Surely you've heard about the Dell XPS edition laptops. These are pretty much the best windows laptops in the market sporting a stunning design and unbelievable specs at a relatively competitive price point. Today we're here to tackle one of the most interesting new models in the XPS family; the Dell XPS 13 9350-1340SLV.
Dell's new laptop comes packed with an Infinity edge Full HD display, 128GB of SSD storage, 8 GB of RAM and an astounding 11 hours of battery life. Wanna know more? Then join us as we review the Dell XPS 13 9350-1340SLV to try and uncover everything there is to know about Dell's promising new model.
Pros: No bloatware or trialware, 128 GB of SSD, Full HD display, 2.86 pounds, up to 11 hours of battery life, competing price.
Cons: no DVD reader nor HDMI or Ethernet ports.
Review; Dell XPS 9350-1340SLV the "MacBook killer"
An Infinity Edge Display on an ultraportable laptop
With the XPS 9350-1340SLV Dell sought out to debut its Infinity Edge Display. As the name suggests, this is a kind of display that virtually lacks borders allowing the company to place a 13 inch display in the body of a typical 11 inch screen. This entitles the laptop to be significantly lighter than its 13 inch counterparts (2.86 pounds) and makes it much more portable for everyday handling.
As for the resolution at hand, Dell's new foray into the XPS segment comes with a Full HD LCD display, allowing for crystal clear images and a stunning visual experience when watching movies or editing pictures.
Processing power and RAM
Moving on towards the most important components of the newly released laptop, Dell's 9350-1340SLV comes equipped with an Intel Core i5-6200 dual core processor. This is a skylake generation processor which clocks in at a base frequency of 2.3 GHz and reaches its maximum frequency at 2.8 GHz
Launched towards the end of 2015, the 6200U is one of the most popular and in demand consumer processors in the market. With its 3MB of Intel's smart cache and four logical threads built on a 64 bit architecture, Intel's new i5 does an excellent job at balancing a killer performance with a solid resource management (a.k.a longer battery life).
Overall, when you couple this CPU with the 8GB of LPDDR3 RAM running at 1866 MHz and add to that the fact that we're talking about a signature edition laptop it's easy to see how performance will hardly be an issue.
As a matter of fact we'd recommend this laptop to a wide array of potential users. Be it customers who want a nice ultraportable to do basic computing tasks or a more demanding set of users in need of a laptop to handle the heavy lifting with tasks such as picture editing, video editing and code compiling, it's hard to see this laptop letting anyone down.
What's the deal with gaming?
The only place where the Dell XPS 9350-1340SLV doesn't excel is in the gaming department. To the point, this machine houses an Intel HD 520 Graphics chip.
This is a good GPU for stuff like the aforementioned video editing but for hardcore gamers it's a non starter which will barely allow you to play games like Fifa 16 at a decent rate but nothing that goes beyond that.
How's storage and battery life?
As important as the RAM and the CPU are to a laptop's general performance, storage and battery life have also become increasingly important when it comes down to making a decision. In the case of our review of the Dell XPS 13 9350-1340SLV we're glad to see that neither of these aspects have been neglected. On the contrary, they're amongst the laptops biggest selling points.
Specifically, in regards to the storage we've got a 128 GB SSD. While it's true that 128GB might fall short for many users who use their laptop to store all their pics and videos, for those who value speed over brute capacity the SSD will be a welcome breath of fresh air.
When it comes down to general usage, the decision to opt for an SSD will make the response times on this laptop much faster, both for accessing files and apps as well as during the boot up and boot down process.
Moving on to battery life, we're looking at a 4 cell lithium battery capable of handling up to 11 hours of continuous usage. However, as we all know, this will depend heavily on the tasks at hand and while it might deliver 11 hours to some users, the more intensive users might see this number go down to 8-9 hours. Overall, a great battery life nonetheless.
Additional stuff worth knowing
Now that we've covered all the basics and you've got a pretty good idea of how this laptop will perform in regards to your needs it's time to look at the miscellaneous elements such as the quality of the speakers and the connectivity options.
To this point we should probably point out that the XPS 9350-1340SLV doesn't feature neither a DVD reader nor an HDMI, VGA or even an ethernet port.
Aside from these shortcomings, the new Dell signature edition laptop does boast a couple of USB 3.0 ports as well as a USB Type-C port and you're standard SD card reader as well as an audio jack.
Wireless connectivity is supported by the WiFi a/b/g/n/ac standard as well as Bluetooth 4.1 support. As expected, there's also an integrated webcam and Waves MaxxAudio speaker technology. Finally, though previously we didn't say much about the keyboard, it should be noted that it's a backlit keyboard, allowing you to type away into the night.
So; Is it worth it?
That's the million dollar question; isn't it? Should you buy this laptop? Will this laptop fulfill your needs? Obviously the answer to these questions will rely on who's asking them. However, after doing an extensive review of the Dell XPS 9350-1340SLV we could argue that it's very difficult to see this laptop disappointing anyone.
The only people that should steer clear of this particular model are hardcore gamers who need a dedicated graphics chip and those who need loads of storage. These are the only ones who won't find what they're looking for in this laptop. As for anybody else, anyone who can afford it will be buying into an excellent laptop that will deliver a stellar experience.