Dell XPS 13 Plus: Reddit's Most Warned-Against Ultrabook

The design looks amazing, especially with how the touchpad and the palm rest are the same piece of glass. But everything else seems like a disaster. Only two TB ports on the entire machine and there's a capacitative function row that isn't even customizable. Plus the battery life is terrible and it gets uncomfortable to touch after a while because they stuffed a 28W chip in there.

For thin and light, the MacBook Air really holds strong against these competitors because it can run much cooler, and provides a lot of perf without sacrificing battery life on the altar.

I bought a fully loaded XPS 13 Plus a couple months ago. I agree with the tone of the article where this isn't a good laptop choice for most people, but if you're in a situation where you're not affected by its many negatives, it's an awesome little machine.

Reinstall windows without all the extras from OEMs. Made my laptop much much better. The laptop's bottom does get medium hot. But in such a thin device heat has to go somewhere and the vents are between the bottom of the screen and the chassis. Lap use while running the CPU hard does get pretty uncomfortable since your legs get blasted with the hot air.

I would recommend hard passing on this if it uses any proprietary blobs for like fingerprint, webcam etc. I have a 9310 and it's annoying that the fingerprint reader from Goodix pretty much only works under Ubuntu.

I had one. Battery life was 3 hours with just chromium, Firefox, or chrome running.

The HP hardware works really well with linux. Plus, the keyboard is wonderful and I get a dedicated Esc key. I don't think I could get used to the touchbar.

Good points: It's beautiful. Great design aesthetically. The display (FHD+) is great - bright, punchy, great colours. 16:10 is a good aspect ratio. When it's not throttling, performance is great. The speakers are pretty good for a laptop this size. Bad points: Battery life is terrible.

Not exactly the same but I have an XPS 9500 on which I run Linux and I am completely satisfied with it. For quite a while I had trackpad issues but I finally caved, called support, and had a replacement shipped out. Call took about ten minutes. With the new trackpad I am now golden.

I absolutely echo on Battery.. For me it just runs 2 hours after that need to charge.. F***ed price get nuts of battery life. I do not recommend this XPS 9320 or Dell.. Battery life is worst...

The touch pad fucks up at least once a day. The touch bar at the top seems to break at the same time. I just got this before traveling and I found out it was broken on the plane. Drivers updates reduced the issue a bit, but IT STILL HAPPENS EVERY DAY.

after using for 1 year, battery health is down to 30%, it lasts only about a hour now

I have the 4k uhd model and the battery life really depends on use. I can get a solid 4hrs+ programming on it, or I can go 8hrs+ using light browsing during all-day meetings.

I picked up a maxed out XPS 13 Plus December last year. Imo it's the most premium laptop you can get. Even now I still can't get over how futuristic the design is, probably the biggest reason I chose it over the Lenovo Z13. The battery life is pretty crap tbh and it gets super toasty under load. It's a shame Dell wouldn't put some Ryzen CPUs in these laptops, that would make it the very best portable PC.

Awful. I purchased a 9320 in an i7/32GB/1TB/FHD+ config, and a 9315 in i7/16GB/512GB/FHD for evaluation purposes at work. Both devices suck with terrible performance. I use my laptop primarily on Teams calls with some IT admin work in between, and both would seemingly throttle randomly. They've been better with updates but the experience out of the box was nowhere near the older XPS 13 I was given when I joined the company two years ago.

Dave2D claims the capacitive touch bar has allowed for vastly improved thermals. If that's true, it might be worth it. My Dell XPS gets hot for no reason and it kills performance and battery. I've stopped using it in favor of M1 MacBook because it's just more dependable.

Really tempted, but I can wait. I have a 9310, but I really want a Plus. Still, generally seems wiser to let Dell's manufacturing process mature, especially as this is a significant redesign.

Great battery life. Retains battery very well too during sleep. Very happy but I think I am biased. The smart thing to do is switch laptop every half-decade rather than every generation. You really notice the difference.

Same here, good lord the touch pad is shockingly broken. I understand its a fancy new system and when it does work it works seamlessly but my god its so frustrating when you open up your system and the touch pad decides to not work for like 5 minutes. Also even if it is USB-C having only 2 ports is the worst thing ever especially because one of them is charging.

The trackpad driver consistently malfunctions/self deletes and then you have to redownload the driver from the website. I'd say this happens almost every single time I've gone to use the laptop. Reaching out to Dell support helps in the first instance but they refuse to replace or refund the device. I have immense regret about buying this laptop.

I hate this laptop more than anything. Worst money spent. I bought this in 2022 for grad school and i figured the battery life was due to the OLED screen. The computer screen finally gave out in March and I went back to my macbook. I just got around to troubleshooting it and it is ANNOYING. Also if you breathe, suddenly like 5 fingerprints appear. please do not get it!

Getting barely 4-5 hours of battery life as well as heat and fan noise with like 2 tabs open for a laptop that retailed in the UK for £1350 is just insane to me. I got an M2 pro MacBook Pro on sale for the same price. It's much faster and I have consistently get 18-20+ hours battery life and i have never even heard the fan turn on or it get hot to the touch.

