 Most laptops that roll through here get reviewed from a pretty fresh and purely objective perspective, since they're not really the kind of thing that I would use as a daily driver anyway, and, perhaps more importantly, they don't have a predecessor with whom I have a very intimate relationship. My Dell XPS 13 2015 edition video will be different. Its daddy is clearly the last generation XPS 13, whose name it bears, but for me, it gets to go head-to-head with its mama, the 2013 XPS 12. Or grandma, I guess, it's a generation older than that. A product whose two-in-one transformation capabilities it doesn't share, but to which it otherwise bears a more than passing resemblance. The MSI GT80 Titan is the world's first gaming laptop with a fully mechanical keyboard, and features dual GTX 980Ms and SLI. Click now to learn more. So let's begin with the highlight feature, the 13. Now this laptop is available with a 1080p non-touch display with standard glass, but I think most people would argue that you're not really doing your XPS 13 right, unless you opt for the premium super high pixel density, 3200x1800 IPS Gorilla Glass Cover 10-point multi-touch option that Dell is calling Infinity Display. And as much as that's a silly meaningless marketing word, man, it's beautiful. And like the hyper thin 5.2 millimeter bezel allows the XPS 13 to actually be about an inch less in width and height than my 12.5 inch XPS 12 while delivering a larger display. But of course, size isn't everything, so you know, what's it like once you get it in your hands and start working on it? Actually, a little weird at first to be honest. I mean, I'm accustomed to the screen kind of ending at the edge of the keyboard on most laptops, and on this one it just kind of doesn't. It's surprisingly different feeling, but you do get used to it quite quickly. There are still issues though. Text and UI scaling still sucks in Windows 8.1 with some applications displaying blurry text and others' UIs completely falling apart, something I will keep mentioning until it's addressed. But the good news is that in browsers and most of the other things you'll normally use, man, is this monitor gorgeous. Near perfect viewing angles, retina-like sharpness, and it's bright too. Color temperature was a touch cool out of the box, but a run with the Color Monkey fixed that right up and also told me that I'm sitting at about 40% brightness getting 120 candela per meter squared out of this thing. So that's about ideal for indoors. At full brightness, it's basically blinding inside, but great if you happen to be out in the sun. But of course, if you just wanted to hear about how great the screen is endlessly, then you could watch this 10-hour loop we created me talking about how great it is. If you're not into that sort of thing, well then keep watching this video because this pony has a lot more tricks up its... wherever a pony would store tricks. The guts for all XPS 13s contain a Dell 1560 2x2 802.11ac wireless card, a 52 watt-hour battery that Dell figures is good for up to 12 hours on the high-res model and 15 on the low-res one, and built-in Intel HD 5500 graphics with, depending on the trim level, some variety of U or ultra-low power class dual-core Core i3, i5, or i7 processor, 4 to 8 gigabytes of RAM, and anywhere from a 128 to 512 gigabyte M.2 SSD. Now hold on a second there, Linus. That SSD sounds like super cool and fast and PCI Express, but either I've got wax build up in my ear or you just said this notebook has 4 gigs of RAM on the thousand dollar model and a mere 8 gigs on the $1750 model? Well, you might have enough wax in your ear to cause hearing problems. Gross, by the way. But that wasn't the issue just now. Dell's 2015 XPS 13 doesn't even have the option to configure it with more RAM than I can fill up with a single multi-tabbed internet browser. There is more good stuff, though. The material choices are superb, with a similar machined aluminum and real carbon fiber, black and silver theme to the one that I have and love so much. The whole device is astonishingly slim, yet even while running the work benchmark that I used for battery life testing in PCMark 8, the fan stayed either very quiet and sometimes didn't even spin, and the I.O. has been dramatically improved, for me anyway, by the addition of an SD card reader to go with the USB 3 port and lock on this side, and the additional USB 3 port, 4K-capable mini display port port, power jack, battery life indicator, and 4-pole combo audio jack on the other. But I have more criticism, too. While the bottom is a solid chunk of aluminum with only vent holes and rubber feet to disrupt its awesomeness, and the screen itself is phenomenally rigid, considering how thin and basically bezel-less it is, the keyboard has taken a significant backward step in the build quality department. The backlight is nice and white, and