HP Pavilion Aero 13 Review: An almost perfect blend of portability and performance

The HP Pavilion Aero 13 is a light and compact laptop that offers excellent performance and decent build quality. The laptop weighs just 990g, making it one of the lightest laptops in the world. The chassis is made from Magnesium Alloy, and the laptop has a brushed aluminium finish. The laptop's 16:10 FHD+ display is excellent and offers more screen real estate than a conventional 16:9 panel. The keyboard is a 60% keyboard, and the trackpad is relatively small, but the keys have a 1.5mm travel and are relatively silent. The laptop is powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 7735U CPU featuring 8-Cores, 16-Threads with 4.7GHz Max Boost Clock and 28W TDP, with 16GB LPDDR5 RAM running at 6400MHz, and a 1TB NCME PCIe Gen 4 SSD. The HP Pavilion Aero 13 is an excellent option for those who need a powerful, lightweight laptop that can handle most productivity tasks with ease.

Laptop processors are beginning to get really good. Even in an affordable laptop that costs between Rs 55,000 to 65,000, you get a decently rich performance package. Using this you can do almost all your productivity and work-related tasks very easily. You can also do some light gaming on these processors because a lot of them now come with decently capable integrated graphics. But when you begin to ask for this performance in a portable form factor, the price tag begins to go up. 

To pack power and maintain a small size as well, OEMs have to pull a lot of tricks ranging from artificially limiting a processor’s performance, to using a high-end heat sink to soldering the RAM and thus making it non-upgradable and some other shenanigans as well. Therefore, keep the above context in mind because today I am going to talk about the HP Pavilion Aero 13, which is India’s (and probably the world’s) lightest laptop. 

Together, you and I are going on a journey to discover how such a thin and light device can exist and perform in the same league as a relatively big laptop. Remember that the real beauty is on the inside so we’re going to take a look at this laptop’s internals and see how well/poorly it performs in real life. And after all, is said and done, we will see, together, who is this machine for and whether it is worth a buy or not. 

HP Pavilion Aero 13 - Specifications

Processor - AMD Ryzen 7 7735U CPU featuring 8-Cores, 16-Threads with 4.7GHz Max Boost Clock and 28W TDP

Graphics - AMD Radeon 680M 12-core GPU running at 2200MHz frequency

Memory - 16GB LPDDR5 RAM running at 6400MHz

Storage - 1TB NCME PCIe Gen 4 SSD

Display - 13.3-inch WUXGA IPS LCD display

Battery - 43Wh

Weight - 990g

HP Pavilion Aero 13 - Design And Build Quality

Clever engineering is an important pre-requisite if you want to make (arguably) the world’s lightest laptop. Moreover, HP isn’t the first company that has tried to build a featherweight laptop. The 12-inch Apple MacBook was close to 920g. The Acer Swift 7 is another ultra-lightweight laptop that you can buy in India and it weighs just 889g. However, it is quite old at this point and uses an 8th gen Intel processor. FUJITSU also makes some really good and lightweight machines. And most of its laptops feature a rock-solid chassis that screams Japanese engineering. It’d be safe to assume FUJITSU is the Toyota of the Windows laptop world. 

The HP Pavilion Aero 13 also manages to stand on its own in presence of these giants. The laptop’s chassis is made from Magnesium Alloy. I received the Aero’s Rose Gold variant and the laptop has a  brushed aluminum finish all over it. The laptop’s panels are decently tough. But you will find some flex in the area adjacent to the keyboard deck, and you’ll notice some flex above the function keys if you try and press really hard. However, the rest of the laptop feels pretty rock solid.

On top of the lid, you’ll see the new revised HP logo and it looks more minimalistic than the previous generation. I can’t say that it looks either good or bad but I much rather prefer the old design. Near the deck area you’ll see a Bang & Olufsen branding and adjacent to it is the fingerprint sensor. I think that on a 13.3-inch thin and light laptop saving as much real estate as possible should be OEM’s priority. So considering that they should integrate the fingerprint and the power button together. Moreover, now I also have to first press the power button and then press the fingerprint sensor which is placed away from the keyboard entirely. 

HP Pavilion Aero 13 - Keyboard And Trackpad

The HP Pavilion Aero 13 comes with a 60% keyboard. However, its right side is occupied by the home, pg up, pg dn, end keys, and the right navigation key as well. I personally don’t mind if the keyboard is a full size or a 60% one but you will require some getting used to if you were using the former one, probably due to the laptop’s small size and the keyboard’s layout. 

HP has merged the Function keys with the dedicated feature buttons for volume, brightness, etc. But by default, the dedicated keys work when your press these buttons. The keys themselves have a 1.5mm travel to them so they’re very ‘clicky.’ But despite that, they are relatively silent. And thanks to the 60% keyboard layout your palm stays clear of the touchpad. 

