Without a doubt, Dell's XPS laptops are some of the best laptops around. Indeed, year in and year out, I'm excited when one arrives at my door, and every time, I get to say that it's one of the best laptops on the market. The Dell XPS 13 9315 (the 2022 model) is no different, although things are a bit different this year.

It comes with a complete redesign, which I am here for. Still made out of aluminum, it comes in colors like Sky and Umber, leaving behind the traditional XPS design that's frankly iconic. But as always, we need to move forward. The new design is prettier and more modern.

There are some downsides. For example, the processor that Dell chose to use comes with compromises. If you need more than the Intel U9 processor in the XPS 13, you have to go for the 28W processor in the Dell XPS 13 Plus. Also, the only display option is 1080p now. Finally, the most concerning compromise is that Dell still hasn't upgraded to an FHD webcam like its competition has.

Still, I'm not afraid to call this one of the best laptops on the market. It's delightful, coming in at just over two and a half pounds light. That's extremely light for an aluminum laptop, and it feels great to use. Dell clearly designed this with purpose, but I also want to point out, it starts at $999. With prices rising, I feel like I'm reviewing more and more laptops that cost two thousand dollars and up. You can get a Dell XPS 13 with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD for just over a thousand dollars, and you can't beat that.

Navigate this review:

• Dell XPS 13 (2022) Pricing and availability
• Dell XPS 13 (2022) specs
• Design: It's the first fully redesigned XPS in a very long time
• Display: There's no 4K option anymore
• Keyboard: It's definitely shallower, but that's not necessarily a bad thing
• Performance: Intel's 12th-gen U9 processors are definitely lacking
• Who should buy the Dell XPS 13 (2022)?

Dell XPS 13 (2022) Pricing and availability

• The Dell XPS 13 (2022) starts at $999 and it's available now

The Dell XPS 13 9315 starts at $999, which is pretty impressive in today's market where it seems like the price of PCs is just skyrocketing. Seriously, every time I price out a PC I'm reviewing I feel like it ends up costing over $2,000.

That base model comes with a Core i5-1230U, 8GB LPDDR5, and a 512GB SSD. The only option for display resolution is 1,920x1,200, and it comes in non-touch and touch. Obviously, the base model is non-touch.

The version that Dell sent for review includes a Core i5-1250U, 16GB LPDDR5, a 512GB SSD, and a touch display. While the touchscreen comes in at a $100 premium, the boost from 8GB RAM to 16GB only costs an extra $50, so it's probably worth it.

Dell XPS 13 (2022) specs

Design: It's the first fully redesigned XPS in a very long time

• The Dell XPS 13 (2022) comes in Sky and Umber colors
• There are just two Thunderbolt 4 ports
• The headphone jack is gone

The Dell XPS brand is iconic. We can all imagine a silver laptop with a black keyboard and palm rest that's made of cabon fiber. With the Dell XPS 13 9315, it's different, really different. And it's different in a good way.

The new Dell XPS 13 is still made out of CNC-machined aluminum, but you won't find that two-tone look anymore with the black palm rest, or the white woven glass fiber. It's all metal, coming in two colors: Sky and Umber. I've seen them both in person, and they're both beautiful. Dell gave me the choice between the two when it sent me a review unit. I chose Umber, because it seems less common.

The new Umber color is both bold and beautiful.

Umber is a sort of deep purple, and it's quite beautiful. It's definitely a bold color, which I love to see. Another thing to point out is that very few companies are doing colored laptops. It's something that Microsoft started doing with the Surface Laptop years ago, but few companies have followed suit.

Still, if anyone is taking bets, I'd be willing to place a wager that Dell will add silver as a color option for next year's model. The reason is simply because that's still the most popular laptop color, and customers will ask for it. As for this reviewer's opinion, I say get a laptop that's going to wow you every time you open it, and colors like Sky and Umber give you that feeling.

The old XPS 13 design was iconic, but this is the future.

The Dell XPS 13 9315 is slimmer than its predecessor, the XPS 13 9310, by 0.03 inches, coming in at 0.55 inches. It's also a fair bit lighter at 2.58 pounds instead of 2.8 pounds. While that drop in weight might not sound like much, it actually makes the XPS 13 one of the lightest aluminum laptops around. Anything beyond that is going to force you into magnesium territory.

