Dell XPS 13 9300 Review: The Ultimate Thin Laptop!

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Recently, many friends have been asking me, what laptop is the most reliable to buy these days without considering the budget? My answer is simple: for gaming laptops, choose ALIENWARE; for thin laptops, look at XPS. These two brands are benchmarks in their respective fields, and you can’t go wrong by choosing them with your eyes closed.

Now, the opportunity for proof has arrived.

As you can see, Dell’s latest generation XPS 13 9300 is already in front of us. Let’s talk about what makes it stand out and see why it can be the first choice for thin laptops.

Slender Body Comparable to iPad Pro

Nowadays, almost all laptops use ultra-narrow bezel designs, which you should be used to by now, right? However, when I got the actual Dell XPS 13 9300, I was still amazed by its design.

5.6mm, 4.6mm, and 3.85mm are the widths of the top, bottom, and left/right bezels of the Dell XPS 13 9300, respectively. It can be said that the XPS product has once again broken the narrow bezel record in the laptop field, with a screen-to-body ratio of up to 91.5%, a figure even higher than many smartphones with full-screen designs!

Dell XPS 13 9300 Compared to Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max: The Former is a Full-Screen Laptop

The benefit of compressing the bezels to the extreme is that it makes the Dell XPS 13 9300 smaller and more exquisite; it is only slightly larger than an A4-sized magazine, and this feeling can be more vividly felt when you hold it in your hands.

Many Apple fans believe that the MacBook Air is the most lightweight benchmark among 13-inch thin laptops. However, when this benchmark meets the Dell XPS 13 9300, you will know what it means to “compare goods and throw away the inferior”. Whether it’s length, width, thickness, battery capacity, or overall weight, the XPS 13 9300 will teach it how to behave in no time. If you think this isn’t impressive, then take a look at its comparison with the 12.9-inch iPad Pro; they have their advantages and disadvantages in length and width, but let’s not forget that the XPS 13 9300 is a laptop with a larger screen that also supports touch functionality.

In addition to being thinner and lighter, holding the Dell XPS 13 9300 gives you a sense of “safety”. Its shell is made from a single piece of 6000 series aerospace aluminum through top-notch CNC precision stamping technology, so you no longer have to worry about your laptop getting deformed when squeezed on the subway during peak hours.

The carbon fiber palm rest design on the C surface of the Dell XPS 13 9300 is very unique, giving a leather-like delicate touch when your palm rests on it, which is particularly comfortable.

The Dell XPS 13 9300 features a unique Edge-to-Edge keyboard, where the keyboard edges extend to the chassis edges, increasing the keycap area by 9%. When placed next to a 15.6-inch gaming laptop, you will find that the XPS 13 9300’s keycaps are even larger! Larger keycaps and longer key travel make typing on the XPS 13 9300 a pleasure during long sessions.

Above: Dell XPS 13 9300 Below: 15.6-inch Gaming Laptop

This product’s TouchPad is also very large, covered with a layer of delicate glass material. When your fingers glide across it, it feels like sliding on a smartphone screen, supporting multi-finger gesture functionality, enhancing efficiency when using Windows 10.

Do you see the power button at the upper right corner of the keyboard? The Dell XPS 13 9300 combines the fingerprint recognition function with the power button, allowing for dual security verification with facial recognition and fingerprint recognition, whichever you prefer.

Now, many laptops support facial recognition, but the Dell XPS 13 9300 is one of the most special. It embeds a four-element lens camera into the top bezel of the screen. Compared to placing the camera on the bottom bezel or the keyboard area, you no longer have to worry about being captured with a double chin during video conferences and chats; next to this lens is an infrared module and a complex sensor matrix.

The magic of the Dell XPS 13 9300 lies in the fact that as soon as we lift its screen, it automatically triggers the Instant On boot command. During the lifting process, Windows Hello can recognize your face, and as soon as you set the screen angle, the Windows 10 system interface is already in standby mode.

When the sensor next to the camera detects that we have left our seat for 1 minute, it triggers the lock screen mechanism to prevent others from accessing the computer, and when we return to our seat, the system can automatically scan our face to unlock it. The entire process is seamless; if you don’t mention it, you might not even realize that the laptop just locked.

How is the Largest View in the Same Size Achieved?

