Could Surface Book killers arrive so soon?

Oct 7, 2015 15:29 GMT  ·  By

In the continuous flurry of powerful notebooks that have invaded the news, out of which Microsoft's Surface Book stands out as the current performance champion, a new challenger has arrived to dethrone the newly installed king. Welcome Dell XPS 13 ultrabook.

The new XPS 13 is basically a refreshed model that follows the original launched earlier this year, which carried a 5th Gen Intel Core i5-5200U, 4GB DDR3, and 128GB SSD. Since the Skylake came out, practically every laptop manufacturer far and wide has started to refresh their models with the new chips in order to stay competitive. Although Microsoft made headlines yesterday with the great Microsoft Surface Book, a new powerful ultrabook comes fast from behind to challenge the new king.

This new challenger from Dell brags that it is the world's smallest, 13-inch laptop, with an InfinityEdge display has no display borders, so it pretty much covers the entire viewing surface. The display has also an optional UltraSharp Quad HD+ (3,200 x 1,800 touchscreen resolution), boasting 5.7 million pixels.

To make sure that, connectivity-wise, it will remain top-notch, the new Dell chose Thunderbolt over any other charging port, guaranteeing transfer speeds 8 times faster than USB 3.0, and 4K display support like nothing.

The Dell XPS 13 promises to stand up to Microsoft's Surface Book

To complete the challenge against Microsoft, Dell will offer a choice of new 6th gen Skylakes comprising in Intel Core i3-6100U, Core i5-6200U, or Core i7-6500U processors, together with a DRAM memory availability of up to 16GB and 1TB of SSD storage space.

Designed to be the best laptop for its size, while being a tad smaller than the 13.5" Surface Book, the new Dell XPS 13 can still stand up to Microsoft's powerhouse. Last but not least, Dell also claims that its new product has the longest battery life of any 13-inch laptop on the planet, reaching up to 18 hours, which leaves behind, in theory, Surface Book's 12 hours lifespan.

If it will kill the Surface Book in the long run is yet to be seen. The specs are incredibly similar, and both of them are steaming hot and extremely powerful laptops. At the moment, there are no explicit details about pricing and availability of the new device, but this YouTube video from Dell pretty much explains everything about the new Dell laptop. Currently, the XPS 13 sells for a starting price of $1,700 (€1,510), so we can expect the final price for the refreshed model to be a bit higher.