Speaking of the touchpad, it is quite small. It has no dedicated left or right button, instead, it is one single unit. I like that the trackpad is placed a bit away from the laptop’s lower edge. This helps a lot in preventing any accidental touches on it especially when you’re typing while sitting in a chair or lying on your bed. Another good thing about the keyboard is that the ctrl and alt keys on the left side are relatively bigger. 

HP Pavilion Aero 13 - Screen And Speakers

The 16:10 FHD+ display gives you more screen real estate compared to a conventional 16:9 panel. It is not as good as a 3:2 display in terms of productivity but it is a good compromise between the two. As you can still watch normal cinematic content, which is usually shot at 16:9, and have just enough screen height to be a tad more productive. 

HP has once again chosen a 60Hz panel and not a high-refresh-rate one. I understand that this decision comes with the objective of making the HP Aero 13’s relatively small 43Wh battery last as long as possible. And with everything this laptop is designed to do, a high refresh rate display won’t add much to the device’s overall capability. 

In terms of display and colour quality, I ran the display through our usual suite of tests and found some interesting results. Firstly, the peak luminance of the display is pretty high at 440nits. To put it in perspective, I recently tested the Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 which has an AMOLED display and it had a peak brightness of 415nits. Moreover, the HP Pavilion Aero 13’s display has a matte finish to it compared to the glossy one you’d find on Samsung’s laptop. 

A matte display prevents unnecessary on-screen reflections when working in a brightly lit environment. The display is also really great at showing accurate colours in the sRGB colour spectrum thanks to 99.2% coverage. So if you’re developing any piece of graphic or content to be viewed on Chrome or any other web browser, this laptop will show you accurate colours as these platforms showcase colours that majorly lie in the sRGB colour spectrum. 

In terms of colour accuracy, the Average Delta E during the Calman ColorChecker analysis came out to be 2.1 with a black luminance of 0.262. 

However, the laptop has 76.5% DCI-P3 coverage, which is pretty average. So unless you’re not developing content to be viewed specifically on displays with high DCI-P3 colour space or if you’re fine with not experiencing the wide gamut of colours in HDR on your display then this number is fine.

Another thing about the display is that the gamma tracking is a bit off. In the charts, it is clear that the display messes up regions with high brightness and shadows (darkness). So if you’re watching any piece of content with these features, this screen would not feel as much suitable.

The speakers on the other hand are pretty loud. They’re downwards facing as the keyboard runs from one end to the next horizontally thus leaving no room for the speaker grille. They have good mids, and decent treble but very poor base and you can’t even expect a machine this small to have a good base either, so it’s not a surprise. 

HP Pavilion Aero 13 - Performance And Battery Life

AMD’s latest Ryzen 7 7735U uses TSMC’s 6nm process nodes. It features 8-high performance cores and 16 threads with a base clock speed of 2.7GHz and a boost clock speed of up to 4.75GHz. The processor also has a boost clock speed of 4.75GHz but the laptop manages to reach around 3.7 to 3.5GHz. The laptop heavily limits the CPU's average core temperature to 70 degrees Celsius. It does so by throttling the core clock and the CPU package power as well when under extreme load.

And managing that load is this processor's forte as it can easily provide a backup of 5.5 to 6.5 hours, depending upon usage. I used the laptop in balanced mode at 70% screen brightness, and it lasted close to seven hours. Considering that it has a small 43Wh battery and powers an ultra-bright 440-nit display, I'd say it's a win.

I tried playing Doom Eternal on the laptop and while the initial gameplay was pretty smooth, the laptop started to heat up after a quick session. Following that the performance dipped a bit. But I was playing the game at 1200p with high graphics preset, so lowering that can improve thermal performance. 

However, this was one extreme example. For instance, you can play a less demanding title or even a newer game in a less demanding setting, and everything will be fine. Similarly, everything else apart from hardcore gaming that you can manage to throw at this laptop can manage pretty well.

The benchmarks I ran also confirm this trend. During a single run of the Cinebench R23 test, the laptop scored 10116 in the multicore test. However, during a sustained run, the multicore performance decreased, resulting in a score of 8956. The single-core performance remained virtually unchanged in both cases. 

The AMD Radeon 680M integrated GPU is also pretty good as it scored 2065 and 4917 in 3D Mark’s TimeSpy and FireStrike, respectively. As a reference point, the TimeSpy score for the AMD Radeon Graphics is typically 1000 to 1500 points lower than that of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 laptop GPU. This suggests that the AMD Radeon Graphics offer impressive performance per watt.

