Why Dell XPS 13 7390 laptop is the best Windows notebook for the masses

Dell unveils XPS 13 laptop: The XPS 13 is powered by the latest Intel Comet Lake CORE i7 6-core processor coupled with 16GB of RAM.

Dell unveils XPS 13 laptop: Dell, the American tech giant that manufactures state-of-the-art notebooks, has been witnessing a downward spiral for a  couple of years in terms of sales volume. That’s been more due to the advent of smartphones. Much to the discomfort of Dell, the PC market grew at a snail’s pace while rival brands like Lenovo and HP outpaced it in PC sales in the last decade. Despite all these problems, engineers at the Dell laboratory managed to perfect the concept of the “UltraBook” in technical collaboration with Intel in 2011. The new Dell XPS 13 7390 is a culmination of this progress. A balance between portability and power has always been the “holy grail” for a note-book. In the 2010s the Apple MacBook Air was the paragon of this balance. Today, it can be argued, that it is the Dell that champions this. Be it, the svelte form factor resulting in a thickness of just 0.46-inches thick and weight of 1.27 grams, or the three USB Type-C ports out of which two support Thunderbolt 3 and one supports USB 3.1 and often orphaned SDX card reader, give the modern user ample adaptability, more so than Apple’s latest stab at the MacBook Air which came out at the fag end of 2018. This is also a notebook that provides a very very nice screen which is equally good for reading or consuming content and even creating it. Of course, its 4K resolution helps, how-ever, its bezels are also almost non-existent compared to almost every notebook in the market. This is what results in a totally space-age design, coupled with a very comfortable keyboard and robust construction. Typing out long documents like this review was very pleasurable. The keyboard here has great travel, it’s well spaced out and it is silent. Perhaps the only issue being the weird positioning of the page up and down keys. The trackpad on the Dell XPS 13 is also surprisingly good for a Windows-based product. It may not be as big or responsive as a MacBook trackpad, but it is a huge improvement for something Windows-based. Adding to its highly usable nature is its sheer firepower. The XPS 13 is powered by the latest Intel Comet Lake CORE i7 6-core processor coupled with 16GB of RAM. This con-verts to hell lotta heat. This latest Ice Lake chip is based on Intel’s 14nm manufacturing node which leads it pretty powerful on-board graphics, a really rapid CPU which also doubled to be very power efficient. So if you’re a creator who batch edits hundreds of RAW images on Photoshop or you may be an average joe who just likes to open 50 odd tabs of Chrome while working and Netflixing, you can do both, and the Dell will not break a sweat. While doing so, it will not get too toasty in terms of thermals and give you around 7 hours of battery life with medium to heavy usage, though Dell insists on claiming an outlandish number in excess of 10 hours. At the same time, you can also play loads of games, including some older AAA ones like the Witcher and enjoy some good graphics. What you can’t expect this machine to become is a video editing hub or a gaming notebook for the hardcore gamer. It doesn’t have the legs in graphics as there is no discrete GPU, though via Thunderbolt on the USB Type C ports you can hook up an EGPU to augment these capabilities. I tried playing some of the latest games like Fifa 2020 using my Black-Magic EGPU which I owned and it worked like a glove. At the end of the day, if you’ve been a lifelong Windows user, this will feel familiar but better. And if you’re used to working on a lot of Microsoft Office-based apps, then this will be something that’s going to work well because hey, Microsoft is behind Windows. Even coming from a Mac, this will feel like a fine machine because it is more adaptable and has modern niceties like a touch-screen and a vastly better keyboard, something that’s essential. That being said, the only palpable weakness here is also Windows ironically. Windows as an operating system aren’t as intuitive as macOS and at the same time, it doesn’t have some mission-specific tools that are loved by the creative community and coders while attracting more malware than even your attic. On the flip side, it will be a better office laptop as it will play nice with your IT manager and at the same time will be equally good at being the ultimate personal laptop that you can buy right now if your budget is upwards of Rs 1,00,000. Long story short, for 99% of the people, this will be an incredible notebook.

Specifications:

  • Intel Core i7 Comet Lake 6-core
  • 16GB RAM
  • 13-inch bezel-less screen with touch input 4K
  • 512GB onboard storage
  • Windows 10
  • 2x Thunderbolt 3
  • 1x USB 3.1
  • SDX card reader

    • Price:

  • Rs 1,41,000

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