Dell XPS 12 Review: A Jack of All Trades Flipscreen Ultrabook
by Jarred Walton on February 22, 2013 2:13 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Dell
- XPS
- Intel Insider
- Ultraportable
- hybrids
- Ultrabook
Dell XPS 12 Laptop Performance Summary
We’re taking the same approach to benchmarks that we used with the Acer S7 and Surface Pro reviews—which is to say, we’ll use all of our typical laptop benchmarks along with some of the tablet-centric benchmarks to round things out. Performance as you’d expect is basically on par with other Core i7 ULV offerings (e.g. Acer S7), so faster than the Surface Pro, substantially faster than any non-Core products, but worse battery life than ARM offerings. Given the size and weight, this is much more a part of the laptop with a touchscreen crowd as opposed to being a tablet with laptop aspects, so our primary focus will be on how it compares with other laptops. Here’s the quick overview of the base components for the various laptops we’re including. Note that at present, only the XPS 12, Acer S7, Surface Pro, and Vizio CT15 were tested with Windows 8; the rest were running Windows 7.
| Laptop Configuration Overview | ||||
| Laptop | CPU | Graphics | Storage | Battery |
| Acer Aspire S7-391-9886 | Intel i7-3517U | HD4000 | 2x128GB SSD | 35Wh |
| Apple MacBook Air 13 (Mid-2012) | Intel i5-3427U | HD4000 | 256GB SSD | 50Wh |
| ASUS Zenbook Prime UX31A-DB71 | Intel i7-3517U | HD4000 | 256GB SSD | 50Wh |
| Dell XPS 12 | Intel i7-3517U | HD4000 | 256GB SSD | 47Wh |
| Dell XPS 13 | Intel i7-2637M | HD3000 | 256GB SSD | 47Wh |
| HP Envy 14 Spectre | Intel i7-3667U | HD4000 | 2x128GB SSDs | 56Wh |
| HP Folio 13 | Intel i5-2467M | HD3000 | 128GB SSD | 60Wh |
| Intel IVB Ultrabook Prototype | Intel i5-3427U | HD4000 | 240GB SSD | 47Wh |
| Microsoft Surface Pro | Intel i5-3317U | HD4000 | 128GB | 42Wh |
| Toshiba Satellite U845-S406 | Intel i5-3317U | HD4000 | 500+32GB Hybrid | 54Wh |
| Toshiba Satellite U845W-S410 | Intel i5-3317U | HD4000 | 500+32GB Hybrid | 54Wh |
| VizioCT15 | Intel i7-3517U | HD4000 | 256GB SSD | 52Wh |
There aren’t really any surprises here; the XPS 12 performs right about where we’d expect. Acer’s S7 does come in slightly ahead in most benchmarks, which is interesting considering it’s thinner and thus cooling the chip (and enabling higher Turbo Boost clocks) should in theory be more difficult, but clearly that’s not the case. Whether it’s a lack of fine tuning for performance, minor differences in other components, or prioritizing quiet over fast, unless you’re really concerned about a difference of a few percent all of the i7-3517U Ultrabooks perform about the same. Actually, that’s not quite true, as Windows 7 models seem to hold a slight performance advantage in several tests as well (particularly battery life, which we’ll get to in a moment).
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nagi603 - Friday, February 22, 2013 - link
My thoughts exactly. I'm looking to replace a rapidly aging tablet PC, and just can't find a good, modern convertible / tablet to replace it with... A shame companies eschew either the 8 gigs of ram, the pen input, the big enough battery or the not-insane price.damianrobertjones - Friday, February 22, 2013 - link
Lenovo Helix. HP 2760p (Ish)uditrana - Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - link
ThinkPad Helix?Fits everything but the insane price.
BrokenCrayons - Friday, February 22, 2013 - link
Though really, for $1200+ dollars, I could buy a lot of ink pens and Marble Composition notebooks which don't seem to suffer from the same battery life problems that a tablet has and are probably somewhat lighter. Dropping one, even from the top of a building, or running over one with a car won't cause a significant enough amount of damage to make the notebook cease to operate either. Of course, you don't get an Internet connection to anything. Still, I'll take $1.75 each from Wally World plus a few cents for a good PaperMate pen for the durability, endurance, and weight savings.-BC
Rick83 - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link
Weight saving?Have you ever tried to get 1200 dollars worth of pens and paper into your carry-on luggage?
On another note: I don't think the limitation matrix in the post three up is quite correct: Price should be replaced by "with a decent screen".
Currently not even 2500 dollars can buy something that's better in every way, compared to a Thinkpad X60 tablet from 5 years ago (which then cost around 2000 dollars, but was worth the money for those that were looking for pen support.)
twin - Friday, February 22, 2013 - link
I think you mixed up the weight on the table. It shows 2.87 instead of 3.35lbs.Any plans to look at the Lenovo Helix in the future? thanks
JarredWalton - Friday, February 22, 2013 - link
Oops... copy/paste of the Acer table and I missed updating the dimensions and weight. It's fixed now, thanks.As for the Helix, Lenovo has not seeded us with a laptop for review for several years, so unless that changes the only way to review it will be if one of us purchases one. I know personally it's more than I can spend, considering I have other laptops to use that don't cost me anything. I did play with it at CES, though, and it was decent; not sure about the mechanism for attaching to the keyboard base, as it just felt a bit clunky, but dockable tablets and devices always seem to have some issues there.
StormyParis - Friday, February 22, 2013 - link
Darn the first picture is ungly, to the point of making the damn thing broken, I initially thought the screen was on the tablet, separated from the rest of the device.JarredWalton - Friday, February 22, 2013 - link
The glossy display shows reflections quite well, so unless you really try to stage the photos you get a lot of stuff like that. Thought it was a nice shot for those that worry about glossy LCDs. :-)nerd1 - Friday, February 22, 2013 - link
I wonder how long it takes to see the review of Ativ Smart PC (atom) and hopefully Ativ smart pc pro (i5 version)It literally took months...