Dell 13.3 XPS 13 7390 Windows 10 Pro hv4kv

The most noticeable change you’ll see from last year’s Dell 13.3 XPS 13 7390 Windows 10 Pro hv4kv is the display. No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you: the 16:9 screen is (finally!) no more. Dell has shaved a big chunk off the bottom bezel — it’s gone from 19.5mm to 4.6mm. (There’s also a dropped barrel hinge that hides a bit of it below the keyboard deck).

Dell has downsized the top and side bezels as well, resulting in a 16:10 display that’s 6.8 percent larger than that of its predecessor. The company claims a 91.5 percent screen-to-body ratio. It’s a lot of pixels — almost a million more than last year’s 1080p panel. And a few extra millimeters makes a big difference; I felt like I had more space than I usually do on 16:9 panels, and usually didn’t have to zoom out to comfortably work in two windows side by side. Get more in Dell 13.3 XPS 13 7390 Windows 10 Pro hv4kv review.

Dell offers free recycling schemes, even for products from other brands, while its packaging is made from recycled materials. The firm has a number of sustainability and environmental impact schemes under way for 2030, including the recycling or reuse an equivalent product per purchase and use of recycled material. Dell publishes the carbon footprint of its products.

Specification – Dell 13.3 XPS 13 7390 Windows 10 Pro hv4kv

Who is it for – Dell 13.3 XPS 13 7390 Windows 10 Pro hv4kv?

Buy it if…

You’re after something fancy
The Dell XPS 13 is without a doubt one of the most premium-feeling laptops we’ve laid hands on, and it will doubtless get some glances at the local coffee shop. It’s a laptop you’ll want to show off. 

You want a beautiful display
Dell excels with its display yet again, delivering a panel that’s bright and color accurate. And, with the tiny bezels, your entire view will be screen. 

You want something lightweight
This is an incredibly thin and light laptop, making it super easy to carry around wherever you have to go. If you want a competent computing device that feels like a feather, this is it. 

Don’t buy it if…

You’re on a budget
The Dell XPS 13 is a premium device, and with that comes a pretty steep price tag. You can get the same level of hardware elsewhere for less cash.

You want great laptop audio
Dell chose to put the speakers on the bottom of the laptop again, which means that audio quality isn’t great. You can get around this by using some headphones, but when you’re paying this much, we’d like to see better built-in speakers.

Compare Dell 13.3 XPS 13 7390 vs ASUS ZenBook 13 Ultra Slim Laptop

Price and availability – Dell 13.3 XPS 13 7390 Windows 10 Pro hv4kv

The $1,149 base model of the Dell XPS 13 has a 1-GHz Intel Core i5-1035G1 processor with 8GB of RAM, a 256GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD, an Intel UHD Graphics GPU and a 1920 x 1200 non-touch display. I had the opportunity to review the $1,749 model, which features a 1.5-GHz Intel Core i7-1065G7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB M.2 NVMe SSD, an Intel Iris Plus GPU and a 1920 x 1200 touch display.

The Dell XPS 13 9300 starts off at $1,249 (₤1,399, AU$2,499), with a 10th-gen Intel Core i5, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD – or a 512GB SSD in the UK and Australia. At this level, you’re also getting a 1080p display without touch capability – you’ll have to pay extra to touch your screen. 

Of course if that’s not enough, you can configure the new Dell XPS 13 with more powerful hardware and better displays, with the price tag going up in turn. The unit we reviewed, with the hardware listed to the right, will set you back $1,749 (₤1,599, AU$3,099), with a 10th-gen Core i7 and a touchscreen. Again, however, we have to mention that the 1080p touchscreen doesn’t seem to be available outside the US.

It’s definitely an expensive piece of kit, but much like the MacBook Pro it’s trying to compete with, the XPS 13 feels like an expensive piece of kit. We have our reservations with charging this much for this level of hardware, but premium design is something you’re into, Dell is serving it up here. 

And, if you really want to go all-out with it, you can have Dell strap a 4K touch screen on here for an extra $200 (about ₤160, AU$330) and a 2TB SSD for an added $300 (about ₤250, AU$500). This means that with everything added up, a fully kitted out Dell XPS 13 9300 is going to set you back a whopping $2,249 (about ₤1,850, AU$3,720).

The laptop can also be configured with a 1TB SSD ($150), 2TB SSD ($350) and a 3840 x 2400 touch display ($300). A tricked-out XPS 13 costs $2,309 and gets you the Core i7 processor, 2TB SSD, Windows 10 Pro and a super- high-resolution display. The laptop would also come in the Frost color scheme instead of the usual silver-and-black motif.

