Dell unveiled a new XPS 13 at Computex on Sunday with a starting price of $699 for general consumers and $599 for students aged 16 and over, the first time the company’s flagship thin-and-light laptop line has launched anywhere near MacBook Neo territory.
The pricing structure is the news: it places Dell’s most-prestige consumer-laptop sub-brand inside the segment Apple has dominated since the MacBook Neo launch earlier this year.
The hardware itself is competitive. The new XPS 13 (model number DX13260) weighs 2.2 lbs (0.9kg) and measures 0.5 inches (12.7mm) thick, making it the thinnest and lightest XPS Dell has ever produced.
By comparison, both the MacBook Neo and the MacBook Air weigh 2.7 lbs. The Dell laptop ships with Intel’s new Wildcat Lake CPU at the entry level, which the chipmaker is positioning as a low-power x86 part optimised for the same battery-life-and-thermals envelope that Apple Silicon has owned since 2020.
Dell quotes up to 17 hours of streaming battery life. The chassis is aluminium rather than the plastic that typically defines the sub-$700 PC laptop tier; the screen is touch-capable.
