Dell XPS 13 Review: A mixed bag and a swan song

I used the latest Dell XPS 13 for a few weeks in December, and I was underwhelmed. Let me explain. For as long as I’ve known Dell as a brand, the XPS lineup was considered the crème de la crème of laptops — impossibly thin, beautifully designed and, by all accounts extremely powerful.

Which is why my sort of underwhelming experience with the XPS 13 left me scratching my head. Did I hear incorrectly that the XPS was the pinnacle of Dell’s consumer laptop offerings? Was my perception misplaced?

And then, in January, everything fell into place when…