Dell counters the MacBook Neo with a $599 XPS 13

Dell just announced the new XPS 13, a well-timed response to the wildly successful MacBook Neo. It starts at $599 through September, but only for students and educators, and everyone else pays $699. By matching the Neo's price with a premium ultraportable, though, Dell's giving Windows buyers what they're asking for and gives other PC makers something else to worry about. But only 8GB of RAM hurts more under Windows than it does under Apple Silicon and MacOS, so all eyes will be on the benchmarks.

It's the thinnest and lightest XPS Dell has built, 12.7mm thick and weighing 2.2 pounds. Inside is Intel's Core Series 3 5 320 "Wildcat Lake," a six-core chip with two performance cores, four low-power efficiency cores, and dual-core integrated graphics. The 13.4-inch IPS LCD touchscreen is 2560 x 1600, covers 100% of DCI-P3, reaches 500 nits, and shifts its refresh rate between 30 and 120 Hz. The base model ships with 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, with RAM options up to 32GB and 1TB. Connectivity: two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4. There is no 3.5mm audio jack. Dell claims 17 hours of battery life.

It's 11.7 x 7.9 inches (296.9 × 200.7 mm) and should fit in the same sleeves as a MacBook Neo. Microsoft's Surface Laptop Go is an inch smaller, if like me you miss the 12" MacBooks and want a smaller ultrabook.

If the Neo reset expectations for what a MacBook costs, it's good to see ultrabooks closing the gap. Intel's Wildcat Lake competes on power draw, and here's a mainstream test for it. Maybe wait a week and see what Microsoft and NVidia have coming.

There are Windows alternatives already, too. I mentioned the Surface Laptop Go: now in its third generation, the price has dropped to $630, and it has comparable specs to the Dell (though only 256GB of storage) and is even smaller. The display is an iffy 1536×1024, though, which at 12.4 inches has a ppi of 149 (the Dell's is 226, the Apple's is 219). The 3:2 aspect ratio is nice for retrogaming. It (like the Neo) also has a headphone jack.