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Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 Review: A Surface-like Slate for Less

The latest hybrid XPS isn’t as expensive as the Microsoft Surface it apes, but parts of it aren’t as good, either.

The newest XPS 13 two-in-one from Dell looks and feels a lot like the Surface Pro from Microsoft. Yes, there are many other Windows tablets with clip-on keyboards, but the Surface is the original and still best known, so it’s the one you’re most likely to compare with this. 

I’ve always been a fan of the XPS line in general, and specifically the XPS 13 clamshell laptops. This two-in-oneversion has some of the same aesthetically minimalist touches and mod-feeling matte aluminum body. Even better, it costs a good deal less than a comparable Surface Pro, depending on how you configure each system. 

7.7

XPS 13 Two-in-One

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Like

  • Less expensive than some competing products
  • Fanless, silent operation
  • Excellent keyboard feel

Don’t Like

  • Kickstand implementation is poor
  • Keyboard lies perfectly flat
  • No headphone jack

A Surface Pro 9 with a Core i5 CPU, 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD, along with the keyboard cover, is $1,578. A similarly configured XPS 13 two-in-one, also with the keyboard cover, is $1,299. And that’s with a bigger 512GB SSD, too. An exact comparison is tough because the Surface Pro 9 doesn’t offer a pairing of Core i5 and 512GB, while the XPS 13 two-in-oneoffers only 512GB and 1TB storage options. Prices can also change regularly with limited time discounts and deals. (As of this review, the Surface Pro 9 is offering a free keyboard cover for a limited time, a savings of $179.)

There’s also an ARM-based Surface Pro 9 (the model we reviewed) that uses Microsoft’s SQ3 chip instead of one from Intel and adds 5G support, but there’s no comparable XPS two-in-oneoption for that. 

Dell XPS 13 9315 2-in-1

Price as reviewed $1,299
Display size/resolution 13-inch 2,880×1,920 Touch
CPU 1GHz Intel Core i5-1230
Memory 16GB LP-DDR4
Graphics 128MB Intel Iris Xe Graphics
Storage 512GB, M.2, PCIe NVMe, SSD
Networking Wi-Fi 6E 1675 (AX211) 2×2 + Bluetooth 5.2

Keyboard and kickstand sins

But configured as closely as possible, there’s a pretty big price difference. Still, I’m still not sure I would go with the XPS two-in-oneover the Surface Pro 9. Why? Because the two things the Surface has perfected about tablet/laptop hybrids, the kickstand and the keyboard cover, are not quite as perfected here. 

dell-xps-2-in-1-2023-2dell-xps-2-in-1-2023-2
Dan Ackerman/CNET

And that’s a shame because the 13-inch 2,880×1,920 screen is bright and rich-looking. It’s rated for 500 nits brightness, and in practice it makes for a very good TV/movie streaming device when lying in bed. The Surface Pro supports a faster 120Hz refresh rate, versus just 60Hz here. That can mean smoother video, but also have an impact on battery life. Having a higher, or variable, refresh rate is a nice feature to have, but most people will be happy with a 60Hz screen. 

But the keyboard cover, which Dell calls the XPS Folio, is a letdown. I’ll start with the good news: It’s just $100 extra, not the criminal $179 Microsoft charges for its keyboard cover. But unlike the Surface keyboard, which can angle up at the back for a more ergonomic experience, the Dell version sits flat on your desk and that’s it. The actual keys are large, flat, edge-to-edge-style keys, which is a good use of limited space, and in fact, it feels more like a solid laptop keyboard than the Surface version. But, the lack of any kind of incline option made it feel awkward. 

dell-xps-2-in-1-2023-3dell-xps-2-in-1-2023-3
Dan Ackerman/CNET

A far bigger sin is how the kickstand is incorporated into the XPS Folio itself, instead of being built into the tablet. That means to prop up the XPs 13 two-in-one, you need the full keyboard cover attached, even if you just want to prop the tablet up like a standalone screen. While the Surface Pro allows for almost unlimited kickstand angles, the back of the XPs Folio slides down into three magnetic stops, and it’s entirely possible none of them will feel exactly right to you. 

Fanless performance 

Once you get past these design foibles, the XPs 13 two-in-oneis a respectable performer for a U-series Core i5 Windows system. It’s fanless, which makes it totally silent and helps battery life, even if it’s a theoretical limiter on overall performance because the heat needs to be regulated. 

A current M2 MacBook is faster, as is the Core i7 XPS 13 Plus and the most recent Core i5 XPS 13, but not by a huge amount. I’d call this a perfectly fine PC for mainstream tasks and even some photo or video work. 

dell-xps-2-in-1-2023 with keyboard stand attached, rear/side viewdell-xps-2-in-1-2023 with keyboard stand attached, rear/side view
Dan Ackerman/CNET

Battery life is also nearly 7.5 hours on our online video streaming test. Again, nowhere near what some other laptops with bigger batteries can pull off, but still very good if you’re going to be doing a lot of video streaming. 

