Dell’s new 13-inch XPS lineup is getting a well-deserved upgrade. The popular line of laptops are now paired with Intel’s 11th-generation chips. This latest version of Dell’s XPS 13, XPS 13 Developer Edition, and XPS 13 2-in-1 are the first Dell laptops that have managed to get Intel Evo certified. To be an Evo-certified laptop, the machine must support fast charging, at least a 9-hour battery, and it has to be able to wake from sleep in less than 1 second.

The new Intel Evo certification really does sound like a nice set of standards for a laptop to have. This reminds me of the Ultrabook initiative that Intel started about a while ago. The Ultrabook standard made the difference between the clunky, thick laptops of yesteryear and today’s slim, cutting edge machines. So yea, this Evo certification thing is going to make these 13-inch XPS laptops that much more appealing.

These new Dell laptops have full support for Thunderbolt 4 and include upgradable system memory. Another thing, this new 11-gen Intel-powered platform supports memory speeds ranging from DDR4 3733MHz to DDR4 4267MHz. The total amount of RAM these systems can support is 32GB. So, that means you can have up to 32GB RAM in a laptop at speeds of over 60GB per second. On the GPU front, the new 13-inch XPS 13 2-in-1 and XPS 13 offer Intel Xe graphics as well. The XP3 13 Developer Edition lacks this feature. The 2-in-1 convertable comes with an IR (Infrared) depth-sensing camera that supports Windows Hello. The convertible starts at $1,249, and the standard 13-Inch XPS 13 begins at $999.

The 13-Inch XPS Developer Edition

The Developer Edition comes with Linux preinstalled, and Dell is estimating that the system will yield a battery life of almost 19 hours. The Linux distribution that’s installed on the 13-inch XPS Developer Edition laptop is Ubuntu 20.04LTS. This laptop also has an updated version of Dell’s InfinityEdge FHD+ display, but we don’t know how much it will cost just yet.

You will be able to purchase these devices in the US and Canadian markets on the 30th of September. After that, Dell is planning on launching a 13-inch XPS model that features a frost machined aluminum finish and an ‘arctic white’ woven glass palm rest. Dell will, however, be selling all three of these systems in limited European and Asian markets sometime in the next couple weeks.

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Shiela Gutierrez

I love art, sky, trees, computers, science, technology, and space. I’m an entry-level web developer, and I love to do research on the latest upcoming tech!

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If you are in the market for a new laptop, right now may not be the best time to buy. That applies to both MacOS and Windows laptops, because Intel’s next-generation chips are looking like they will actually provide a reasonable boost in CPU performance while also drastically increasing graphics horsepower. There are some early tests of the new chip, and its showing that it may be worth waiting for.

Tech YouTuber ‘The Tech Chap’ was able to gain access to a Intel Core i7-1185G7 CPU and a pre-production MSI Prestige 14 laptop. It’s important to note that the i7-1185G7 is the most powerful chip in the Tiger Lake family. The new CPU comes with Intel’s all-new 96 core ‘Xe’ graphics engine. 

Overall CPU performance of the quad-core Core i7-1185G7 is going to see a pretty sizable boost compared to last-gen chips like the 10th Gen Intel Ice Lake CPUs that you can find in computers like the Microsoft Surface Laptop 3. Graphics performance, though, is where Tiger Lake chips are really going to shine.

The Tech Chap ran quite a few tests and benchmarks that showed the Core i7-1185G7 outperforms a lot of laptops that use Ice Lake CPU with Iris Plus graphics. The new i7 even bests AMD this time around, outperforming machines that have a Ryzen 7 4800U with Vega 8 graphics. Even more mind-bending is the fact that this new Intel chip has better performance than a laptop that uses a discrete Nvidia MX350 GPU. 

This chip will provide photo and video editors with real-world performance gains, and super-thin ultra-portable laptops are going to finally be able to play modern games at good frame rates.

Things aren’t perfect quite yet, though. The Tech Chap said there are some stability issues with the drivers. After a bit of gaming, the system crashed [sad-emoji]. We are still in the early days for the Tiger Lake chips, so that’s to be expected. The Tech Chap also mentioned that the MSI Prestige 14 is somewhat thicker than a lot of other ultra-portables and also has higher-end cooling. So, it’s probably going to be able to squeeze more performance out of the Core i7-1185G7 than other upcoming super-slim laptops.

Intel’s new i7 chip was able to deliver solid graphics performance in games like Fortnite and Rainbow Six Siege. And it’s important to note that this is all before Intel’s Tiger Lake chips have been put through the normal paces of driver updates and optimization.

Basically, for the first time in a while, Intel’s new chips are seeming like they actually might be worth buying. Tiger Lake could quite possibly break the cycle of disappointment that Intel fans have had to endure lately. These chips may actually provide ultra-portables an upgrade worth paying for. So, that’s why we think you might want to wait for them to become available before you buy a new MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or Windows 10 laptop. 

Yes, Apple is indeed moving away from x86-based Intel chips in favor of its own custom designed ARM-based processors. In fact, We are thinking a MacBook with an ARM-based chip could show up as early as this year, but the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro platforms will probably still use Intel’s processors for the next generation or two.

So, if you’re in the market for a new MacBook, take our advice and wait on that purchase. If you do, there is a high probability that Apple will use a Tiger Lake chip for its refreshed version current MacOS machines. When those Macs get that upgrade, it will give those machines a sizable boost in graphics power without the customer needing to spend more money on a model that has a dedicated GPU.

Judging by the leaks we have seen so far, we are thinking that we will see a 12-inch MacBook and a 13-inch MacBook Pro that have the new custom Apple designed ARM-based chip. Apple is expected to eventually entirely drop Intel chips from its MacBook range, so then point that was mentioned above regarding waiting to buy a new Mac machine is still valid because it’s worth waiting for either Apple Silicon or Intel Tiger Lake-powered MacBooks.

Kevin C

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