Dell 13.3 XPS 13 7390 Windows 10 Pro hv4kv review

Design

But there’s dozens of laptops out there that can say they’re thin and light, where the XPS 13 really excels is in other areas of the design. There is very little in the way of wasted space here, as the keyboard extends nearly to both edges of the laptop, along with a healthily-sized and incredibly smooth touchpad. 

This will probably not surprise anyone, but the Dell XPS 13 is an absolute stunner. Not only is this laptop extremely lightweight at 2.8 lb (1.27kg), but it’s super thin, too, measuring in at just 0.58 inches (14.8mm) at its thickest point. This makes the Dell XPS 13 an incredibly easy laptop to just throw in your backpack and carry around. However we do have to admit that we didn’t actually toss it in our backpack in our testing – thanks to that social distancing.

At 11.6 x 7.8 x 0.6-inches, the 2.8-pound XPS 13 is one of the smallest ultraportables available. It’s 2% smaller than its predecessor. Regarding weight, it’s on a par with the MSI Prestige 14 (2.8 pounds, 12.8 x 8.5 x 0.6 inches), and lighter than both the Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 (2.9 pounds, 12.1 x 8.8 x 0.6 inches) and MacBook Pro (13-inch 2019 with Touch Bar) (4.4 pounds, 12.8 x 8.9 x 1 inches). However, the HP Spectre x360 13 (2.7 pounds, 12.1 x 7.7 x 0.7 inches) is a tad lighter but slightly thicker. 

Build

The body of the laptop is made from aluminium, with your choice of black carbon fibre or white glass fibre on the laptop’s deck. It feels solid, sleek and unique. The wedge-shaped laptop weighs just 1.27kg and is only 14.8mm thick, with a smaller footprint than most of its competition.

Display – Dell 13.3 XPS 13 7390 Windows 10 Pro hv4kv

Likewise, the display is a thing of beauty. We reviewed the Dell XPS 13 with a 1080p touch display and it is without a doubt one of the brightest, most colorful displays we’ve seen in a while. Sure, the 4K model probably looks better, but we struggle to really see the point in getting a 4K display in a 13-inch laptop anyway. When we got the laptop ready for its battery test, we set the display brightness down to 50% – and we just left it there. The laptop was set to 100% brightness when it was first pulled out of its box, but it’s more than bright enough for our work at 50%.

For a bit of background, Dell is hyping the Dell XPS 13 as being part of its Dell Cinema program, aiming to bring pristine video and sound quality for folks that want to watch a lot of content on its laptops. The video part of that equation is definitely there – everything simply looks amazing on the Dell XPS 13 display. But wow that sound is not there.

Keyboard

The keyboard itself is again a winner, with key travel that is just deep enough to be comfy without having to make compromises to the portability of the laptop. The touchpad, too, is pretty incredible. It’s not on the level of, like, a MacBook Pro, but no Windows 10 laptop has ever even come close to that. For the most part, tracking is incredibly smooth and accurate, and the buttons don’t feel as mushy and weak as they do with other Windows laptops. 

For the past year, the XPS 13’s keyboard and touchpad have been my favorite keyboard and touchpad on the market. Their 2020 variants continue to earn their stripes. Dell hasn’t ported over the butterfly keys of the XPS 2-in-1; these keys have 1mm of travel, and they’re snippy, satisfying, and not too loud. My fingers flew, and I made fewer mistakes than usual. The keyboard is now edge-to-edge, and the keycaps are 9 percent larger. That doesn’t seem like much, but I can feel the difference. The touchpad is also 17 percent larger than last year’s model; the surface is delightfully smooth and the click is effortless.

Ports

There’s an annoying trend in current laptops to cut down ports in the name of portability, and the Dell XPS 13 is definitely guilty of that. You’re getting two Thunderbolt 3 ports, a microSD and a headphone jack. That’s it. That’s admittedly more than many other laptops on the market right now and there’s not really any space on the laptop for more, it just means you’ll have to live that adapter life. 

Like previous versions of the XPS 13, the top of the keyboard deck is covered in this composite fiber palm rest. This is pretty comfy, but it is definitely something that will get gross over time. 

Ultimately, the Dell XPS 13 is a premium device aimed at folks that want to get lightweight computing done and look good while doing it. And, really, it ultimately succeeds. It’s a beautiful piece of kit, we just wish Dell would take audio seriously for once. 

Speakers

The speakers on this laptop are probably going to be pretty decent for watching a quick YouTube video or binging some Netflix in the middle of the night when you’re too stressed to actually sleep. But if you really want to enjoy your media, the speakers aren’t going to cut it. 

Listening to Toxic by Britney Spears, the speakers on the XPS 13 almost completely stripped out the bottom end of the track. And that track without the booming bass – what’s even the point? Even less bass-dependent tracks like Cirice by Ghost sound like they’ve completely lost their teeth. Just imagine, you’re watching the latest Hollywood action movie and an explosion just sounds like a gust of wind. 

