Dell XPS 13 vNext gets teased ahead of CES 2018

The Dell XPS 13 has earned rave reviews from critics and consumers alike for both its looks and performance and naturally, one would expect the saga to continue. CES 2018 is still a few months away but that hasn't deterred Dell from offering a sneak peak at the upcoming XPS 13 refresh. 

TechRadar reports that they were shown an early preview of the upcoming XPS 13 while on a tour of Dell's Round Rock, Texas headquarters. We are pretty stoked to see new color variants, Alpine White and Rose Gold, lending a bit of oomph to the InfinityEdge display equipped notebook. The new XPS 13 seems to be inspired by the XPS 13 2-in-1, not by having a 360-degree hinge, but by the conspicuous absence of full size USB 3.0 ports. Instead, we get 3 USB Type-C ports and one of those in all likelihood will be Thunderbolt 3 enabled. We just hope that Dell doesn't gimp the Thunderbolt 3 bandwidth in 2018 but we're taming our hopes on this. The SD card reader has also been swapped out for a microSD card slot. From what we see, Dell seems to have not learnt the lesson of placing the webcam where it belongs. There is a black strip seen below the Dell logo, which could house the nosecam err, webcam and the IR camera for Windows Hello. Competing notebooks such as the HP Spectre 13 have near bezel-less displays with proper webcam positioning so Dell is still out of touch with reality in this aspect. 

One of the features that Dell could boast about the notebook when it launches is about the palm rest. All XPS models till date have used rubberized palm rests. The 2018 Dell XPS 13 will supposedly use a glass fiber palm rest comprising of a woven crystalline medium and a clear resin lends a soft, yet firm feel. Dell had to develop this new material as it did not want to compromise on the aesthetics by simply painting existing carbon fiber materials white. 

Apart from the exteriors, not much was disclosed to TechRadar. Dell had already started shipping XPS 13 notebooks featuring Intel 'Kaby Lake-R' chips shortly after their IFA 2017 announcement. It will be interesting to see what the new XPS 13 would pack under its hood and what sort of performance metrics it will sport.