This see-sawing list of pluses and minuses leave the XPS 13 two-in-onein a strange place. The price is right, considering the components, accessories, design and performance. But in some of the quality of life issues, it falls behind the more expensive Surface Pro line, and you’ll have to decide if the price tradeoff is worth it for the kickstand and keyboard differences. 

Geekbench 5 (multicore)

Asus ROG Flow Z13

11,620

Apple MacBook Air (13-inch, M2, 2022)

8,592

Dell XPS 13 Plus 9320

8,302

Dell XPS 13 9315

7,369

Dell XPS 13 9315 2-in-1

6,133

Microsoft Surface Pro 9

5,652

Microsoft Surface Pro 8

5,317

Note:

Longer bars indicate better performance

Cinebench R23 (multicore)

Asus ROG Flow Z13

12,389

Dell XPS 13 Plus 9320

10,344

Dell XPS 13 9315 2-in-1

7,474

Apple MacBook Air (13-inch, M2, 2022)

6,796

Dell XPS 13 9315

5,332

Microsoft Surface Pro 8

4,176

Microsoft Surface Pro 9

3,318

Note:

Longer bars indicate better performance

Online streaming battery drain test

Apple MacBook Air (13-inch, M2, 2022)

1,039

Microsoft Surface Pro 9

645

Dell XPS 13 9315

611

Microsoft Surface Pro 8

524

Dell XPS 13 9315 2-in-1

449

Asus ROG Flow Z13

381

Dell XPS 13 Plus 9320

235

Note:

Longer bars indicate better performance

System configurations

Dell XPS 13 9315 2-in-1 Microsoft Windows 11 Home; 1GHz Intel Core i5-1230U; 16GB DDR4 4,266MHz RAM; 128MB Intel Iris Xe Graphics; 512GB SSD
Dell XPS 13 9315 Windows 11 Home; 1GHz Intel Core i5-1230U; 16GB DDR5 6,400MHz RAM; 128MB Intel Iris Xe Graphics; 512GB SSD
Dell XPS 13 Plus 9320 Windows 11 Home; 1.8GHz Intel Core i7-1280P; 16GB DDR5 6,400MHz RAM; 128MB Intel Iris Xe Graphics; 512GB SSD
Microsoft Surface Pro 9 Microsoft Windows 11 Home; 3GHz Microsoft SQ3; 16GB DDR4 RAM; 7,889MB shared Qualcomm Adreno graphics; 256GB SSD
Microsoft Surface Pro 8 Microsoft Windows 11 Home; 3GHz Intel Core i7-118G7; 16GB DDR4 RAM; 128MB Intel Iris Xe graphics; 256GB SSD
Apple MacBook Air (13-inch, M2, 2022) Apple MacOS Monterey 12.4; Apple M2 8-core chip; 8GB RAM; Apple 10-core GPU; 256GB SSD
Asus ROG Flow Z13 Microsoft Windows 11 Home; 2.5GHz Intel Core i9-12900H; 16GB DDR5 6,400MHz RAM; 4GB Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti graphics; 1TB SSD

Technologies

Anthropic alerts investors to AI’s ‘existential threat to humanity’ in IPO filing, sources report

Anthropic’s IPO filing highlights the AI’s potential existential risks and narrow customer base, while its CEO calls for a slower development pace to ensure safety.

Anthropic plans to warn speculative investors in its IPO prospectus that its AI models pose a “catastrophic or existential risk to humanity,” several reports said on Tuesday.

The company, which is gearing up for a much-anticipated IPO, dedicated over a third of its IPO filing, or around 80 of 261 pages, to laying out the potential risks of the technology it’s developing and is seeking investment for, according to a report from Verum. It only used 48 pages to discuss its actual business.

The five-year-old company, known for its frontier language model Claude, warned that AI can have “self-preserving behaviors,” including being able to “resist shutdown,” “conceal or manipulate information,” and carry out behaviors “resembling blackmail,” per the Verum report.

The company is pursuing a $2 trillion valuation when it goes public and reported in the filing that it made a net loss of $42 billion in 2025. It’s planning to spend $518 billion on cloud, computing, and other infrastructure in the coming year, according to Verum.

Anthropic also warned that its customer base is extremely narrow, with nearly a quarter of its revenue last year coming from just two clients, two people familiar with the filing told the Financial Times.

AI safety guardrails

Anthropic’s co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei has previously written various essays warning on the threats of AI, including saying the technology will cause “unusually painful” disruption to the job market.

