Dell's $699 XPS 13 laptop is now available with the MacBook Neo in its sights — entry-level XPS design comes with Wildcat Lake, 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD

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Surprisingly available at the originally announced list price.

Dell XPS 13
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Dell's new XPS 13 is available for sale, starting at $599 for students and $699 for everyone else. Revealed as a MacBook Neo competitor sporting Intel's Wildcat Lake chips last month, the XPS 13 attempts to strike a balance between premium XPS design and entry-level specs. Given the state of DRAM and NAND flash prices, designs like the XPS 13 and Neo are an attempt to get premium-feeling devices into the hands of customers who don't need high-end compute, all at reasonable prices

At the heart of the XPS 13 is one of Intel's new Wildcat Lake chips, which have been sparsely available in the U.S. market. This range is built on the same 18A process as Intel's Panther Lake SoCs, and it leverages the same microarchitectures. Wildcat Lake is severely stripped back compared to Panther Lake, however.

The entry-level XPS 13 at $699 comes with Intel's Core 5 320, for instance, which is a six-core chip with two Cougar Cove P-cores and a cluster of four Darkmont LPE cores. It has a base power draw of just 15W, and a maximum turbo power of 35W, along with onboard Intel Graphics sporting two Xe3 cores. With those specs, you shouldn't expect to do more than basic web and productivity tasks.

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However, Wildcat Lake comes with the upside of modern connectivity, including speedy LPDDR5X at up to 7,467 MT/s, Wi-Fi 7, and USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2. The XPS 13 specifically has some premium flourishes, as well. It's an all-aluminum machine that weighs just 2.2 pounds and measures 0.5 inches think, and it's equipped with a 13.4-inch 2.5K touch display, even on the $699 design.

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CPU

Intel Core 5 320 (6-core, 2 + 0 + 4, up to 4.6 GHz)

GPU

Intel Graphics (2 Xe3)

Memory

8GB LPDDR5X-7467 (single-channel)

Storage

512 GB NVMe SSD

Ports

2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C

Display

13.4-inch, touch, 120Hz, 2560 x 1600, 500 nits

Battery

52 Whr

Weight

2.2 pounds (1 kg)

Dimensions

0.5 x 11.69 x 7.9 inches (12.7 x 296.9 x 200.66 mm)

You can see the full specs for the entry-level configuration above. As it stands now, there's only one other configuration available with 16 GB of memory for $899. Keep in mind that Wildcat Lake is a single-channel product; even with 16 GB of memory, you'll still need to settle for single-channel performance. But given this machine's target audience, that's probably fine.

Dell says it will eventually release the XPS 13 with Panther Lake chips, which uses proper dual-channel memory. We'll eventually see a configuration with the Core Ultra 7 355, which starts at 16 GB of memory and scales up to 32 GB, as well as sports Thunderbolt 4. Additionally, Dell says it will offer the XPS 13 with 256 GB and 1 TB storage options, but 512 GB is the only configuration available now.

If you need an affordable basic Windows laptop in a chassis that doesn't feel like a penalty box, the XPS 13 is a strong choice. Get it while it's hot.

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Jake Roach
Jake Roach
Senior Analyst, CPUs

Jake Roach is the Senior CPU Analyst at Tom’s Hardware, writing reviews, news, and features about the latest consumer and workstation processors.

6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • abufrejoval
    Don't quite know why this reminds me of the Russians waving flags in terrain supposedly taken from Ukraine...

    Somehow this seems like the type of machine nobody wants to build and nobody should buy, yet needs to be there, just to keep the Fruity Cult from overrunning what used to be a personal computing market, that all vendors try to turn into an AI addiction needle instead.

    Anyone with half a brain should be looking at old new stock, which oddly enough still exists and offers vastly better value, and often twice everything when adding another one or two hundred quid.

    Then again, there is even a refurbished market, should buget constraints bite harder.
    Reply
  • HideOut
    "We'll eventually see a configuration with the Core Ultra 7 355, which starts at 16 GB of memory and scales up to 32 GB, as well as sports Thunderbolt 4. "

    You mean SUPPORTS?
    Reply
  • cyrusfox
    abufrejoval said:
    Anyone with half a brain should be looking at old new stock, which oddly enough still exists and offers vastly better value, and often twice everything when adding another one or two hundred quid.

    Then again, there is even a refurbished market, should buget constraints bite harder.
    If the old new stock isn't lunar lake, it can't compete on battery, I have heard very glowing reports about battery life on this platform, and that is attractive.
    Reply
  • ezst036
    More ridiculous Windows 11 computers having only half the DRAM they need to nicely function.
    Reply
  • das_stig
    Battery life of current models would be more than enough for a days work, even 8GB could be usable for light office work, if Windows was more efficiently coded, Microsoft and friends didn't have so much unnecessary crap running eating resources, just to "enhance the customer experience".

    Like to see a review of Wildcat Lake running Linux in an everyday office test.
    Reply
  • abufrejoval
    cyrusfox said:
    If the old new stock isn't lunar lake, it can't compete on battery, I have heard very glowing reports about battery life on this platform, and that is attractive.
    True and LL is one variant I had in mind, now that the prices are ok, but there are other choices, too.

    Trying to get everything will cost you dearly and fail to to deliver all. You need to carefully look at what's really important and sufficient for you, and then focus on how extra money gets you extra value, not just stick with 'everything', which the leading edge keeps promising.

    It's for the battery life I got myself a LL laptop recently and yes, it's doing better than anything Intel I own and it also beats my Hawk Point variants on battery, but the ARM chips I tested, X1 Elite and Fruity Cult M4 are lasting longer yet, still not nearly as long as an Android tablet like my OnePlus Pad 2, which shames a lot of x86, at least in Geekbench, and the Fruity Cult with a brilliant hi-res touchscreen, pen, 16GB of RAM and 500GB of SSD at €500.

    For me software platform issues quickly eliminated the Fruity Cult, but also Windows on ARM, both for lack of good Linux support while Android remains handycapped with desktop apps, desktop mode and Meta going down the AI dictator path.

    BTW LL does much better on suspend to RAM with Linux than Windows, because on Windows the connected standby eats your battery by waking up every 30 minutes, even in airplane mode: tried tons of things to disable the wakeup trigger, but nothing worked. Fedora disables hibernation by default (because it leaves RAM content unencrypted), but one might argue that it also doesn't need it any more: contrary to Windows LL lasts for days without noticeable battery drop on suspend with Fedora.

    So depending on how you use your laptop, LL on Linux might get you through several days of conference, note taking and occasional reference surfing, while Windows may force you to hibernate, which is much slower and far more expensive on the battery, just because it keeps eating too much power in suspend...
    Reply