Dell's $699 XPS 13 laptop is now available with the MacBook Neo in its sights — entry-level XPS design comes with Wildcat Lake, 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD

Dell's new XPS 13 is available for sale, starting at $599 for students and $699 for everyone else. Revealed as a MacBook Neo competitor sporting Intel's Wildcat Lake chips last month, the XPS 13 attempts to strike a balance between premium XPS design and entry-level specs. Given the state of DRAM and NAND flash prices, designs like the XPS 13 and Neo are an attempt to get premium-feeling devices into the hands of customers who don't need high-end compute, all at reasonable prices

• Check out the XPS 13 at Dell for $699.99

At the heart of the XPS 13 is one of Intel's new Wildcat Lake chips, which have been sparsely available in the U.S. market. This range is built on the same 18A process as Intel's Panther Lake SoCs, and it leverages the same microarchitectures. Wildcat Lake is severely stripped back compared to Panther Lake, however.

The entry-level XPS 13 at $699 comes with Intel's Core 5 320, for instance, which is a six-core chip with two Cougar Cove P-cores and a cluster of four Darkmont LPE cores. It has a base power draw of just 15W, and a maximum turbo power of 35W, along with onboard Intel Graphics sporting two Xe3 cores. With those specs, you shouldn't expect to do more than basic web and productivity tasks.

However, Wildcat Lake comes with the upside of modern connectivity, including speedy LPDDR5X at up to 7,467 MT/s, Wi-Fi 7, and USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2. The XPS 13 specifically has some premium flourishes, as well. It's an all-aluminum machine that weighs just 2.2 pounds and measures 0.5 inches think, and it's equipped with a 13.4-inch 2.5K touch display, even on the $699 design.

You can see the full specs for the entry-level configuration above. As it stands now, there's only one other configuration available with 16 GB of memory for $899. Keep in mind that Wildcat Lake is a single-channel product; even with 16 GB of memory, you'll still need to settle for single-channel performance. But given this machine's target audience, that's probably fine.

Dell says it will eventually release the XPS 13 with Panther Lake chips, which uses proper dual-channel memory. We'll eventually see a configuration with the Core Ultra 7 355, which starts at 16 GB of memory and scales up to 32 GB, as well as sports Thunderbolt 4. Additionally, Dell says it will offer the XPS 13 with 256 GB and 1 TB storage options, but 512 GB is the only configuration available now.

If you need an affordable basic Windows laptop in a chassis that doesn't feel like a penalty box, the XPS 13 is a strong choice. Get it while it's hot.

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