Dell XPS 13 Plus review: thin, light, a great OLED screen, and a powerful P-series chip, but expensive, gets very hot, a poor battery life, and very few ports
Context & Ripple Effects
The XPS 13 Plus is the most aggressive expression yet of a trade-off Dell has been carrying for years: the 2020 XPS 13 was already dinged for limited ports, and the 2020 2-in-1 showed inadequate cooling when fast silicon went into a thin chassis. This review adds a powerful P-series chip and an OLED screen to that same thin body — and reports heat, poor battery life, and very few ports as the price.
It also lands mid-arc in the line's history: the 2015 XPS 13 was praised for class-leading battery life and value, so the Plus reads as a deliberate pivot from endurance to performance-per-millimeter. The follow-up matters too — the 2023 XPS 13 improved battery life but kept only two ports and trailed similar models on performance, suggesting the Plus's constraints weren't a one-year experiment.
First-order effects
- Buyers paying the Plus's premium price get the OLED screen and P-series performance but inherit hot running, weak battery life, and a near-empty port selection — the reviewer's dealbreakers sit exactly where the price is highest.
- Dell's design bet is now public and quantified: the chassis choice that enables the thin, light body is the same one producing the thermal and battery penalties reviewers flag.
Second-order effects
- Dell's own next iteration becomes the verdict on the experiment: the 2023 refresh fixes battery life but holds the two-port limit and loses performance comparisons against similar machines, meaning the correction was partial rather than a return to the 2015 formula of long battery life at low cost.
- Rival thin-and-light makers get a clear benchmark to beat — a premium machine whose weaknesses (ports, thermals, battery) are all chassis-derived, making 'more ports, cooler, longer-lasting at the same thinness' an easy marketing claim.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the premium ultrabook category structurally converges on minimal-port, thermally-constrained designs, with battery life and connectivity becoming the differentiators reviewers and buyers sort on — a reversal of the value-for-endurance positioning the XPS 13 line itself pioneered in 2015.
- Meanwhile Dell's corporate center of gravity is shifting hard toward AI infrastructure — Q1 AI server revenue of $16.1B and a raised $60B FY 2027 forecast dwarf anything the client PC line contributes — which reduces the strategic cost of keeping the XPS line as a design showcase rather than a volume or margin engine.
The trend: Premium ultrabooks keep trading ports, thermals, and battery life for thinness, even as Dell's business weight migrates from consumer laptops to AI servers.