Dell XPS 13

It might seem gushing, but the XPS 13 is a joy to hold. In fact, once you've unpacked it, you'll probably want to hold it a lot, and sometimes - and we really mean this - caress its smooth metal lid. This is something that, in the past, only Apple laptops could inspire from us.But this lovely design isn't the only thing on which Dell has taken its cue from Apple. This machine has very little in the way of connectivity - something that garnered Apple considerable criticism when the Air launched. There are just two USB sockets, and only one of them supports USB 3. Aside from that, you'll find a DisplayPort socket and a combined headphone and microphone jack. And that's it. Apart from the power connector - but that really doesn't count. It's hard to say how we feel about this dreadful connectivity. Our gut reaction is that we simply don't care, that the design and beauty of this laptop makes up for its lack of socketry. Then we snap out of the haze that Apple has managed to hypnotise us in to, and we realise that it is a little bit annoying not to be able to use an Ethernet connection without an adaptor. But the flipside to this is that we don't usually plug our laptops in to Ethernet cables anyway. It's entirely too much hassle, and it detracts from the pleasure of having a portable computer. We miss a full-sized SD card socket too, and that hurts a little more, as it means we'll have to carry a card reader around with us to manage photographs and video - something we do an awful lot of. In many ways, we think Dell should have ditched the battery meter, and put an SD card socket in there instead. Although we have no idea if that's possible, given the tiny proportions of this machine. Screen and sound As with 99 per cent of Ultrabooks, the screen on this XPS 13 is driven by Intel integrated graphics. That means you'll get a solid, but uninspiring performance. Gaming is pretty much out of the question here, but that's unlikely to bother the people buying this machine. The screen is covered in a glossy glass. This is a bit of a disaster for using it in bright conditions, but it is usable. There are some Ultrabooks that use matt screens, and this is good if you use your machine outside a lot, but for most of us, it's not a massive issue. The LCD panel behind the glass is top-notch though. It might be only a 1366x720 panel but the colours are spot on and there's plenty of detail. We really enjoyed looking at it and movies and TV shows look superb with that high contrast - thanks in part to that glass cover. We streamed movies in both 720p and 1080p over our network using Plex. They looked utterly fantastic, and the detail in both was delicious. It's worth pointing out that the i5 processor in our machine handled the high-quality video with ease. Proving, to some extent, that the faster core i7 is perhaps unnecessary. We plugged in a pair of our high-end reference headphones to get the measure of the sound on the Dell. We felt that audio was a little whispy and trebbly to start with, but a quick check in the control panel told us that the Realtek soundcard was applying some daft sound effects. Once disabled, sound was much more balanced and a pleasure to listen to. The built-in speakers are, as you'd expect, less than impressive. They do the job though, and for video conferencing and the occasional YouTube clip are more than adequate. Options The available hardware choices for the XPS are quite small, which is a good thing. As of now, you can get two i5 machines with either 128 or 256GB SSDs and 4GB of RAM each or you can opt for an i7 with a 256GB SSD and 4GB of RAM.