Most of the 360 laptop designs we’ve tested give up performance compared to similar-sized and spec-ed clamshell. The only real compromise has been performance. Because the keyboard is attached, there’s no magnet to give way and send your tablet clattering to the floor, and no need to learn origami to close it back up. The 360 designs also works great for presentations in A-frame mode. They basically feel and function just like a typical clamshell design, and for the few times a year when you need a tablet, you just flip the keyboard around. I’ve since come to prefer 360-degree designs like Lenovo’s Yoga, HP’s many flavors of x360, and others. And yeah, it was plain horrible to use on my lap. Eventually I discovered that I rarely used our Surface as a tablet. I’ve gone through a Surface phase, where I thought Microsoft’s tablet-first, laptop-second concept was pretty nifty. Laptop form factors are a very individual choice. Its proportions are correct, and it supports Microsoft’s Precision Touchpad requirements. The trackpad is glass, with a very light matte feel. The reader is the size of a key and in a bit of an odd location, as you may occasionally press it while fat-fingering for either the backspace or the delete key. The keyboard features a full-pad finger print reader in a rectangular spot above the backspace key. Any perceptions that this keyboard doesn’t “feel” right may be purely subjective. We will say-in typing tests against the traditional and the HP Spectre x360 13t (2019), our typing speed was about the same on all three. Is it bad? No, but for folks who are revolted by low- to no-travel keyboards, this won’t please you. It’s also, frankly, like a MacBook keyboard in its limited travel and feel. The 2nd-gen keyboard is quieter, “softer,” and about 25 percent thinner than a traditional laptop keyboard. First used on its XPS 13 2-in-1 two years ago, it uses magnets to repel the keys back up once they’ve been depressed. With the redesigned XPS 13 2-in-1, Dell shrinks down the “MagLev” keyboard. The keyboard uses Dell’s 2n- gen MagLev technology, which is basically Mac-like (without the reported failure rates). Just make sure when you buy that laptop to get an SSD capacity that will last a while. To be fair, while PC enthusiasts love their upgrade paths, very few users actually upgrade their laptop drives. Yes, others have jammed M.2 removable drives into insanely thin laptops, but Dell sticks to its guns and says every square millimeter counts when you’re trying to jam hardware into a tiny laptop-and make it fast, too. Why? Dell officials have told PCWorld it’s for space and z-height restraints. The XPS 13 2-in-1 we saw features a 512GB Toshiba BG4 SSD soldered directly on the motherboard. The last point that’s triggered some is the use of soldered storage. Nope, there’s no USB Type A on either of the XPS 13 versions above, so make your peace or buy a different laptop. Dell continues to say it couldn’t do it without making the laptop thicker. Missing is the all-important square USB Type-A. There are two Thunderbolt 3 ports and a headphone jack. On the negative side, we’ll point out the port arrangements. The body is narrower but also slightly deeper to accommodate the superior 16:10 aspect ratio screen. The XPS 13 2-in-1’s 16:10 isn’t 3:2, but that slightly taller aspect ratio gives you slightly more usable screen area. Apple’s MacBook use 16:10, and Microsoft’s 3:2 on the Surface line is just about perfect barring the unlikely return of retro 4:3 square monitors. That’s great for videos, but for actual work, where taller screens are preferred, it’s atrocious. PC laptops have long been peer-pressured into a universal 16:9 aspect ratio. LPDDR4X basically means higher clock speeds, larger memory modules, and lower power consumption.įinally, the panel Dell used is to be applauded as well. LPDDR4X memory has been around for about four years now (at least the non-X version), but it’s just finally making its way into PC laptops thanks to Intel’s newest CPU, which supports it.
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