This product only has two ports, both of which are Thunderbolt 4. Yes, that means that there's no more headphone jack (it does come with an adapter in the box), something that's still something of a radical idea on laptops. What I do love is that there's one Thunderbolt port on each side, rather than placing them both on one side. This way is more practical, as it just gives the user choice in where to place cables. The reason most OEMs don't do it is to save costs.

Also, I appreciate that Dell didn't go the route of including two Thunderbolt ports and one regular USB Type-C port. That's actually what it currently does on the Dell XPS 15, and the issue is that the user is expected to know the difference between ports that look identical.

But overall, I love the design on the new Dell XPS 13. It feels more modern, and it's just a stunner.

Display: There's no 4K option anymore

• The screen comes in any resolution you want, as long as it's FHD+
• The webcam is still 720p

Just like in previous generations, the Dell XPS 13 comes with a 13.3-inch 16:10 InfinityEdge display, and that means that the company prioritizes narrow bezels above all else. It makes for the most immersive experience possible.

While the display is certainly enjoyable, it's not quite as good as other XPS laptops. Indeed, the new Dell XPS 13 almost feels like a high-end laptop that sits well under the flagship tier. For a flagship, you'd get the Dell XPS 13 Plus, which starts at $1,399. Meanwhile, in an era where the entry cost for a premium cost has skyrocketed to prices like that, Dell is still offering a great laptop that starts at $999, and that's where the XPS 13 comes in.

That all leads to the fact that there's no 4K UHD or OLED model. There are only two display options, both of which are 1,920x1,200. The only difference is that one is touch and one is non-touch. The one that Dell sent me is touch, and it comes in with a $100 premium. It's disappointing that there's no 4K OLED option, of course, but that's reserved for the XPS 13 Plus.

From my testing, the screen supports 100% sRGB, 72% NTSC, 77% Adobe RGB, and 77% P3, which is fine. It's not great, but I'd say it's average. The problem is that I expect the best from a Dell XPS. Even on non-OLED models, those numbers are all usually in the 90s.

Brightness comes in at 508.4 nits, which is great, and contrast ratio is 1,650:1. Brightness levels above 500 nits are always appreciated, as it makes the device easier to use outdoors.

Like I said, Dell prioritizes narrow bezels above all else, and that includes the webcam. It's still a small 720p sensor, and yes, it's really the only premium laptop left that hasn't been bumped up to 1080p unless you count Microsoft's Surface Laptop 5. Dell did split up the webcam and the IR camera, which is going to get better quality than you've seen in the past, but it's still not as good as what we're seeing from companies like HP.

It's a shame, in the age of working from home. Still, if you do work from home, you might want to invest in a Thunderbolt setup with an external monitor and a docking station anyway.

Keyboard: It's shallower, but that's not necessarily a bad thing

• The shallower keys actually feel more modern
• The touchpad really hasn't changed
• The fingerprint sensor is still limited

Obviously, the keyboard is completely different. Indeed, this whole product is redesigned. We now have a metal palm rest that matches the Umber casing, and the keys are Umber as well. Gone are the days of the black carbon fiber or white woven glass fiber palm rests. Indeed, I remember when the white came out, and Dell shipped the product with a white charger, white USB-C to USB-A adapter, and more. In writing this, I just ran and checked the box in hopes of finding Umber cables, but sadly, they're the standard black. Even the white accessories seem gone, as I discovered in my Dell XPS 13 Plus review.

But I digress. Back to the keyboard itself. The keys feel shallower and more sturdy. Of course, they might just appear to be less wobbly because there's less depth. Still, it feels premium, and I quite like it. You might have to get used to the shallow keyboard a bit, but it'll be fine. It's a really good keyboard.

The touchpad really isn't different from the previous XPS 13. Obviously, you don't get the borderless touchpad of the XPS 13 Plus, and it's not a haptic touchpad at all. This feels like the broader issue. The XPS 13 Plus is a very futuristic laptop, with some features that almost feel like concepts. But it's also the more premium model, so if you want the best but also don't want experimental features, there's no XPS 13 for you.

