Dell XPS laptops are back
Dell Technologies is bringing back its well-regarded XPS laptop brand after discontinuing it last year, as a top executive said the PC business had “gotten a bit off course.”
The high-end XPS series had been a mainstay on tech reviewers’ laptop best-of lists when Dell announced last January that it would be moving to simpler naming conventions.
The new names — such as Dell Pro and Dell Pro Max — drew jeers from consumers, who said the rebranding was eerily reminiscent of some Apple products.
Now, Texas-based Dell is reinstating the brand, it said Monday during CES, the annual consumer electronics show happening this week.
“We’ve gotten a bit off course in our PC business, and the accumulated impact is we’ve underperformed,” said chief operating officer Jeff Clarke during a briefing with reporters ahead of the conference.
Clarke, who took direct control over the personal computer unit last summer, said that tariffs, the “unmet promise of AI” and “one of the slowest CPU transitions I have ever been involved in” culminated in a year that “hasn’t quite been what we thought it was going to be.”
“Quite frankly, I owe you an apology today,” he added, addressing customers and what he called industry experts. “We didn’t listen to you. You were right on branding.”
Limited configurations of two new models, the XPS 14 and XPS 16, will be available beginning Tuesday, Dell said, with a 13-inch model in the pipeline for later this year.
The initial XPS 14 is priced at $2,050 (R33,482) while the XPS 16 is $2,200 (R35,932).
Additional versions of the two laptops, including those priced at less than $2,000, will be available in February, Dell said.
The two notebooks, which will compete directly with Apple’s 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air, similarly have aluminium enclosures, compact designs and slim bezels around the display.
They measure 14.6 millimetres thick, making them Dell’s thinnest laptops, according to the company. The 14-inch model weighs about 1.36kg ,while the larger version is 1.63kg.
On the inside, the XPS systems use newly available Intel Corp. chips that offer faster performance and, in particular, improved artificial intelligence processing, according to Dell.
The company also said it redesigned the internal fans so that they’re larger, thinner, quieter and more power efficient.
Battery life with typical usage can go as long as 27 hours, though that comes with the caveat of configuring the system with a less vibrant LCD screen as opposed to a punchier OLED panel.
The forthcoming XPS 13 will mark the return of a popular model that first made its debut at CES in 2012.
The updated version will have a similar build quality as the new XPS 14 and XPS 16, but will be thinner, measuring less than 13 millimetres thick, Dell said.
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