I'm excited for Intel after testing the XPS 13 - Jeff GeerlingI'm excited for Intel after testing the XPS 13<br>Aug 7, 2026
Shortly after Apple launched the budget MacBook Neo, Dell announced their response, a new low-end XPS 13.<br>Matching the Neo's current pricing, it starts at $699, or $599 with an educational discount. That discount is currently set to expire on November 2, and with the current component pricing insanity, I'd be surprised if we don't see a price increase on both laptops by next year.<br>I ran the XPS 13 through my gauntlet of benchmarks, and published a review on my YouTube channel:
Some headline improvements over the Neo:<br>Higher-resolution touchscreen display, with a more matte finish<br>Backlit keyboard (includes a CoPilot button, ick)<br>Both USB-C ports are 10 Gbps with DisplayPort and PD<br>Base storage is 512GB, the included SSD is faster than the Neo's built-in storage, and it's upgradeable (2230-sized NVMe).<br>Linux support is specifically not advertised, but I was able to get all hardware functionality working in Fedora 44, including WiFi 7 (I had to plug in a USB Ethernet adapter temporarily to run dnf upgrade)<br>A few things are worse, of course:<br>The top-hinge trackpad makes it hard to click anywhere besides the bottom (tap to click is fine anywhere)<br>The built-in webcam and microphone are a bit lower quality<br>Sound from the built-in speakers is noticeably worse<br>There's no headphone jack<br>It only officially supports Windows 11 (and comes with Home)<br>Watch the video for opinions on the laptop itself.<br>In this blog post, I thought I'd dive deeper into the most interesting part for me: the Intel Core 5 320.<br>Intel Core 5 320<br>Intel's had a string of decent low-end SoCs, incorporating a CPU, GPU, and more recently, NPU. At the lowest end, the N150 and N350 match or surpass midrange Arm SoCs, while keeping the wide x86 compatibility Intel's known for.<br>These chips are the reason many Mini PCs became viable sub-$200 options for homelabs and low power utility computers (at least until DRAM prices torched everything).<br>But the Core 5 320 inside—one of Intel's new low-end Wildcat Lake chips—is the first x86 chip that's scored in the top 10 of my HPL FP64 efficiency benchmark.<br>In fact, it's number two, second only to the M4 Mac mini!<br>This surprised me, because I'd never seen an x86 system (laptop, desktop, or server) approach even 4 Gflops/W of efficiency in this specific benchmark. The next-best x86 system I've tested, one with Intel's slightly-older 265K chip, came in at 2.71 Gflops/W.<br>And idle power consumption is wildly improved, too—the XPS 13 would only use 0.5-0.8W at idle with the display turned off, matching the MacBook Neo. That bumps up to 3-4W with the display on at 50% brightness, and add 1-3W for WiFi activity and video playback.<br>Conclusion<br>Obviously, all this efficiency is on the low end—the laptop only achives a little over 120 Gflops, while Apple's faster M3 and M4 Macs are pushing through up to 1.2 Teraflops.<br>But these new cores paired with Intel's power management tweaks, are exciting. I can only hope they'll push through the same efficiency to dense-core-count server chips, and low-end IoT chips in That is, if the product managers can get it through that efficiency matters more than pushing clocks to their extreme.<br>Better efficiency targets lead to:<br>Lower cooling requirements (for slower fans, or none at all, as in the MacBook Neo's case)<br>Lower power consumption (better battery life or more compute density with lower power requirements per rack)<br>Chips that don't burn themselves out<br>Intel's built-in graphics don't hold up nearly as well as the CPU side of these low-end SoCs, though—at least compared to Apple.<br>But I'm glad competition has spurred the market to better solutions, especially in an affordable laptop.
Further reading:<br>It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12<br>The best laptop Apple ever made<br>Dell's version of the DGX Spark fixes pain points
Comments