Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 review (2023) a great convertible laptop

The Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 that we all knew and loved is no longer with us. No, it’s not because Dell has stopped making the line. On the other hand, it looks like it’s here to stay based on the recent changes the maker has made to it, like changing its shape, which brings me back to my first point. Dell has taken the beautiful, slim convertible design of the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 — you know, the one with the beautiful, luxurious shell and the four-in-one design and turned it into a Windows 11-powered Lenovo Chromebook Duet.

Dell XPS 13 2-in-1: Description

That means that instead of a laptop, you are getting a tablet with a folio attached to it. Now, we not trying to say anything bad about the Chromebook Duet. It’s one of the best Chromebooks on the market and one of my personal favorites. It’s also hard to find joy in the way it can be taken apart, and we was disappointed to see one of the best Windows laptops (and one of the best laptops on the market) turn its beautiful design into a flimsy folio that needs a solid surface to work properly.

We understand what Dell was going for here. The Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 (2022) is much lighter, much thinner, and much smaller than its predecessor. It also has next-generation specs, which makes it a great laptop to carry around, whether you are going on business trips or trying to be a digital nomad again. In that way, it has worked. we took this laptop with me to Greece for two weeks and used it as my work laptop there. It gave me access to a full-fledged operating system without being as heavy as even the best Ultrabooks.

But there are some costs to this new form that can be taken off. There are only two ports, both of which are USB-C, and the battery life has been cut from about 10 hours to just eight. Adding insult to injury, the folio is not only weak, but if you’re used to the way traditional laptops work, it’s also hard to learn how to use.

Dell XPS 13 2-in-1: Pros and Cons

Specification Table

Dell XPS 13 2-in-1: Design

The Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 has been a convertible PC with a 360-degree hinge ever since it came out. This year, that will change, for better or worse. It’s hard to say whether a tablet or a convertible is better, but this is what we have. You might think that the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 (2022), which has sharper corners, looks like an iPad Pro. It takes the shape of a metal frame with flat edges and a uniform bezel around the screen.

When looking at it in landscape mode, both the volume buttons and the power button are on the top. The volume buttons are on the left, and the power button is on the right. Dell takes another thing from the iPad, which Microsoft doesn’t do with the Surface Pro 9: The volume buttons change based on where the device is. When you hold it vertically, the top volume button turns the volume up. If you hold it sideways, the buttons switch places so that the one on the right always turns up the volume.

In all four directions, it works. The two Thunderbolt 4 ports are on the left side. These ports can be used for anything you can think of. You could use one to connect a Thunderbolt dock or an external GPU, though you probably wouldn’t want to do that with a 9W CPU.

Dell XPS 13 2-in-1: Display

The XPS 13 2-in-1 has a 13-inch touch screen with a 3:2 aspect ratio and a resolution of 2880 x 1920. The screen isn’t amazing, but it works well enough for watching movies or doing work. In the trailer for the third season of The Mandalorian, there are a lot of colorful alien settings, all of which look great on this screen. Even though the screen is only 13 inches, we could see small details in the clothes of the characters.

Even though they were made with computer graphics, the spaceships and explosions looked real. If you want to use this device to stream content, you won’t be disappointed. Dell’s marketing for this 2-in-1 says that the screen can get as bright as 500 nits. I’m glad to say that this is pretty close. Based on our tests, the screen has an average brightness of 482.4 nits, with 485 nits in the center. On the other hand, the Surface Pro 9 averages 431.6 nits. But with an average of 587 nits, the iPad Pro 2022 shines brighter than both of them.

We pointed our colorimeter at the screen of the XPS 13 2-in-1 and found that it covers 100% of the sRGB color gamut and 70.9% of the more demanding DCI-P3 color gamut (the closer to 100%, the better). The Surface Pro 9’s screen shows 106.1% of the sRGB color space and 75.1% of the DCI-P3 color space when it comes to colors.

Dell XPS 13 2-in-1: Performance

The 12th generation i7 processor won’t break any records, but it will give the XPS 13 2-in-1 solid, mid-range performance that will make it easy to use productivity tools like Microsoft Office. Even when I use it as a tablet, it feels fast and responsive. When I switch between portrait and landscape mode, the Windows desktop and my web browser rotate smoothly.

In the GeekBench 6 test suite, the XPS 13 2-in-1 gets a score of 2,050 for single-core performance and 6,700 for multi-core performance. This puts it right next to the i7 processor in the Microsoft Surface Pro 9, which also has a score of 6,700. The XPS 13 2-in-1 isn’t great for gaming, though, because it only has integrated graphics. In fact, it wouldn’t even run most of our 3D graphics tests. It should be able to handle 2D platform games and card games pretty well, but it’s not really ready for fast-paced 3D action games.

But you can’t really expect fast gaming action from something this small, but it should have a longer battery life. Dell’s website doesn’t say anything about battery life, and even when using the most power-efficient settings and setting the screen brightness to 50%, the XPS 13 2-in-1 could barely stream video for a full six hours.

Battery Life and Heat

The XPS 13 2-in-1 lasted 8 hours and 16 minutes on our battery test, which was continuous web browsing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. These aren’t good results for a device that you’re supposed to carry with you all day. This is especially true when you look at the Surface Pro 9 (9:10) and iPad Pro 2022 (10:36), which are similar machines.

In our standard heat test, which involves running a heat gun over a device after streaming 15 minutes of full HD video on it, the 2-in-1 got as hot as 92.3 degrees Fahrenheit on the upper right side. Most of the time, we don’t like it when the temperature is over 95 degrees. Since the hottest part of the XPS 13 2-in-1 doesn’t get above that temperature, you should be able to hold it for long periods of time without getting too hot.

Pricing and Availability

Dell’s new XPS 13 2-in-1 was announced in the summer, and it’s now available. It starts at $999, like Microsoft’s Surface Pro 9, but that’s all it has in common with that price. The XPS comes with a Core i5, 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD in its base model.

It only costs $50 more to get 16GB of RAM. It costs $100 to bundle either the keyboard or the stylus, and there is no discount for bundling both. Still, the model that Dell sent me with a Core i5-1230U, 16GB LPDDR4x, a 512GB SSD, the folio keyboard, and the stylus is only $1,249.

Final Words

The XPS 13 2-in-1 is both stylish and useful, with a sleek, thin design that lets you quickly switch from a light tablet to a full-featured laptop whenever you need to. The screen has great image quality for both work and play, and compared to Microsoft’s Surface Pro 9, its price makes it a great deal. Only the short battery life might make people think twice about buying it.

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