the shelf).

That context all comes together to make the XPS 13 difficult to judge, not least because its best version isn't here yet. When the Intel Panther Lake-toting product arrives, I suspect it'll be the best premium compact Windows laptop going – but at what price? Until then, the XPS 13 is a harder sell, but still one that's recommendable and might find a cult fanbase purely on its design merits.

Also consider

If you've even half-read this review, you'll be able to guess the first point of comparison for you to consider – the MacBook Neo. Those who don't need a Windows experience will find it cheaper than the XPS 13, and probably a little better-performing. That said, it's heavier and feels less premium, so it's not a straightforward situation.

For those who need the Windows life but are realising that their budget is perhaps bigger than the XPS 13 warrants, there's an easy alternative in Dell's current lineup. The 2026 version of the XPS 14 is a stunner, and has none of the compromises of its smaller sibling – although that price remains stonking.