Dell’s XPS 13 series of laptops have been some of the most well-known lineups of consumer laptops for years now. The company comes out with an upgrade every year or a little quicker at times along with a refreshed Intel chip. But this year, along with an Intel variant, we also have a Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered ultrabook.
The Snapdragon-powered Dell XPS 9345 is priced from Rs 1,19,000 for the base model to Rs 1,69,990 for the high-end variant, and I have been using the one that falls between these two—at Rs 1,52,200—for a few days, and here’s my review of it:
The XPS 13 9345 is a premium, slim laptop made from CNC-machined aluminium with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 shielding on the palm rest. The 13.4-inch Corning Gorilla Glass Victus display ensures no glare effects with its matte finish.
The left and right panels of the XPS feature one USB 4.0 type C port each, with support for both DisplayPort and Power Delivery. There are no other ports at all. Dell could have at least added a 3.5mm audio jack and maybe a microSD card slot, if not a USB type A port, due to the slim profile. The sides also carry the vents and speakers. The keyboard features touch keys for the function row. You get a large trackpad along with a decently sized palm-rest space.
The keyboard on the XPS 13 is backlit and comes with decent travel. As a fast typist transitioning from my regular laptop, I would have preferred a little more definition to the keys. However, you quickly get used to it as you type more and more.
The trackpad is reasonably spaced and mostly reliable and accurate when navigating or using standard Windows gestures. There’s also no break between the trackpad and the rest of the deck, which we have seen before from Dell, but it might still take a little while to get used to it.
The 13.4-inch Tandem OLED display (2880x1800) supports a 60Hz refresh rate along with HDR and Dolby Vision. The display is quite bright but not the brightest when comparing laptops in this price range. With good viewing angles, it does not miss out on details when watching high-resolution videos or viewing images.
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The touch display is also responsive whenever used for pinching to zoom, video playback and similar gestures. It’s a quality panel that justifies itself if you are doing any sort of graphics work on it. However, a higher refresh rate would have been a nice touch for that price tag, especially considering how well the display performs otherwise.
Dell XPS 13 9345 performance
Equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 chip (up to 3.4GHz 12-core CPU, Adreno X1 GPU, and up to 40 TOPS NPU) along with 16GB of LPDDR5x RAM and 512GB of PCIe 4 SSD, it runs on Windows 11 Home (24H2 version). The OS performed satisfactorily, apps and video playback on the device were not glitchy, and you get a smooth web browsing experience when using Edge or Firefox. Day-to-day performance was not something I had any issues with while using the laptop.
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The Dell XPS 9345 is not meant for gaming, but you can expect it to handle a game like Baldur’s Gate 3 relatively okay. Being a Copilot+ PC, the Copilot+ key replaces the right CTRL key, which can be used to bring up the generative AI chatbot. You also get features like Studio effects camera for video calls, which worked okay when tried with decent lighting conditions around. The subtly placed full HD webcam does a good job at handling video calls without too many artificial effects in place by default, though there’s no physical switch to turn it off.
Dell XPS 9345 battery life and connectivity
The device is powered by a 55Whr battery and comes with a 60W USB type C charger. The laptop lasted me a whole working day almost every time, and didn’t show more than 2 per cent of loss on battery when closed lid on standby mode overnight. You can expect to get 12 hours of battery on a full single charge most of the times with display brightness set at 40 per cent.
The 8W total speakers offer good sound output that has depth as well loudness to be your multimedia player when indoors, including watching movies or a TV series. WiFi performance on the device is top notch with no connectivity troubles to be seen during my usage.
All in all, the Snapdragon-powered XPS 13 performs well on most counts. It would have been nice to have some more port connectivity options for working on the go. However, if you need only USB type C ports for your accessories and general usage, you can definitely consider this Dell laptop due to its reliable performance, long battery life, and slim profile.
