Dell’s XPS 13 has always been quite popular, and now with the CES 2022 refresh, it is looking more modern and futuristic than ever before. It has a low-profile design, and the Intel 12th Gen processors integration has made it quite powerful from its predecessor. However, there is another modernized laptop that also lives up to this criteria. The Surface Laptop 4 from Microsoft is currently one of the sleekest looking laptops on the market. It has quite a match-up with the XPS 13 Plus, given plenty of similarities between them.
Dell XPS 13 Plus vs Surface Laptop 4
Dell XPS 13 Plus and Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 is currently two of the best modern laptop that money can buy. In this article, we compare these two laptops head-on to help you make a good purchase decision.
Design
Design-wise, both the XPS 13 Plus and Surface Laptop 4 maintain a minimalist outlook. XPS 13 Plus looks really flat, with a Capacitive Touch Function Row that replaces the traditional one. Basically, it is a Flat bar with small LED buttons to toggle brightness and volume level functions. The Trackpad is invisible now as it got replaced by Haptic ForcePad. The keyboard is now completely low profile with a 1milimeter key travel that feels really comfortable to type with.
On the other end of the spectrum, the Surface Laptop 4 looks ultra-thin, and combined with its invisible hinges, it appears really sleek and can be opened with just one finger. However, XPS 13 Plus looks more futuristic than the Surface Laptop 4.
Ports
Surface Laptop 4 brings along a wide selection of ports, including 1 USB-C, 1 USB-A, a Surface Connect Port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The Surface Connect Port is a cool feature to have as it combines faster data transfer, power delivery, and video streaming within a single port. As for the XPS 13 Plus, it has 2 Thunderbolt 4 ports, and that is pretty much it.
Display
You get 4 Display options on the XPS 13 Plus and 2 on the Surface Laptop 4.The 13.4-inch XPS 13 Plus comes in Full HD, Ultra HD, and a 3.5K screen, in either touch or non-touch, as well as an OLED panel option. Surface Laptop 4, however, has a 13.5 and a 15-inch variant where both have a Quad HD screen, 3 by 2 aspect ratio, and Surface Pen support.
Internal Specs
Naturally, the XPS 13 Plus is more powerful compared to the Surface Laptop 4 as it has Alder Lake series of processors to power it up. The base model has an i5-1240P CPU, with 8gigs of DDR5 RAM and 256gigs of SSD. However, you can crank it up with up to an i7-1280P CPU, 2TB of storage, and 32GB of RAM.
Under the hood, the Surface Laptop 4 also packs significant power. You can get it with either an i7-1185G7 or Ryzen 7 4980U processor. With that being said, memory and storage availability stretches as far as 32GB and 1TB, respectively, giving you a handful of options to choose from.
Pricing
And lastly, their pricing. The starting price of the XPS 13 Plus is about 1199 dollars with all the base specs, including a 12th Gen i5 chip. Surface Laptop 4, however, retails for 899 dollars with a decent amount of spec, making it more affordable than the XPS 13 Plus.
Final Verdict
Which of these portable machines gets the title of being the best modern laptop? Honestly, that is rather debatable. Surface Laptop 4 is quite practical given its minimal design, a wide array of ports, and better configuration than the base variant of the XPS 13 Plus. It is also quite affordable and will help you to save some bucks. But if you can care less about the price, you might just want to go for the XPS 13 Plus, which is quite futuristic and has a flagship Intel SKU to power it up.
