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

video made in partnership with Dell for

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

hardware, they just nuked it because

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

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.

It's all new. And even the chassis is

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

very good with this kind of metal work.

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

thing. When you look at a video like

this, a lot of high-end premium laptops

can look similar because it's just like

metal stuff. But when you hold this

thing in hand, it just there's just no

flex to this thing. And it's a very

clean design. There's almost no visible

seams on this thing. You can see the

screws, but unlike a typical laptop,

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

have to watch out for, but it just

maintains a very clean and seamless

look. Now, the top logo is no longer

that old school Dell logo they had from

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

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.

For ports, we have three Thunderbolt 4

ports and an audio jack, but there are

no SD card slots on either of the

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

kind of two compare on the inside. So,

if you'll notice, there's a few things

that are different this year. So, the

first thing, there are no visible

cutouts or grills for the speaker on

both the XPS 14 and 16. They're

invisible. There's four speakers on each

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.

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

parts for the click mechanism. It's just

like a haptic motor that sends a

vibration to your finger when you click

to indicate that you've clicked. Now, on

this one, the previous generation, there

was no visual indication as to where the

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

know where it is. For some people, could

have been frustrating. Now, they've

added like a bit of etching to here.

It's not super visible, but you can feel

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

change in this keyboard area, I'm sure

you've noticed by now. They've gotten

rid of this row of capacitive function

buttons and the escape key. This is

something that I think a lot of people

disliked out of the gate. I honestly

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

and most importantly, at least for me,

the escape key. It's a very welcome

change. The lattice keyboard does take

some time to get used to. I've always

thought this thing looks really nice,

but you do have to spend some time with

it, like a couple hours, but the type as

fast as you normally would. At least I

did. Now, the displays, both of these

have an option for a tandem OLED panel,

and these look so nice. So, it's two

layers of OLED material stacked on top

of each other, and it gives you better

brightness, gives you better efficiency,

better longevity of the panel because

you don't have to drive them as hard.

Everything just gets better when you

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

both the LCD and tandem OLED panels

support variable refresh rate, so

they're also more efficient than before.

Now, under the hood, these are running

Intel's new Core Ultra 300 series chips.

Now, because this is so early on in the

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

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

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

devices, XPS 16 and XPS 14 do not have

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

only, at least for this product line. I

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

energyefficient chip. The idea being

this is as efficient as Lunar Lake,

which was Intel's most efficient chip

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

very energyefficient chip, these also

have very energy dense battery packs.

This is the first laptop I have seen, in

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.

Those are going to be like 6 maybe 700

watt hours per liter. These are 900. And

it's because they're running a new

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

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.

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

the same size pack? It should be a

bigger one. My only guess, and this is

just like a guess in my head, because

this battery tech is new, like really

new. The manufacturers behind this, they

can't do like multiple SKs for Dell.

They just want one skew. You get a 70

watt hour pack, that's all you get for

now. And maybe in the future, they'll

have more options. That's the only thing

I can think of as to why this is a I

think most people, they would love the

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,

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.