Nov 17, 2017
In the months before Christmas each year I often report on my current laptop choice for productive travel work, and here’s this year’s choice: the brand new late-2017 release of the Dell XPS 13. Here’s why I am recommending it:
- I like a 13 inch screen for travel laptops, which it has.
- My current work patterns no longer call for a tablet and I now prefer a regular clamshell, which this is. And I like a compact clamshell laptop if traveling a lot. Due to the Dell’s infinity screen, this is still the world’s smallest 13 inch laptop. (I still use my XPS 15 for more stationary work like desktop replacement with monitor). And it’s very very light.
- The main reason for choosing this laptop over other small and lightweight 13 inch ones: this is one of the first laptops to come out with Intel’s brand new 8th generation i7 processor, which is a quad-core processor in a dual-core footprint (called Kaby Lake R). So you get XPS 15 quad core performance in a tiny, battery-saving, footprint, and the reports are that it has blazing performance.
- But don’t get this if you routinely use a webcam on your laptop… like on the XPS 15 the webcam is positioned wrong. I don’t use laptop webcams, so no problem for me.
I don’t have one of these yet (still using my Yoga 900 for travel and no need to upgrade yet), so my recommendation is based on third-party reviews, like this one. For detailed benchmarks on this new processor, read this article.
Michael