Battery Life and Pricing

Editor’s Note: After our review of the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1, Dell contacted us about our performance results. They found our numbers were significantly lower than their own internal benchmarks. They offered to send us a replacement notebook to test, and we have done so. After spending some time with the new unit we have seen much higher results, more in line with Dell’s performance claims. We haven’t been able to find any differences between our initial sample and the new notebook, and our old sample has been sent back to Dell for further analysis. Due to these changes, the performance results and conclusion of this review have been edited to reflect the higher performance results.

In order to evaluate battery life, we test our mobile devices while browsing the internet with Google Chrome. While we know that Chrome isn't exactly an easy application on battery life, it's the most popular browser and that's what we use day-to-day at the office. We want the result to be as close to real world browsing as possible, which is also why we run the screen brightness at a fixed 180 nits which is bright enough to be usable in all indoor environments. 

Looking at the results, we see that the XPS 13 2-in-1 achieves an impressive 8 hours and 30 minutes in our browsing battery test. This is in part to the impressive 60Wh battery contained in this small chassis, compared to the 33.7Wh battery in the MateBook and the 49.2Wh battery in the 2016 MacBook Pro.

Pricing

The XPS 13 2-in-1 as we reviewed it is currently available from Dell for $1,299. Additionally, while the machine we reviewed only had 8GB of RAM, Dell is currently running an offer with a free upgrade to 16GB of memory for this specific configuration.

Overall, I am left feeling pretty conflicted and confused about the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1. I've always admired the standard XPS 13 as a high bar for great PC notebooks, and I have become a fan of 360-degree hinges through the Lenovo Yoga series. 

What I don't understand is why this had to be a completely separate product from the standard XPS 13. Dell's 360-degree hinge implementation is great, and design change of moving the camera helps the usability of this notebook versus its sibling. I think users of the standard XPS 13 would be willing to sacrifice a bit of additional thickness in order to bring this design to that notebook.

 If you are dead set on a 2-in-1 this is still a really good notebook, but at the price point compared to the trusty XPS 13, I would be hesitant to recommend it to someone looking for a new notebook.

Instead, the most recently updated standard Dell XPS 13 might be the best option for you. It has a lower starting price and higher performance platform.

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