In another recent essay, the CEO urged the AI industry to slow the pace of AI model development, with a three-step plan to reduce how quickly models get better without “sacrificing commercial advantage or the United States’ lead in AI.”

Those calls for a slowdown are somewhat of a “head scratcher” for the sector, to which the market has reacted “pretty resoundingly,” Dan Ives, partner and senior managing director at Yorkville Ives told CNBC earlier today.

“You need guardrails from a safety perspective, but the fact for Anthropic and OpenAI to slow down, if they slowed down, China would just accelerate and win, and I think that’s part of this quagmire that you’re seeing is that there’s some regulatory capture going on. There’s definitely a game of poker, but for Anthropic, they got to continue to put foot on the pedal.”

Ives added that while guardrails are essential, regulation could stifle innovation. That continues to be the “biggest concern within the U.S., which is why we’re in an F1 race,” he said.

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Technologies

U.S. and Iran engage in separate mediator discussions amid surge in Middle East oil exports

U.S. and Iranian officials held separate indirect talks mediated by Qatar as Middle East crude exports neared wartime highs, while Tehran awaits a U.S. response to its cease‑fire and sanctions‑relief proposal.

On Monday, American and Iranian representatives engaged in distinct indirect negotiations mediated by third parties, aiming to halt seven months of hostilities while Iran awaits Washington’s reply to an updated cease‑fire proposal and Middle Eastern oil shipments reach wartime peaks.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with Qatari mediators in New York, staying on after the UN General Assembly, and indicated he anticipates a U.S. response by Tuesday. “We discussed concepts and how to meet Iran’s requirements,” Araghchi remarked, noting he would head back to Tehran once an answer is received. “When the Qataris have a reply, they know how to deliver it to us.”

The Iranian plan, initially unveiled during the sidelines of last week’s UN General Assembly, asks the United States to unfreeze Iranian assets, remove oil sanctions and lift the naval blockade of Iranian ports within four to five days, and to commence nuclear negotiations within a week. Tehran links any resumption of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz to the fulfillment of those conditions.

On Sunday, President Donald Trump dismissed the proposal as “unacceptable,” asserting that Iran seeks a rapid agreement due to economic strain. Speaking at the White House on Monday, Trump noted that U.S. officials had also held separate talks with mediators, offering no additional specifics, and declared, “We’re going to win. It’s going to happen fast.”

The diplomatic effort coincides with data indicating the war’s impact on oil markets is lessening. Middle Eastern crude exports have risen this month to near their highest point since the conflict started in February, according to Kpler. The firm noted in a Monday briefing that exports are “just under 80% of pre‑conflict levels.”

The Strait of Hormuz remains far from usual activity. Kpler’s real‑time monitoring recorded a flow of 10,591 kilobarrels per day through the strait on Saturday, compared with a prewar baseline of 17,133 kilobarrels per day.

The ongoing impasse is influencing U.S. fuel markets, where retail diesel prices linger close to a record $6.53 per gallon. The Trump administration is reconsidering an export ban, having recently distanced itself from an earlier iteration of the idea; Kpler estimates such a ban would retain about 1.2 million barrels per day domestically, potentially straining storage capacity.

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Technologies

Saudi Red Sea export rebound pushes oil prices down

Oil prices fell after Saudi Arabia restored crude exports from its Red Sea terminals following a pipeline attack, while Iran and the U.S. continue talks over the Strait of Hormuz.

Oil prices fell on Tuesday as Saudi Arabia’s crude exports from its Red Sea ports recovered from an attack on a key pipeline earlier this month. The decline reflects renewed flow from major loading points.

Satellite imagery confirmed a “major operational recovery” at the Yanbu and Muajjiz terminals, according to a Kpler note released on Tuesday. The data shows that 12.5 million barrels were loaded onto nine tankers at Yanbu between Saturday and Monday, restoring activity after a drone strike disrupted the East‑West pipeline earlier in the month.

Riyadh has brought the pipeline’s throughput back to roughly 3.5 million barrels per day, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News on Monday. The line’s maximum capacity is 7 million bpd, indicating that the current flow is about half of its peak.

Meanwhile, U.S. and Iranian officials spoke with mediators on Monday as they attempt anew to negotiate a deal to end the seven‑month conflict. Iran offered last week to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if the United States accepts the terms of the failed June memorandum of understanding, but President Donald Trump rejected Tehran’s proposal on Saturday as exports through the waterway recover.

Oil flows through Hormuz have averaged 13.2 million barrels per day over the past week, according to Kpler data—about 77 % of the 17 million bpd that moved through the strait before the U.S.–Iran war. The U.S. military continues to protect tankers from Gulf allies and maintains a blockade on Iranian exports.

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