The power button doubles as a fingerprint sensor, so you do have the option of that or the IR camera for facial recognition when it comes to biometrics. The bad news is that Dell still refuses to configure the fingerprint sensor so that it can scan you fingerprint before the PC boots up. Every other OEM that uses a power button fingerprint sensor scans it before boot, so that once it boots up, Windows just automatically logs you in.

Dell considers that a security issue, thinking that you might walk away from your PC in the time that it takes to boot.

Performance: Intel's 12th-gen U9 processors feel like they're lacking

• The Dell XPS 13 (2022) comes with Intel's 12th-gen 9W U-series processors, which are cranked up to 12W
• The low-power processors force you to choose between battery life and performance

One of the things I've pointed out throughout this review is the disparity between the Dell XPS 13 and the XPS 13 Plus. The XPS 13 Plus has a lot of features that are more traditionally reserved for the regular XPS 13 (this is the first time there's been a Plus model), but at the same time, it has a lot of experimental features, like a borderless touchpad. You also get a powerful 28W processor in the XPS 13 Plus; however, with the regular XPS 13, you get a 9W processor that's boosted to 12W.

Historically, the XPS 13 has come with a 15W processor. This has been the standard for ultrabooks and most convertibles for ages. Intel has brought about some changes with 12th-gen, adding the 28W tier. There's always been a lower-power tier, which was pretty good with 11th-gen. The other thing that changed with 12th-gen is better power management, with big performance cores (P-cores) and little efficiency cores (E-cores).

The Core i5-1230U under the hood of my review unit has two P-cores and eight E-cores, for a total of 12 threads. For comparison, all 11th-gen U-series processors had four cores, and since there was no hybrid architecture, you can just consider them P-cores. In other words, you get more cores and threads now but fewer performance cores.

My biggest complaint is that Dell didn't just use a 15W processor like it's done in previous years. I get that it was going for super thin and light, and I'm absolutely smitten with the form factor that it resulted in, but I just need a bit more. I'd love to have seen a Core i5-1235U instead. Frankly though, I'm surprised Dell didn't send the Core i7-1250U model for review, since it's very possible that that might have given me the boost I needed.

Battery life is great when the thermals are set to optimized.

Here's the other thing I take issue with. Dell has an app called My Dell, which lets you change settings for thermals. By default, it's set to optimized, which gets you terrible performance. Seriously, it's awful. I took this laptop to an event and vowed to never do it again until I remembered that Dell has this app. Once you set it to best performance, things are a lot better, but stll not great.

For productivity, there's no issue. I really do think that this is a laptop designed with mobile productivity in mind, and it really succeeds. For creators that really need photo editing chops, I think you should go for the more powerful XPS 13 Plus, which also comes with a better display.

For benchmarks, I ran PCMark 10, 3DMark, Geekbench, and Cinebench.

As you can see, the Dell XPS 13 9315 with a Core i5-1230U falls just short of the XPS 13 9310 with a Core i7-1185G7 in the PCMark 10 test, and that's with the thermals set to best performance. With the Core i7 model gen-over-gen, you'll probably just find a trivial bump in overall performance.

Battery life was a mixed bag. When the thermals were set to optimized, I was able to get just under eight hours of battery life out of it, which is really good. When I had to boost the thermal settings, that became more like four to five hours.

The way I do battery testing is simple. I use the product until the battery runs out, and then I run a battery report in Windows to check how long it took. The settings I use vary depending on the device, because those settings are whatever gives me a comfortable experience. For example, brightness on this unit was 40% because it's such a bright display. On units with a 250-nit display, it might be 100%.

With the thermals set to optimized, that is not a comfortable setting. I don't consider that to be realistic. So when you set the power to what you need it to be, you have to compromise battery life.

Who should buy the Dell XPS 13 (2022)?

As always, the Dell XPS 13 (2022) is one of the best laptops on the market, but it's not for everyone.

Who should buy the Dell XPS 13 (2022):

• People that was a stylish productivity laptop
• People that travel a lot and would be well-served by a light PC

Who should NOT buy the Dell XPS 13 (2022):

• Anyone that needs power for creative work
• Those that rely on a high-resolution display or wide color gamut

If you need more power than the Dell XPS 13 (2022) provides, Dell has you covered. The XPS 13 Plus has a 28W CPU, and if even that's not enough, then you can start looking at the XPS 15 and XPS 17, which have 45W CPUs that are paired with dedicated graphics.