Don’t be fooled by the Dell XPS 13 9300’s iPad Pro-like size; it has a surprisingly large display compared to other 13-inch competitors, the XPS 13 9300’s screen is even the largest.

The Dell XPS 13 9300’s screen is not the common 13.3-inch 16:9 display panel; it is a newly customized 13.4-inch 16:10 panel, with nearly a million more pixels and an effective display area increased by 6.8%, allowing for more content and windows to be displayed on a single screen, making software like Word, Excel, and Photoshop more efficient.

In addition to having a larger “view,” the quality of the XPS 13 9300’s screen is also top-notch, boasting a 4K+ resolution (3840×2400 pixels) and professional-grade 90% DCI-P3 color gamut, with brightness and contrast reaching 500 nits and 1500:1, respectively. It supports Eyesafe physical blue light reduction technology and Dolby Vision + VESA HDR 400 certification. Additionally, many laptops’ “eye protection modes” are achieved through software adjustments of screen colors, while the XPS 13 9300’s Eyesafe physical blue light reduction technology is hardware-based, ensuring eye protection without affecting color accuracy, which is impressive.

It is no exaggeration to say that the Dell XPS 13 9300 has the most stunning screen of any laptop I have reviewed. If you are engaged in design work, what is displayed on the screen is exactly what the printer outputs, truly “what you see is what you get.”

Besides having a larger view and more perfect colors, the Dell XPS 13 9300’s screen also supports touch, providing a commanding operation experience that allows you to freely express your creativity. To prevent screen scratches, the product is covered with a layer of sixth-generation Gorilla Glass, with an anti-glare coating on the surface, so you no longer have to worry about being blinded by lights.

Astonishing Productivity!

Compared to the previous generation XPS 13 7390, the new XPS 13 9300 is equipped with Intel’s 10th generation Core processor, but it chooses the 10nm process version of the Ice Lake platform. In addition to being fully superior to the 14nm Comet Lake platform in process technology, it also adopts the new “Sunny Cove” microarchitecture, with integrated graphics architecture evolving to Gen 11 (Comet Lake is Gen 9.5), while natively supporting Thunderbolt 3, edge-side AI computing, LPDDR4-3733MHz or DDR4-3200MHz memory.

i7-1035G7 is the Star of Intel’s 10nm Processors

Integrating the Most Powerful Iris Plus G7 Graphics

The Dell XPS 13 9300 I received is equipped with the i7-1065G7 processor (4 cores, 8 threads, 8MB L3 cache), with a maximum turbo boost frequency of up to 3.9GHz, and integrates the top-level Iris Plus graphics with 64 execution units. Additionally, this product has 16GB LPDDR4X and a 1TB PCIe NVMe SSD.

CPU-Z Benchmark Scores Comparable to Desktop-Class Sixth-Generation Core i7-6700K

Chess Benchmark Scores Not Inferior to 45W Mobile Processors

CINEBENCH R15 Single-Core Scores Higher than i7-9750H

CINEBENCH R20 Test Scores Also Impressive

Master Lu Benchmark Scores Easily Break 230,000 Points

3DMark 11 Test: GPU Scores Already Exceed Early GeForce 940MX, Very Close to Low-Power Version MX150

From the theoretical test scores, the Dell XPS 13 9300’s performance can rank among the top tier of 13-inch integrated graphics thin laptops, especially the 3DMark test scores are even comparable to NVIDIA Geforce MX150 (low-power version), capable of smoothly handling popular 3D online games like League of Legends.

Careful readers may notice that the Dell XPS 13 9300’s scores are higher than many similarly configured thin laptops. The reason is that it adopts a more luxurious cooling module design, with a more generous power limit and temperature limit settings.

First, let’s take a look at the internal design of the Dell XPS 13 9300, which includes two cooling fans, a rarity among small-sized models. Though it only has one heat pipe, the width of the heat pipe is nearly 12mm, and its thermal conductivity efficiency is even superior to two 6mm-wide heat pipes. Additionally, there is a dual condenser design, which, combined with the dual fans, provides better cooling performance.

Next, let’s look at the power limit settings of the Dell XPS 13 9300; its PowerLimit 1 (long-term turbo power) and PowerLimit 2 (short-term turbo power) both reach 61W, which is higher than many gaming laptops!

In AIDA64’s CPU single burn-in mode, the Dell XPS 13 9300’s processor can stably run at 28W power, maintaining a steady output frequency of 2.75GHz.