Watching the last action scene in Thor Ragnarok, even when the giant demon thing bursts out of the castle in Asgard, the sound leaves so much to be desired. One of the most bombastic scenes in the history of Marvel sounds boring on the XPS 13. If you’re going to watch your favorite movies on the XPS 13’s gorgeous display, please, for the love of everything good: wear some of the best headphones. 

Processor

Now, about this new processor. You’re not alone if you’re confused by Intel’s big mess of 10th Gen chips, so here’s the TL;DR. The late 2019 XPS 13 is powered by a Core i7-10710U, which is a Comet Lake chip with six cores and 12 threads. This XPS has an i7-1065G7, which is an Ice Lake processor — four cores and eight threads. This might look like a downgrade on paper, but that actually depends on what you’re trying to do. Extra cores give you an advantage in computational tasks — crunching numbers, compiling code, elaborate things in Excel. But Ice Lake is better for tasks that might leverage a GPU (gaming, photo and video work, etc.) thanks to Iris Plus, its far superior Gen 11 integrated graphics.

Multitasking

The XPS handled my daily multitasking — swapping between 15-20 Chrome tabs, Slack, and Spotify, often with downloads running in the background — without a stutter. Multitasking did cause some heat, particularly in the keyboard area. Outside of gaming, the device was never uncomfortable in my lap, but my fingers could often feel the heat beneath the keycaps when I was running as few as eight tabs — and the keyboard was downright hot during games (even League). The good news is that the XPS does a good job of keeping the CPU cool. I never experienced throttling, and the i7 stayed fairly consistently in the high 60s and low 70s throughout my 30-minute session of Tomb Raider. The fans, meanwhile, were audible, but not annoyingly loud.

Dell XPS 13 security

The XPS 13 has an embedded fingerprint reader in the power button for easy login using Windows Hello. It’s a nice, easy way to add an extra layer of security. I do wish Dell had found a way to either add a physical shutter for the webcam or an electronic kill switch. Having to use a piece of tape mars the beauty of those barely there bezels.

Gaming

Iris Plus delivered perhaps the best gaming performance I’ve seen from an integrated GPU. The XPS breezed through League of Legends, averaging frame rates in the low 160s and never dipping below 110, and pulled a consistent 70fps in Rocket League on maximum settings, with a low of 41. Overwatch was even playable on Ultra settings, hovering in the low 40s with a low of 21. (On Epic settings, it delivered mid-30s. On Medium, low 50s). That’s comparable to the performance we got from last year’s Razer Blade Stealth, which ran an MX150 discrete graphics card. I’m comfortable saying now that if you want to do light gaming, you no longer need to bother with a low-tier MX chip. This system got the job done just fine.

Of course, the XPS isn’t a gaming rig by any means. Shadow of the Tomb Raider was not playable, stumbling along at an average of 17fps on the lowest settings. It wasn’t just a stuttery experience; it was like watching a flip book. I’m aware that running Tomb Raider on this machine is overkill; anyone who wants to play that isn’t buying an XPS 13 with integrated graphics as their primary device. I only mention such a graphics-heavy task because it’s the point where the limits start to show.

Heat

The heat is my only major complaint about this device; everything else ranges from adequate to exceptional. The battery life, for example, is not the best in the category, but it’s still very good. Handling my typical workload (described above) at 50 percent brightness (brighter than I typically need indoors, as noted earlier), the XPS lasted seven hours and 20 minutes on the battery saver profile (which didn’t cause any slowdown). That should just about get you through a work day, and the screen is bright enough that you can easily browse at 30 or 40 percent if you need more juice.

I was also able to finish a 90-minute movie at maximum brightness with about 80 percent left in the tank. Even gaming on battery was decent; I got three hours of League of Legends in performance mode at full brightness. The game was playable for much of that time, dropping below acceptable thresholds at around 15 percent.

The audio isn’t what you’ll get from a competent external speaker, but it’s still about as good as anything I’ve ever heard from a laptop. Bass wasn’t strong, but the percussion had some oomph, and the bottom-mounted speakers filled a decent-sized room. The sound was a bit distorted at max volume, but crystal clear at 90.

Webcam

If the XPS 13 has a true weakness, it’s the webcam. The 2.25mm 720p shooter delivers an almost comically grainy picture — my hair looked like a blurry blob, and my background was either washed out or very dark with no middle ground. Miraculously, though, Windows Hello worked just fine, recognizing me instantly in diverse settings and conditions. And Dell deserves credit for squeezing a functional camera into a bezel so tiny — really, I’ll take anything over the nosecam of prior years. (If facial recognition isn’t your speed, a fingerprint reader is also reliable).