the layout is pretty much ideal, other than a slightly shorter than I'd like backspace key, but the key travel distance is very short. The membrane switches have an unsatisfying front-heavy and sudden tactile bump, and much more importantly than any of that other stuff, the entire keyboard has way more flex than I'd expect in a premium product like this, regardless of how thin and sexy it is. While I'm piling on, I do have some other gripes in no particular order. Dell, the power adapter is super small, which is nice, but your friction-locked power plug wore out on my old notebook and basically falls out now on that one. I'm disappointed this hasn't been revised. Your nonsense McAfee trial and Dell update were using 25-plus percent CPU, doing lord-only-knows-what when I first booted the thing up. At one point, I've since removed them both. The speakers are side-firing rather than front-facing, which bites, and there's a bit of a lip on the bezel here that makes swiping in from the right for the charms menu kind of uncomfortable and difficult. Okay, that last one was pretty petty, which means we're probably heading to the good stuff again. The precision trackpad's default medium delay for palm rejection is horrible, but once I changed that, I got used to it pretty quickly. There is something I can't quite put my finger on. Ha ha ha! What a joke. But even now, I'm actually experiencing some kind of cursor acceleration-based tracking annoyances with fine movements, but I'm pretty sure that's Windows' fault, so as far as the hardware is concerned, overall accuracy, responsiveness, and the feel of this glass pad with seamless clicky buttons on the bottom is very, very solid. And so was pretty much the rest of this device. I mean, thanks to its 5th gen processor, my i5-equipped model managed to score a 2846 in the PCMark Work Suite that I ran as a battery life benchmark, and to see how far we've come in the last couple of years, well, it did that while managing 35%. Yes, deep into double digits. More battery life than my old product. And speaking of battery life, Dell actually sent over this battery pack thing, which you can use to squeeze some extra out of it and charge other stuff like your phone while you're at it if you're into that sort of thing, so we have come a long way. But it's bottom line time now, and the bottom line is the XPS 13 2015 edition is a fantastic and stunningly beautiful machine that I love, but that lacks the customizability on Dell's website that would allow me to configure it into something that I would buy. The pre-baked options make a lot of trade-offs that sound great on paper, like giving up 20% of its rated battery life for a fancy high pixel density display in the premium models, but in practice are let down by the awful experience that is using Windows with UI scaling. So, Dell, if you're listening, I love this device, but here's the one that I would want to see next time. 1080p IPS with a touchscreen covered in Gorilla Glass so that I can conserve some battery and don't need to scale, and 16 gigs of RAM, seriously, that's critical, and let me have whatever processor and SSD that I want and whatever trim level I want. It seems like a lot of the options are locked down kind of unnecessarily. A build-to-order option would be nice. Speaking of, I don't know, something that I just said, Valentine's Day is fast approaching. I know, right? And today's sponsor, Pro Flowers, has a great solution to this prob- excuse me, wondrous occasion for our subscribers in the US. They're a flower delivery service that saves you the hassle of going to the store and selecting something at the last minute. Just head over to their website, pick out something that you like, check out, and boom! They're set to deliver on Valentine's Day. Delivery on that day is guaranteed, by the way, and their flowers last seven days or your money back. And today they're offering the Linus Tech Tips audience a special deal. You can get a dozen assorted roses with a glass vase for 20 bucks, or you can upgrade to a dozen red roses, an elegant ruby vase, and a box of gourmet chocolates and a lavender spot trio for another 20. So click the link in the video description to get the deal. It's a great, affordable idea, and it only takes a few minutes. Just like watching this video did. Like it if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it, leave a comment if your feelings are more complicated than this. As always, we have links in the video description to support us. You can buy a tool t-shirt like this one, you can give us a monthly contribution, or you can change your Amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code, so every time you buy one of these- I don't even know if they have these on Amazon, probably, let's hope they do- we get a small kickback. Thanks again for watching, and as always, don't forget to subscribe.