A new, thinner XPS 13 is also coming later this year.
Replacing the function keys with a capacitive bar was the stupidest thing they have ever done. So silly that even Apple walked back on that design choice.
Any serious laptop buyer would rule out a laptop just for that. And any casual buyer looking to spend XPS money on a laptop is going to buy a MacBook.
I’m glad the XPS line is back but unfortunately for Dell Windows is worse than ever.
When I last bought an XPS 13, there was an option for Ubuntu. I agree that many people will choose a Macbook, but the XPS line has been decent. Perhaps someday they will discover the third OS option.
My work gave me a Mac with this. I absolutely hated it - constantly triggering random things I didn’t want or need and apparently something about the wiring caused the physical keyboard to fail prematurely.
Fortunately we’ve moved on from those dark days. I still have to use a Mac, but at least there’s no touch bar.
I’ll never buy an xps again. Last one needed pretty much everything replacing, and within 3 years dell stopped manufacturing the battery!!
$2k on a laptop that’s a brick within 3 years?
1 Hz display option: like an e-Ink display?
(it says 120Hz in the article)
They might mean down to 1hz like some smart phones do, to save battery.
There’s a 1920 x 1200 non-touch display option, which will surely get you better battery life than OLED. But what’s most interesting about it is the 1-120 Hz variable refresh rate, which Dell says is a first to for this model. That extremely low refresh should help save power when static images or text is on the screen.
Ah yeah, I should have read the rest of the article. I didn’t know about that feature though, that’s cool
Ha, I thought a 1Hz display was a typo until I read the article - that’s the minimum display update, not the maximum: for situations when nothing’s changing on the screen to save battery life.
On phones and tablets, variable refresh rates make an “always on” display feasible in terms of battery budget, where you can have something like a lock screen turned on at all times without burning through too much power.
On laptops, this might open up some possibilities of the lock screen or some kind of static or slideshow screensaver staying on longer while idle, before turning off the display.
With enough pitch black on the lock screen background, you should be able to keep it going for quite a bit longer, since this apparently has OLED. I think for phones, always on is usually a black background with text and stuff on it, isn’t it?
Most Android phones with always on have a grayscale screen that is mostly black. But iPhones introduced always on with 1Hz screens and still show a less saturated, less bright version of the color wallpaper on the lock screen.