For a flagship product, this has been a boring review. That’s a good thing, though, because I really don’t have much to say. The XPS 13 speaks for itself. This isn’t a laptop that’s trying to push boundaries or rewrite the rules; it’s just giving users what they want. I would take a better webcam, I would take better cooling, I would take a USB-A, and I would take a slightly more color-accurate screen. But none of those are glaring flaws because they aren’t big impediments to the user experience. And in the areas that matter most — build, display, keyboard, touchpad, battery life, performance — the XPS 13 doesn’t just check all the boxes. It blows the boxes off the page.

Dell 13.3 XPS 13 7390 Windows 10 Pro hv4kv performance review

Here’s how the Dell XPS 13 (2020) performed in our suite of benchmark tests:

Cinebench R20 CPU:  1,700 points
Cinebench R15 CPU:  760 points
3DMark Time Spy: 901; Fire Strike: 2,856; Sky Diver: 10,066
GeekBench 5: 1,251 (single-core); 4,781 (multi-core)
PCMark 8 (Home Test): 3,890 points 
PCMark 8 Battery Life: 5 hours 35 minutes 
Battery Life (TechRadar movie test): 9 hours 40 minutes

The Dell XPS 13 we got for review is rocking an Intel Core i7-1065G7, a 4-core, 8-thread mobile processor built off of Intel’s Ice Lake architecture. And, well, it’s fine. 

This little processor provides enough juice to power you through pretty much any mundane computing task, but might struggle in super heavy workloads like video editing. But, there’s one key feature to Ice Lake that should be noted: the GPU. 

The Intel Gen11 graphics, or “Intel Iris,” are supposedly about 2x more powerful than the integrated graphics found in last-generation Intel Whiskey Lake processors. That definitely sounds impressive, and the fact that this laptop can score a healthy 2,856 points in Time Spy compared to the LG Gram 17 2019’s 1,094 backs up Intel’s claims. Still, this is very much not a gaming laptop. 

The Dell XPS 13 might be able to handle some esports titles at 720p, but you’re not exactly going to be getting killer Doom Eternal PC performance is all we’re saying. 

Raw CPU performance is another interesting story. Ice Lake in general is targeted more towards media consumption than raw performance, which is what its sister architecture Comet Lake is meant for. This means that in benchmarks like Cinebench and Geekbench see slightly lower scores than 8th-generation. 

As for what that’s like in practice, we were able to have dozens of Chrome tabs open in a panicked bid to keep up with work without having the laptop slow down even a little. 

What is super impressive, however, is that there is virtually no heat that transfers up to the keyboard or trackpad. Now, while the bottom of the trackpad does warm up quite a bit when it’s working hard, the keyboard feels just as cool after 8 hours as it does when we first open the laptop up at the beginning of the day. 

Even some of the best-cooled laptops will transfer some heat to the top-side of the chassis, but we’re super impressed by how well the Dell XPS 13 handles this. 

Battery life

Sure, the Dell XPS 13 performs extremely well, but because this is such a portable laptop, you’d expect long battery life so you could carry the laptop around for a long time without worrying about carrying around a charger. 

And, well, the XPS 13 largely delivers. In our movie test, the Dell XPS 13 lasts a respectable 9 hours and 40 minutes, and even in the more demanding PCMark 8 battery test lasts just under 6 hours. 

Benchmarks only tell so much of the story, though. What’s really impressive is how well the battery keeps up with our daily work. We’re not exactly easy on the laptops we test, loading up chrome with dozens of tabs and listening to music – and we have no problem getting through a full day of work, with some battery left over for the next morning. 

If you’re looking for a laptop to take to the office with you, where you can chill and watch some Netflix on the train home, the Dell XPS 13 makes a pretty good case for itself. 

Battery life wasn’t great, averaging only five and half hours of work between charges, including 90 minutes of photo editing, lots of browsing and word processing, with the screen brightness set to 70%. The 2020 MacBook Pro and Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 each lasted 7.5 hours under similar conditions. Lighter use saw closer to seven hours between charges. Models with the lower-resolution FHD+ screen, rather than 4K, will are likely to last significantly longer as the screen is one of the biggest power drains.

Software and features

Because the Dell XPS 13 is a flagship, it’s not bogged down with a ton of needless bloatware. However, there are a few pieces of software that offer some good ease of life bonuses.

Of course you have update assistants and customer service apps, but one of the most unique pieces of software here is Dell Cinema Guide. This allows you to basically collect all your streaming services under one app, and search for movies or TV shows you want to watch through all the libraries at once. Not exactly the most vital piece of software in the world, but we have to admit its pretty cool. 

Beyond that, the Dell XPS 13 features both versions of Windows Hello, with a fingerprint scanner above the backspace key that doubles as a power button, along with a IR-capable webcam that can scan your face to let you into the device. 

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