Dell XPS 13 Plus – It looks like a MacBook Touch Bar

Dell today introduced its latest line of XPS laptops. Previous updates have ranged from minor processor upgrades to moderate design changes with larger screen-to-body ratios, smaller footprints, and breaking changes such as the removal of the nose-up webcam. But the latest XPS 13 is one of the most unusual in recent years. Designed to accommodate a more power-hungry processor, Dell is calling it the XPS 13 Plus.

Announced this week for CES 2022, the XPS 13 Plus (9320) will be available worldwide this spring with Windows 11 or Ubuntu 20.04 (XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition). Dell has yet to decide on a starting price, but has told the press that it is “targeting”$1,199.99 in the US. That’s a notable jump from the current non-Plus XPS, which starts at $850 (this configuration was out of stock on Dell’s website at the time of writing. The next cheap WeU available starts at $950). Dell has said it will confirm the price of the XPS 13 Plus closer to the shipping date.

One look at the XPS 13 Plus and you can tell it offers a different experience than the previous XPS 13. The machine’s keyboard extends across the entire panel with no gaps between individual keys. The touchpad is not surrounded by a frame and is not complemented by the left and right mouse buttons, but responds with haptic feedback. And instead of filling the keyboard with a row of function keys, the XPS 13 Plus has a capacitive touch strip, similar to the Apple Touch Bar, that you can toggle to display feature lines you type or media functions.

A range of capacitive touch features

The Touch Bar was an interesting concept that MacBook Pros started playing with in 2016. It replaced the top row of physical function keys with a capacitive touch strip that provided access to numerous inputs, including those for specific applications.

The 2021 MacBook Pro does away with Window Touch, but the XPS 13 Plus brings back the concept with a more pared down approach. Like the previous generation MacBook, the XPS 13 Plus has a capacitive touch strip instead of a function row with physical keys. It doesn’t change depending on the app, and unfortunately it’s not programmable (you can’t turn it off either). Instead, by pressing Fn and Esc, you can display one of two sets of menus:

• Esc, F1-F12 and Delete
• Esc, Mute, Volume Down, Volume Up, Mute, Play/Pause, Keyboard Brightness, Display Brightness Down, Display Brightness Up, Windows Projector Menu, Print Screen, Home Screen, End, Paste and Delete

Locking the menu of my choice was easy, but having to hold down two keys to see one of the two lists of inputs didn’t seem intuitive at the time I worked with the XPS 13 Plus. I may get used to it over time, but I usually don’t need a setup period to use my laptop’s function or multimedia keys, especially on a mainstream system like an XPS laptop. The fact that the keys work with a touch screen and not with a button press makes the experience even more unnatural.

However, I’m sure there are people who lament Apple’s move away from the Touch Bar. Unique technologies have become cult. This is definitely one of the more unusual XPS features coming soon.

In addition to a number of touch features, the XPS 13 Plus keyboard spans the full width of the deck thanks to large keycaps. Over the past few years, Dell has increased the size of the XPS 13’s keypad and told me this is the final step.

In addition to numerous 3D printed assemblies, the spacious XPS 13 Plus keyboard required a new scissor mechanism to stabilize the keycaps. While the rubber dome keyboard also has a 0.3mm deeper platter, the keys retain the same 1mm of travel as the current XPS 13.

In my opinion, the current XPS 13’s keyboard offers the minimum path needed to be usable by frequent typists. However, the keys on the XPS 13 Plus are much closer together. They make the keyboard look flattering, while also making finding my place a bit disorienting. But when I pressed the keys, I was surprised at how much my fingers traveled.

This wacky new keyboard with a range of touch features may seem like a gimmick, but it also serves a functional purpose. Removing the physical feature line was one step towards getting the XPS with a 28W processor rather than a 15W one.

Force

Omitting a number of physical features gives the XPS 13 Plus more thermal headroom than the standard XPS 13, allowing Dell to run a 28W processor instead of 15W while maintaining a similarly sized build. The XPS 13 Plus is 0.60 inches (15.28 mm) thick and starts at 2.73 pounds (1.24 kg). The current XPS 13 starts at 0.62 inches (15.8 mm) and 2.6 pounds (1.16 kg).

Additionally, Dell is removing the headset jack and thicker protruding hinge found on today’s XPS 13 to leave more room for heat dissipation. It also ditched the glass cover on the 13.4-inch display, which includes a 3456×2160 OLED touchscreen, to keep the weight low and “improve clarity,”according to press releases.

This machine has a couple more fans than its predecessor, according to Dell. They extend to the outer edges of the deck, and with a heat sink at the rear, Dell claims the XPS 13 Plus delivers 55 percent more airflow than the XPS 13, “without increasing noise.”

The XPS 13 Plus starts with a 12-core Intel Core i5-1240P with turbo speeds up to 4.4GHz and 12MB of cache. Its top configuration includes the i7-1280P with 12 cores, 4.8GHz turbo and 24MB cache. It can also support up to 32GB LPDDR5-5200 RAM and 2TB PCIe 4.0 x4 SSD.

By comparison, the current XPS 13 goes up to a four-core i7-1195G7 (albeit different cores than those used with 12th Gen Intel chips), boosted to 5GHz, and 12MB of cache. You can set it up with up to 32GB of the slower LPDDR4x-4267 RAM and 2TB of PCIe 3.0 storage.

I haven’t had a chance to test the performance of the XPS 13 Plus, so it will be interesting to see if the thin and light clamshell can handle noise and especially heat to get the most out of it. of relatively beefy parts for such a small car.