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It's got a soft touch feel, is grippy and has that checkered gray pattern that says carbon fiber (you know what I'm talking about, sportscar geeks). The tapered sides make for a slim look and feel, and the carbon fiber that covers the bottom and wraps around the sides looks and feels simply wonderful. The lozenge-like aluminum lid is very attractive, though MacBook Air derivative. Happily, the over the top design elements like the shiny spiral hinge and weird speaker grilles found on the XPS 14z and 15z are gone. The laptop looks like a Dell when it comes to the black keyboard deck and fondness for curves. It's 0.24" at its thinnest point up front and 0.71" at the rear. and the Toshiba Portege Z830 the lightest at 2.5 lbs). The XPS 13 weighs 3 pounds, which is average for Ultrabooks (the HP Folio is currently the heaviest at 3.3 lbs. Of course, looks aren't everything and the box is exciting for the first 10 minutes, but material quality and durability are rather important, so Dell competes nicely with the Asus Zenbook UX31 and the 13" MacBook Air, its two aluminum-clad chic competitors. It makes a mockery of the HP Folio 13 sitting beside it on our desk an Ultabook that costs just $50 less than the Dell but uses everyday design elements and plastics and ships in your typical HP cardboard outer box with foam retainers. Build quality, fit and finish and even the box are top notch. The Dell XPS 13 has an aluminum lid, a black painted magnesium alloy keyboard deck and a very cool looking and feeling carbon fiber bottom. Display quality and build materials are manufacturers' two key differentiation points for Ultrabooks, and Dell definitely went to town with materials. While some Ultrabooks started higher than Intel's hoped for $999 or under price tag (the Asus Zenbook UX31 comes to mind), Dell managed to get the XPS 13 in with a starting price of $999 while using premium materials. Dell goes with the usual Intel Core i5 1.6GHz ULV CPU and a Core i7 ULV option, 4 gigs of RAM, a 128 or 256 gig SSD and a 1366 x 768 display. Some ignore the Intel spec and use a conventional spinning hard drive rather than an SSD (Acer Aspire S3) to bring costs down, and others stretch the Ultrabook definition to 14 or 15"- the Lenovo IdeaPad U400 and the upcoming 14" Fujitsu Lifebook to name two. That means you won't see much variation among makers beyond display resolution and casing materials. Intel created the Ultrabook concept, so they guide the specs. The Dell XPS 13 is late to join the Ultrabook party that started around the holiday 2011 season, but if you haven't yet picked up one of these svelte yet powerful machines, you'll be glad you waited to see what Dell brings to the table. Now we've covered Ultrabooks (13.3" super thin and light notebooks with Intel Core i Sandy Bridge CPUs and SSD drives) from Asus, Lenovo, HP, Acer and Toshiba. Not so very long ago, there was just one Ultrabook on the market, and it didn't run Windows, nor did it go under that Intel-invented moniker: the MacBook Air.
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In Chief (twitter: Update, March 2013: Read our review of the latest Dell XPS 13 that replaced this model. What's not: Fan can be boisterous when working the notebook hard, trackpad not the best. One of the best Ultrabooks on the market. Good backlit keyboard, works with large high resolution monitors, nice display. What's hot: Excellent build quality and top notch materials and components. Home > Notebook Reviews and Ultrabook Reviews> Dell XPS 13