Dell Takes a Swing at the MacBook Neo — New XPS 13 Costs More, But Comes Loaded

The success of Apple’s MacBook Neo has a lot of folks feeling the heat, and now Dell is bringing an updated XPS 13 to market — a featherweight laptop aimed straight at the MacBook Neo crowd. It weighs about 1 kg with a chassis just 12.7 mm thin. The body is all aluminum, but the engineers didn't sacrifice active cooling to hit those dimensions — they actually managed to squeeze in two fans. Dell stresses that the build quality and materials are held to the same standards as the higher-end XPS models, and that the lower price tag doesn’t mean cutting corners on quality.

Every version of the XPS 13 comes with a 13.4-inch touchscreen (2560×1600), an anti-glare coating, and a variable refresh rate ranging from 30 to 120 Hz. Dell claims full DCI-P3 color coverage — the industry standard for pro video and photo work. The MacBook Neo has no touch input, and its screen is capped at 60Hz with a more modest color gamut.

The base XPS 13 packs an Intel Core 5 320 processor, 8GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and a 512GB SSD. A beefier version with an Intel Core Ultra 7 355, support for up to 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD will follow later. According to Dell’s internal tests, battery life hits up to 17 hours of continuous video playback. Standard gear that comes “in the base model” includes: a backlit keyboard, four speakers, an Intel Wi-Fi 7 module, two USB-C ports with 10 Gbps speeds (USB 3.2 Gen 2), and an infrared camera for Windows Hello.

The starting price for regular buyers is $699, while the MacBook Neo starts at $600. Dell didn’t go the discount route — instead, it’s betting on a noticeably richer feature set for a small premium. The top-tier Storm color variant with the Core Ultra 7 is expected around mid-summer; its price will be announced later.

The entry-level model hits the market before the end of June. This launch clearly shows Dell is trying to check off several boxes for high schoolers, college students, and entry-level pros: a light chassis for daily portability, and a screen you can actually work with on the go.

What do you think — can the better-equipped XPS 13 justify the price gap over the MacBook Neo, or does this crowd still care only about the lowest possible sticker price? Drop your take in the comments.