The Pros

Excellent battery life; Small footprint; Comfortable keyboard; Attractive design

The Cons

Oddly placed webcam; Runs warm on bottom; Relatively slow SSD

Verdict

The Dell XPS 13 is the best ultraportable laptop for the money, thanks to its wonderfully compact design, long battery life and snappy performance.

Design

If you're a business traveler who places a premium on the size of your carry-on, the XPS 13 is the laptop for you. That's because Dell managed to cram a 13-inch notebook into the footprint of an 11-inch system. It did so by trimming the bezel around the display. It's just 0.2 inches thick --less than half of what you'll find on most other notebooks.

Eliminating the touch screen also shaves off a few ounces from the XPS 13.

Unlike earlier versions of the XPS 13, which had a carbon-fiber bottom, the newest model has aluminum on the outside. Carbon fiber is now used for the deck, which not only looks cool, but also is comfortable on your wrists.

The touch version of the XPS looks a bit slicker than the nontouch version because it has edge-to-edge glass, whereas the display on the nontouch version is inset, with a small but more noticeable bezel.

With a footprint of 11.98 x 7.88 x 0.33-0.6 inches, the XPS 13 is closer in size to the 11-inch MacBook Air (11.8 x 7.56 x 0.11-0.68 inches) than it is to other 13-inch systems, such as the HP EliteBook 1020 (12.2 x 8.27 x 0.62 inches), Lenovo Yoga 3 (13 x 9 x 0.5 inches) and 13-inch MacBook Air (12.8 x 9 x 0.11-0.68 inches).

Eliminating the touch screen also shaves off a few ounces from the XPS 13. At 2.6 pounds, it's lighter than the touch version (2.8 pounds), and on a par with the HP EliteBook 1020 (2.68 pounds) and Lenovo Yoga 3 (2.6 pounds). The Air's aging design is the heaviest, at 3 pounds.