The New Dell XPS - It's Back and SO MUCH Better!

[00:02] CES. Last year, Dell did the unthinkable. They killed off their XPS brand. It was the weirdest thing. Like, this brand name XPS that's been associated with like their top tier, most premium

[00:14] they were trying to simplify their naming of their systems and it just made no sense. But thankfully, someone at Dell realized that this was not the move. And so, for CES 2026, they are bringing back the XPS brand. So, we have

[00:26] bringing back the XPS brand. So, we have the XPS 16, XPS 14. This has been fully upgraded this year. We have brand new chips from Intel with powerful GPUs. We have new keyboards, new screen tech, new battery tech. This first of its kind.

[00:38] It's all new. And even the chassis is new. So, these have a completely new new. So, these have a completely new design. This is a very thin system with the body being milled from a single block of aluminum. So, Dell has been

[00:50] They've shown year after year that this is what they do with the XPS line. But this year, it feels a little bit different. This feels so sturdy and so rigid considering how thin this device is. It's kind of crazy. And here's the

[01:03] this, a lot of high-end premium laptops can look similar because it's just like thing in hand, it just there's just no clean design. There's almost no visible seams on this thing. You can see the

[01:17] there isn't a panel to lift away. To open it up, you unscrew those screws and then you remove the top keyboard deck. like it comes off and that's how you access the internals. It's not as easy to get in there now. There's a cable you

[01:31] maintains a very clean and seamless look. Now, the top logo is no longer the previous generation. It's now this more modern XPS, and I think it looks a lot better. The colors of the devices that I have are this graphite gray

[01:46] color, but there is another colorway that's releasing later called Shimmer. It's like this warmer colored metal finish that I think looks really good. ports and an audio jack, but there are

[01:58] devices this year. Now, the trackpad area on these devices. So, I'll show it to you on both the 16 and the 14. Uh, actually, you'll be able to see how the if you'll notice, there's a few things that are different this year. So, the

[02:13] cutouts or grills for the speaker on both the XPS 14 and 16. They're of them. They sound great, but you just can't see them. they're underneath the keyboard and they fire up. The second thing pertains to the uh the trackpad.

[02:28] So, this is a previous generation of XPS14. And if you'll notice this, so these both all of these things had uh haptic trackpads in the sense that they're like uh like a MacBook. They have a trackpad that doesn't have moving

[02:42] parts for the click mechanism. It's just like a haptic motor that sends a to indicate that you've clicked. Now, on this one, the previous generation, there this one, the previous generation, there was no visual indication as to where the

[02:57] active area started and ended. So, you could be kind of sliding around and once you get past a certain point, the trackpad stops working and now you don't have been frustrating. Now, they've added like a bit of etching to here.

[03:11] it as you're sliding your finger across. You just feel it and you're like, you know that you've reached the end of that active area. But the most important you've noticed by now. They've gotten rid of this row of capacitive function

[03:26] buttons and the escape key. This is something that I think a lot of people don't even know why they went with it to begin with. And now the new versions of XPS products with the relaunch. They have physical keys for the function keys

[03:41] the escape key. It's a very welcome change. The lattice keyboard does take thought this thing looks really nice, but you do have to spend some time with fast as you normally would. At least I did. Now, the displays, both of these

[03:55] have an option for a tandem OLED panel, and these look so nice. So, it's two of each other, and it gives you better brightness, gives you better efficiency, you don't have to drive them as hard. Everything just gets better when you

[04:09] have tandem OLED. It is more expensive than the LCD panel. It looks awesome, though. 120 Hz refresh rate and it just looks so good for games and content. And support variable refresh rate, so they're also more efficient than before.

[04:23] Now, under the hood, these are running Intel's new Core Ultra 300 series chips. launch cycle, and these are both running very raw and early drivers. I'm not allowed to benchmark these things and show the numbers to you, but I will say

[04:37] just playing around with them, testing them, I think people will be very, very happy with the performance they get from CPU and GPU. These are just so good. Intel claims that these new integrated GPUs can deliver up to 50% better GPU

[04:51] performance compared to the Lunar Lake stuff. But yeah, for an integrated solution, very impressive. Now, because the GPU is as good as it is, these the GPU is as good as it is, these devices, XPS 16 and XPS 14 do not have

[05:04] an option for a discrete Nvidia GPU. Like for the past 10 years or even more, there's always been the ability to be like, hey, you know, if you want to, you could get a Nvidia GPU on the XPS devices, but now it's integrated GPUs

[05:20] don't know about future stuff that they're planning on putting out. Now, the battery or let's talk about energy efficiency first. This is a very this is as efficient as Lunar Lake,

[05:32] that they ever put out. It's supposed to be on that level. The 14-in pulls up to 25 watts. The 16-in pulls up to 35 watts because there's just more room in there. It's got a more powerful cooling solution. But in addition to having a

[05:46] very energyefficient chip, these also have very energy dense battery packs. fact, I think it's the only one out there right now that have the new 900 ED cells that are significantly more energy dense than a typical laptop battery.

[06:01] Those are going to be like 6 maybe 700 watt hours per liter. These are 900. And silicon carbon tech, right? You just get a different anode material that allows it to be more dense versus the typical graphite anode. And it's just a better

[06:14] pack. Now, because of that super dense pack, the 14-in device gets a 70watt hour pack despite being super thin, which is great. The 16-in, however, also gets a 70watt hour pack. Uh, in terms of battery life, that's like their claims.

[06:28] battery life, that's like their claims. This is around 25 27 hours. The 16-in is supposedly the same somehow. From my testing so far, I again can't give you like numbers, but they look very good. The thing is, why is the 16-in running

[06:43] bigger one. My only guess, and this is just like a guess in my head, because new. The manufacturers behind this, they can't do like multiple SKs for Dell. watt hour pack, that's all you get for now. And maybe in the future, they'll

[06:59] have more options. That's the only thing I can think of as to why this is a I extra battery size and just be like, "Yeah, bring on the weight. I'll take it because a 99 or a 95watt hour battery in this thing would be like awesome." Okay,

[07:12] there you have it. the new Dell XPS and uh 14 and 16. Thank you for Dell for partnering with me to be able to show you guys things early.