The XPS Developer Edition will be sold in the US and some countries from Europe

Feb 22, 2013 14:42 GMT  ·  By

Ultrabooks aren't all consumer products, though the majority of them definitely think of convenience and portability before other things. Dell's XPS Developer Edition is an example of the unusual.

Dell didn't launch this particular laptop today. Instead, the XPS Developer Edition was released months ago.

What Dell took the time to announce today is the upgrade to the display.

While the screen will continue to measure 13.3 inches (the company couldn't very well change that without essentially making a new laptop), it will not have the same resolution as before.

While 1,366 x 768 pixels (HD as it were) is definitely a respectably quality for that panel size, it is not ideal, nor mainstream. At least not anymore.

That is why Dell gave the XPS Developer Edition a full HD screen (1920 x 1080 pixels).

“The 1080p display offers 44% more pixels than the 900p display that it currently offers. For those who want to compare it against the MacBook Pro 13, while the retina version does offer a higher resolution, it also adds several hundred dollars to the price and over a half pound of weight in the process,” said Dell's Lionel Menchaca.

“I know some folks may judge the XPS 13 against the MacBook Pro 13, but in terms of size and weight, I think the MacBook Air 13 is a more realistic compare. The XPS 13 is smaller than the MacBook Air 13 because we fit a 13-inch screen into something barely bigger than an 11-inch footprint.”

Dell will sell the upgraded notebook in the United States, the UK, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Denmark, Spain and Sweden, as well as other countries from the rest of the world (Morocco, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, Russia).

For those that want a rundown of the rest of the hardware, XPS Developer Edition (Project Sputnik) has a Core i5 CPU, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD storage, Wi-Fi and every standard feature that laptops are known for today. The price is $1,550 / 1,172.55 Euro.