Dell's $699 XPS 13 answers the MacBook Neo and resets the fleet laptop ceiling

Dell has shipped an XPS 13 that starts at $699, or $599 for students, the same entry price as Apple's MacBook Neo ^[5]. According to Wired, whose reviewer spent months looking for a Windows machine built to the same brief and found nothing, this is the first credible answer ^[4], which means the price at which buyers can reasonably demand premium build quality has moved down a bracket.

The trigger was Apple. The MacBook Neo was announced this spring at $599 for the base configuration, a price Apple had never previously brought a MacBook to, and it now starts at $699, which Wired still calls unprecedented territory ^[1][2]. That is a $100 increase, about 17 percent, and it still lands under $700 ^[3]. It also put Apple inside a price band where Windows machines had effectively had the field to themselves ^[6].

The reason that hurt is that the Windows field at that price cut corners: cheap materials, low-quality displays, weak touchpads ^[7]. Wired singles out the HP OmniBook 5 with the Snapdragon X Plus, a machine it otherwise likes, for a weak touchpad ^[8].

The XPS 13 is specified to compete on those exact points. It is the same half-inch thickness as the Neo but weighs 2.2 pounds, half a pound lighter ^[9][10], which puts the Neo at roughly 2.7 pounds ^[11]. Its 13.4-inch panel is larger than the Neo's 13-inch screen and sits in smaller bezels, so the Neo is the taller machine with the lid open ^[12]. Wired measured the Neo at up to 509 nits with decent color reproduction ^[13], and says the Dell beats it three ways: it has a touchscreen, which MacBooks do not ^[14]; it runs at 120 Hz, which not even the MacBook Air does ^[15]; and it has better saturation on Adobe RGB and P3 while being equally sharp ^[16]. Dell's color choice is two shades of silver against Apple's white keyboard and brighter options ^[17].

For anyone specifying standard-issue laptops, the interesting differences are the boring ones. Apple's base Neo omits Touch ID and drops keyboard backlighting; the XPS 13 keeps backlighting ^[18]. Both machines have two USB-C ports, but Dell puts one on each side so the machine charges from either flank ^[19], and one of the Neo's two ports is USB 2, slow for transfers and unable to natively drive an external display ^[20]. Both of Dell's are USB 3.2 Gen 2 and each can support a 4K display ^[21]. In practice that gives a base Neo one modern port, which is a docking problem, not a spec-sheet quibble.

Two things to watch. First, the parts of the comparison that decide fleet suitability are performance and battery life, and Wired says its own conclusion was a surprise once it dug into the testing, with the piece headlined as an upset ^[22][23] - build quality alone does not settle it. Second, whether any other Windows vendor follows Dell into this bracket. For months after Apple's announcement, none did ^[4], and a single credible answer at $699 is a response, not yet a market.