Dell Takes Aim at the MacBook Neo With Its $599 XPS 13 Laptop

Apple reset the budget laptop market earlier this year when it debuted the MacBook Neo, a machine with a design superior to anything near its price of $599 and enough performance for most students. It was only a matter of time before Windows laptop-makers responded, and Dell has answered with the XPS 13. The XPS is Dell’s premium brand, but it’s built an entry-level XPS 13 model for students that gets it close to what they’d pay for a Neo.

The XPS 13 follows on the heels of Dell relaunching its XPS line with the XPS 14 and XPS 16. The XPS 13 starts at $699, and students can buy it for $599. That’s $100 more than the baseline Neo that costs $499 with Apple’s education discount, but the XPS 13 has a few advantages over the Neo.

Campus fight: Dell XPS 13 vs. MacBook Neo

You can’t take on a MacBook without delivering a sleek, all-metal design, and it appears Dell did just that with the XPS 13. The aluminum chassis is thin at just 0.5 inches thick and weighs only 2.2 pounds. That’s a half a pound lighter than the Neo.

Based on a 13.4-inch LCD display with a 2.5K resolution, variable refresh rate up to 120Hz and touch support, the XPS 13 provides a slightly larger display than the Neo. The Neo’s display also isn’t a touchscreen and hums along at a standard 60Hz. 

The $599 XPS 13 has a six-core Intel Core 5 Series 3 processor and integrated Intel Graphics with two Xe GPU cores, 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. You can upgrade to a Core Ultra 7 Series 3 chip with an integrated eight-core GPU, up to 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD for added oomph. The Neo also starts you out with a six-core CPU in the A18 Pro along with 8GB of RAM but only a 256GB SSD.

There are four other features that favor the XPS 13: speakers, biometrics, wireless networking and keyboard backlighting. The XPS 13 has quad speakers to the Neo’s pair of stereo speakers, so audio output is likely better with the XPS 13. It also has a Windows Hello webcam so you can use facial recognition for easy, secure logins. Without an IR webcam or fingerprint scanner, the Neo has a distinct lack of biometrics. The XPS 13 offers Wi-Fi 7 networking, and the Neo does previous-gen Wi-Fi 6E. Lastly, the XPS 13 has keyboard backlighting for late-night term papers and study sessions, and the Neo does not.

Dell offers a vague battery life claim that it’s “targeting up to 17 hours of streaming” with the XPS 13. That would give students a longer leash on a single charge than with the Neo, which lasted 13.5 hours on our video streaming battery drain test. We’ll need to test the XPS 13 to confirm Dell’s 17-hour figure, but we’ve seen good results so far with laptops based on Intel’s Core Ultra Series 3 processors, so 17 hours isn’t out of the question.

One item in the Neo’s favor: color. Apple offers the MacBook Neo in three cheerful hues, plus basic silver. The XPS 13 comes in two colors — sky and storm — and from the photos, they each look like a different shade of gray or silver. 

Dell says the $100 discount for the XPS 13 will be available to students 16 years old and up. So, basically high school sophomores and older. Sorry, freshmen.

The XPS 13 will be available starting later in June with the $100 student discount. Dell told me that the discount will be offered all summer and “up to the start of September for back-to-school.”