Dell XPS 13 Plus Laptop Review: Gorgeous, Powerful, Radical
Dell XPS 13 Plus Storage, Productivity And Game Benchmarks
ATTO Disk Benchmarks
ATTO disk benchmark is a fairly quick and dirty test that measures sequential read/write bandwidth across a range of different data sizes. While we don't typically compare these results across multiple machines, it's useful to gauge whether a particular notebook's storage subsystem is up to snuff.
In this case, the 512GB PCIe Gen 4 Samsung PM9A1 SSD on board the new Dell XPS 13 Plus is nice and snappy, offering up nearly 6GB/sec of bandwidth for reads and about 4.5GB/sec for writes in this quick and dirty throughput test.
The Dell XPS 13 Plus outpaces all other thin-and-light notebooks in Cinebench R23 at both of its power mode settings, which is a solid indicator of both single and multi-threaded workload performance. In Geekbech, the test group is slightly more dispersed with the AMD Ryzen 6000-powered ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 sneaking in for a second-place finish in between the two Dell XPS 13 Plus power settings. The G14 is, however, a slightly beefier machine at 3.85 lbs versus the XPS 13 Plus' 2.7-pound wafer-thin profile.
The Dell XPS 13 Plus slots in with more middling scores in this mixed, mostly productivity workload benchmark. It does, however, excel in content creation. Using its Ultra Performance mode, the machine vaults to near the top of the pack, which indicates notably better CPU responsiveness at this setting.
BrowserBench Speedometer Web App Benchmarks
We use BrowserBench.org's Speedometer test to gauge mixed internet usage experience, which takes a holistic look at web application performance. This test automatically loads and runs several sample web apps from ToDoMVC.com using the most popular web development frameworks around, including React, Angular, Ember.js, and vanilla JavaScript. This test is a better example of how systems cope with real web applications, as opposed to a pure JavaScript compute test like JetStream.
In this first test, which is a good indicator of system responsiveness for light duty, bursty workloads, the Dell XPS 13 Plus slots in at the top of the pack in a virtual dead heat with the Intel 12th Gen power Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 360, at its Ultra Performance mode setting.
Geekbench And Cinebench R23 Rendering Tests
This is the latest 3D rendering benchmark from Maxon, based on the Cinema 4D R23 rendering engine. We tested both single-threaded and multi-threaded tests on all of the notebooks represented here. Meanwhile, with GeekBench, which is a fully synthetic benchmark that performs tasks like text compression and image compression, we tested its CPU Benchmark module as well. You can consider both of these tests as pure CPU throughput metrics, with Cinebench offering a heavier-duty real world workload.
The Dell XPS 13 Plus outpaces all other thin-and-light notebooks in Cinebench R23 at both of its power mode settings, which is a solid indicator of both single and multi-threaded workload performance. In Geekbech, the test group is slightly more dispersed with the AMD Ryzen 6000-powered ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 sneaking in for a second-place finish in between the two Dell XPS 13 Plus power settings. The G14 is, however, a slightly beefier machine at 3.85 lbs versus the XPS 13 Plus' 2.7-pound wafer-thin profile.
UL PCMark 10 Testing
PCMark 10 uses a mix of real-world applications and simulated workloads to establish how well a given system performs productivity tasks, including image and video editing, web browsing, and OpenOffice document editing. While these scores appear to be all over the place, the systems are sorted by their overall PCMark score, which is the third (gray) bar in each cluster.
3DMark Graphics & GPU Tests
3DMark has several different graphics tests which focus on different types of systems. We tested here with Night Raid, which is 3DMark's targeted benchmark for laptops with integrated graphics. This test presents a solid challenge for the system's CPU and GPU engines using DirectX 12's API.
With this synthetic gaming test, the Dell XPS 13 Plus puts up more middling scores overall, as its Intel Alder Lake CPU's Iris Xe graphics engine is really only capable of light duty casual gaming. At its Ultra Performance mode again, however, performance is markedly better.
Middle Earth: Shadow Of War & Gear Tactics Game Tests
Middle Earth: Shadow of War is a fun and beautiful title set in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings universe. To test the game's performance relative to other systems, we set the resolution to 1920x1080 and turned the visuals up to the High preset. For Gears Tactics, we used a similar resolution, but tested the game with its Low, Medium, and High presets to see how it scales. The frame rates here are the averages reported by each game's built-in benchmark utilities.
These are two good benchmarks that illustrate performance with two very different types of gaming workloads. Shadow Of War is much more graphically intensive and GPU-bound, while Gears Tactics relies a bit more on the CPU for physics, object tracking, and game character AI calculations. As you can see, though it still maintains playable performance at Medium in-game settings, the Dell XPS 13 Plus puts up another middling showing in its Optimized power profile. However, flip it to Ultra Performance and its scores are boosted nicely to the top of the pack, right behind Samsung's Galaxy Book Pro 360 that's based on Intel's previous 11th Gen Core series CPU.
In short, graphics performance hasn't changed much for Intel's 12th Gen Alder Lake mobile CPUs, and the Dell XPS 13 Plus, as well as the Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 which is based on the same CPU architecture, put up respectable though uninspiring performance in gaming. That said, prospective ultralight laptop consumers are obviously not looking to this class of machine for a gaming platform.
In short, graphics performance hasn't changed much for Intel's 12th Gen Alder Lake mobile CPUs, and the Dell XPS 13 Plus, as well as the Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 which is based on the same CPU architecture, put up respectable though uninspiring performance in gaming. That said, prospective ultralight laptop consumers are obviously not looking to this class of machine for a gaming platform.