In AIDA64 and FurMark’s dual burn-in mode, the Dell XPS 13 9300’s processor can stably run at 32W power, while its CPU frequency remains around 2.14GHz. In comparison, many similarly configured thin laptops see their frequencies drop below 2.0GHz during prolonged CPU single burn tests.

The Dell XPS 13 9300 also introduces GORE thermal insulation materials, which are thin, elastic, and have a thermal conductivity lower than air, ensuring that the C surface palm rest temperature remains relatively cool even under high loads.

This product has a built-in 52Wh battery, which is larger than many 15.6-inch thin laptops, and it is not easy to fit such a large battery into an 11-inch mold. The pre-installed Dell Power Manager technology can adjust the laptop’s noise levels, ensuring a balance between noise, temperature, and performance. It can also customize the lithium battery’s charging threshold to maximize battery life.

For laptops, a 4K+ resolution screen is definitely a power-hungry component, but thanks to the 10nm process processor and a smarter power management mechanism, the Dell XPS 13 9300 still offers up to 12 hours of battery life, enough for you to watch movies continuously from Beijing to New York.

It is worth mentioning that the Dell XPS 13 9300 also comes standard with a very compact 45W power adapter (USB Type-C interface). It is very lightweight, and the total length of the power cable is nearly 3 meters, so you don’t have to worry even if the desk in the hotel is far from the socket during business trips.

Unlimited Expansion Capabilities

The productivity of a laptop is not only limited by absolute performance but also influenced by networking and expansion capabilities. After all, remote work is becoming popular these days, and many design, engineering applications, and games also require connections to cloud servers.

The Dell XPS 13 9300 is equipped with Killer’s AX1650 Wi-Fi 6 wireless card. Compared to the commonly seen Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 wireless card, the former introduces exclusive Advanced Stream Detection, Intelligence Engine (reducing CPU load by 10% and memory usage by 20%), and sequential priority features. Combined with the Killer Control Center 2.0, it offers a lot of advanced network features, including gaming priority, diagnostics, network layer optimization, bandwidth allocation, and xTend hotspot cloning (which can act as a wireless hotspot that automatically copies the main router’s wireless name and password).

In terms of the number of ports, the Dell XPS 13 9300 only provides 2 USB Type-C ports, a MicroSD card reader, and a 3.5mm headphone jack, which may seem insufficient. However, in terms of port quality, the XPS 13 9300 is very luxurious.

In simple terms, both USB Type-C ports on the Dell XPS 13 9300 support Thunderbolt 3, which can be used for charging and has a data transfer throughput of up to 40Gbps. You can connect two 4K displays or the most complex docking stations on the market, such as external GPU docks that can accommodate RTX 2080 desktop graphics cards, allowing you to build a gaming platform capable of smoothly running the latest AAA titles in a compact space, compensating for the integrated graphics performance of the i7-1065G7 processor.

The card reader on the Dell XPS 13 9300 is also impressive, capable of achieving transfer speeds exceeding 200MB/s with high-speed storage cards, comparable to high-end USB 3.0 interfaces, which is definitely good news for users who frequently use DSLRs.

Conclusion

The XPS series has always been a high-end sub-brand among Dell’s consumer laptops, and the XPS 13 9300 inherits and promotes the design philosophy of its predecessors, achieving greater breakthroughs in aspects such as lightweight portability, quality design, and powerful performance.

The combination of a 91.5% screen-to-body ratio and the strongest 16:10 aspect ratio screen allows the XPS 13 9300 to present a more stunning and immersive view even in a thin body; the 6000 series aerospace aluminum body combined with carbon fiber/silica fiber materials integrates strength, toughness, luxury, and lightness; the 10th generation Core processor platform and Thunderbolt 3 interface leave no regrets in terms of performance and expansion capabilities… Each of these features may be easy to achieve individually, but bringing them all together is quite challenging.

It is worth mentioning that users purchasing the XPS 13 9300 can enjoy Dell’s 7×24 hour technical support and receive up to 730 days of accidental damage protection, ensuring free repair services for spills or drops during mobile use, and it even comes with global warranty!

In summary, the emergence of the Dell XPS 13 9300 sets a new benchmark for thin laptops in 2020. If you pursue fashion and taste without wanting to sacrifice performance for thinness and long battery life, this product will definitely not disappoint you.

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