I have the same computer. I second this. DO NOT BUY THE DELL XPS 13 +

This computer looks nice, and it's really light and small. But that is literally it, all of the other aspects of this computer are absolutely terrible. I used it for 1 year and the battery health is at 30%. It lasts only 1 hour if I run some programming applications that shouldn't even drain the battery quickly. It already died completely once for no reason and couldn't be opened. The performance of this computer after 1 year is terrible, lags very often.

I bought it when it was released and now if I unplug my charger it barely even cross 45 minutes.. worst purchase of my life :(

Agreed worst laptop ever

Not recommend, sometimes, it take minutes for file explorer to work.

Agreed. I have the same computer. It's been terrible. They replaced it earlier this year in Feb. Now the camera doesn't work and I'm outside the warranty. Products this expensive should work. Period. I'm done with Dell too.

i got my 9320 about the same time as you and came here to make sure i wasnt the only one with all these issues. the trackpad clicking and staying clicked on its own, getting so hot and loud, the terrible battery life; i could go on and on

The dell xps 13 plus is the biggest piece of junk I have ever bought in all of my electronic devices. I bought it in 2023, the trackpad started glitching and autoclicking on the first day of receiving it, and it was unfixable unless I turned off the haptic feedback. The laptop's battery life turned to 30% just after 1 year and wouldn't even last 1 hour if I just had one coding software on. The laptop gets super hot just after light usage.

2 years and 10 months of moderate usage (I'm a teacher at an elementary school) the display starts showing problems. every time I open the lid more than 30 degrees, the LED goes out. Dell's solution and approach: pay us 500€ for a whole module (lid, display, flex cable and your soul) so that the literal cents part gets swapped.

Same here, after 3 years the LED doesn't work if I open it up more than 30 degrees. Dell quoted 900€ to fix it as it is just months out of warranty. And I have had every other problem mentioned. First replaced the battery at 1.5 years, again at 3 years. Trackpad stuck multiple times, sleep issues, battery drain while sleeping in backpack... you name it. Just hope that anyone that is considering buying this crap reads this page.

Dell just hasn't figured it out. Get a different brand if you want good battery life. Or get the XPS 15 with the big battery. These laptops are tiny.

I have a FHD XPS 13 Plus with the i7-1280p. The battery life is pretty disappointing - I mostly use it for software dev and I usually get about 4-5 hours in. Google meets eat through the battery in about an hour and a half. You'd possibly get better battery life with the i5, and if you're able to stick with the lower power battery profiles.

Constant audio issue where it suddenly stops and all the customer service does is reinstall the drivers. The only fix is to constantly restart the computer and that's such a nuisance.

Pretty bad. Had to have my first unit replaced because the trackpad completely choked. My second unit is usable, but has abysmal battery life (sometimes only 1.5 hours), trackpad will get stuck frequently and do ghost clicks, and it gets really hot. It's a huge shame, bc I really loved my XPS 13 (from ~2018). I figured I'd just be upgrading to a newer/superior model, but was given a product that falls short in many ways, and overall makes it a regrettable purchase.

I have two xps 13 plus machines for work and home. The touchpad is awesome with the haptics and such, still not as good as my MacBook. The screen is amazing though. The touchpad has no definitive box to know where you are, and i find myself right clicking accidentally a lot.

I have the regular 13 with i7/16gb/1TB and there are major sacrifices in performance in exchange for battery life. I don't do any coding or programming but my laptop starts to chug with multiple chrome tabs and video playback. The Plus has a way more powerful cpu.

Got my xps 13 plus 3 weeks ago, it's a brilliant machine. I had an XPS 13 9310 previously, with an i7 and 16gigs of ram, it was constantly overheating and battery life was so-so. All the major negative points of the 9310 are no more with the 9320 — it's a bit thicker and has a better cooling solution, it's definitely not as hot as the 9310 and I can confidently use it on my lap.

Worst piece of hardware I've ever used, I don't even understand how can some tech journalists praise it, either Dell sent them a better version or they were paid.

Personally I have two Dell laptops and they are completely bloatware filled. I've had a few keycaps (a and d) falling off the first one and I've had countless problems with audio drivers with both.

I am going with the 4K UHD because it consumes less power than the 3K OLED. The UHD consumes 5 Watts vs 7 watts for the OLED. Plus you won't have to worry about OLED burning for long run.

I got the i7 1280p, FHD, 16GB, 512GB. The screen looks great. For heating, when doing blender renders it definitely got hot (fans going hitting 95 degrees) but under my normal usage (note taking, youtube and browsers) it stays comfortable.

You wouldn't have overheating issues with either of them. The extra $350 for the Plus would give you two additional performance cores and four threads in the CPU. This could give you more performance, but also less battery life. Some people don't like the trackpad on the 13 Plus - it isn't clearly defined, like the trackpad on the 13 is.

In my experience (three consecutive XPS 13s), the main reason for power drain is touch 4K display, that utterly destroys battery. Older versions with FHD and 2K used to last for 4-5 h of standard usage with full brightness. With the 4K it barely lasts 2 h.