Tiger Lake is coming in Dell XPS 13, XPS 13 DE, and XPS 13 2-in-1

The newest replace to Dell’s XPS 13 product line shall be accessible starting Wednesday, September 30, and can characteristic Eleventh-generation Intel CPUs, aka Tiger Lake. We all know lots of AMD followers are going to be upset at no Staff Crimson possibility—actually, we’re a bit upset, too; we have been extraordinarily impressed with this 12 months’s AMD Renoir laptop computer CPUs.

Nonetheless upset AMD followers could be, Tiger Lake represents a fairly large improve from final 12 months’s Ice Lake and Comet Lake lineup, as we noticed instantly after we had the prospect to check a prototype Tiger Lake laptop computer earlier this month. The 4 core/eight thread i7-1185G7 we count on within the highest-end XPS 13 fashions may not be a match for an eight core/sixteen thread Ryzen 7 4800U—but it surely hangs fairly even with an eight core/eight thread Ryzen 7 4700U, even on massively multithreaded workloads.

In the meantime, not each workload is massively multi-threaded—and the Tiger Lake i7 we examined demonstrated extraordinarily quick single-threaded efficiency. Extra importantly, its Xe built-in graphics had been far and away the best performing iGPU we have ever seen—they are not able to take the place of a gamer’s Nvidia RTX collection discrete GPU, however we suspect they sounded a dying knell for Nvidia’s cheaper MX collection of discrete laptop computer GPUs.

Though Dell hasn’t come proper out and mentioned it, we count on the brand new XPS 13 fashions to even be certified below Intel’s Mission Evo platform model. This implies extraordinarily quick boot and wake-from-sleep instances, very lengthy battery life—which should be achieved below excessive efficiency settings—and quick charging. Dell has particularly focused 19 hours’ runtime for the Dell XPS 13 and XPS 13 two-in-one, with a barely extra modest 18:40 for the Linux-powered XPS 13 Developer Version.

A better take a look at the lineup

One of many coolest issues in regards to the new XPS 13, in our opinion, is that it and the XPS 13 Developer Version are now not actually separate {hardware}. Dell is now permitting customers to put in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on XPS 13 laptops that weren’t bought as Developer Version with out shedding their manufacturing unit guarantee and assist.

Aside from that, you are a really modern, small laptop computer that takes a “high quality over amount” strategy to ports—the one ports it affords are two Thunderbolt 4/USB-C (one on both sides), a 3.5mm headphone/mic combo jack, and a microSD card reader.

The excellent news is, each TB4/USB-C ports assist Energy Supply and DisplayPort—so you’ve got received choices, however you will want a dock to attach any USB-A gear reminiscent of mice, keyboards, or commonplace thumb drives. (Dell contains one USB-C to USB-A dongle, however we suspect most individuals will want extra choices fairly shortly.)

Along with the usual XPS 13 and XPS 13 Developer Version, there’s an XPS 13 two-in-one. For those who’re not accustomed to that type issue, it is a “convertible” laptop computer—a 360-degree hinge lets you fold the display round solely, after which you faux the keyboard would not exist and work together solely with its touchscreen.

For probably the most half, the XPS 13 two-in-one is only a convertible XPS 13—however the larger dimension constraints restrict CPU choices a bit; the two-in-one tops out with the i7-1165G7. Fortunately, the RAM can nonetheless go all the way in which as much as 32GiB—although, as with the usual XPS 13, you’d higher order it the way in which you need it; the RAM is soldered to the board and never upgradeable or replaceable later.

Choices and availability

The XPS 13, XPS 13 Developer’s Version, and XPS 13 two-in-one are all accessible beginning September 30 in platinum exterior/carbon inside trim. Each machines shall be accessible in frost exterior/arctic white inside trim later. At launch, all XPS 13 variants will use the Killer AX1650 Wi-Fi 6 chipset, primarily based upon Intel’s AX200.

At a later date, some fashions shall be accessible with Killer Wi-Fi AX500-DBS, which is as an alternative primarily based on Qualcomm 6390.