Meanwhile, the 1TB NVMe SSD powering the HP Pavilion Aero 13 is also decently fast. In the Crystal Disk Mark speed test, the sequential read and write speeds of the SSD came out to be 3373.35MB/s and 2806.52MB/s, respectively. To get a complete picture of the laptop's performance, I also ran it through the PCMark 10 extended benchmark, which gave me a score of 5800. For reference, the Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 and the Dell XPS 13 9300 scored 5403 and 5627, respectively.

HP Pavilion Aero 13 - Verdict

The HP Pavilion Aero 13 is a lightweight laptop with a magnesium alloy chassis and a brushed aluminum finish, making it an ideal travel companion. Although it is one of the world's lightest laptops, it offers decent performance with its AMD Ryzen 7 7735U CPU and Radeon 680M 12-core GPU. The 13.3-inch WUXGA IPS LCD display provides more screen real estate, and the 16GB LPDDR5 RAM and 1TB NVME PCIe Gen 4 SSD make it a productivity and workhorse.  

The keyboard is a 60% keyboard with a 1.5mm travel, and the touchpad is small but placed a bit away from the laptop's lower edge to prevent accidental touches. The HP Pavilion Aero 13 is for anyone looking for a lightweight laptop that provides decent performance and is easy to carry. 

In terms of performance, the laptop can handle most productivity and work-related tasks with ease, and can even do some light gaming. However, due to the laptop's small form factor, it has a difficult time delivering peak performance under extreme sustained load. 

If you’re looking for more options in the 13-inch laptop category then you can also go for the Dell Inspiron 13 5310 and the FUJITSU UH-X 2-in-1 as well. 

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Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 Review: Big Formfactor, Big Screen, Big Pricetag

The Samsung Book3 Pro 360 is a premium 2-in-1 thin and light Windows laptop with a well-built Magnesium alloy chassis. It features a beautiful keyboard and trackpad combination and a 16:10 3k display with high brightness and showcases accurate colours, making it suitable for creating and consuming content. The laptop is equipped with an Intel Core i7-1360P with 12 cores in total, but only four are performance cores, limiting its ability for demanding tasks like video editing or 3D animation. However, it has a high battery life and a variety of ports, including two thunderbolt ports, an HDMI slot, an SD card slot, a USB Type-A port, and a 3.5mm jack. It's a good choice for those who prioritize battery life, a great keyboard combination, and a colour-accurate and vivid display.

I often find it difficult to review laptops that exist alone in their categories and the Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 is one such device. It is a 16-inch thin and light laptop which also has a 360-degree hinge and is focused on productivity. It feels like Samsung has very cleverly added these features to the Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 to keep it distinct from the competition’s wrath. If the device had no touchscreen it’d have competed directly with LG Gram 16 or 17. If it had an Intel H series processor and an external GPU, like its older brother the Book 3Pro Ultra, then its comparison with the 16-inch Macbook Pro was also a surety. So what is the Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 all about and more importantly, who is it for? 

Specifications

Processor - Intel 13th Gen Core i7-1360P featuring 12 cores (4-Performance cores, 8-Efficiency cores) with 5.00GHz Max Turbo frequency.  Graphics - Intel Iris Xe Graphics chip featuring 96 Execution Units running at 1.50GHz Max Dynamic frequency Memory - 16GB LPDDR5 RAM Running in Quad-Channel mode at 6400MHz Display - 16-inch WQXGA+ AMOLED Display with touch features Storage - 1TB PCIe Gen 4 M.2 SSD Battery - 76Wh

Design And Build Quality

The Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 seems to take design inspiration from a couple of its competitors. The thin 16:10 aspect ratio seems reminiscent of the LG Gram 16. Meanwhile, the 2-in-1 touchscreen display with a 360-degree hinge is similar to what you’d find on a similarly sized gaming laptop, the ASUS ROG Flow X16. To say the designers of this laptop went wild with this laptop seems accurate. But overall, these familiar design tropes come together to create something never before seen, at least in this form factor and price range. 

Samsung has used a magnesium alloy lid for the laptop and when you also factor in the weight of the touch panel, its total weight becomes quite significant. And yet the laptop’s base still manages to feel equally weighted, which is a good design feature. The lid does not wobble and you can participate in a furious typing session with the laptop on your lap. Overall the laptop’s lid is very solid and combined with a strong hinge it stays in place quite firmly. However, you will see some flex near the lower middle portion of the screen. But I think that is more due to the building material in use as opposed to any negligence in construction. 

The laptop’s build quality is solid overall but there are some areas where you’ll likely see some flex. For instance, press just below the keyboard and you’ll encounter a bit of wobble but overall it's manageable. Also take into consideration that the deck is made out of a different material but also has a matte finish, just to keep it coherent with the laptop’s overall theme. It is smudge-resistant but something greasy will end up leaving a stain. But that’s more of a colour issue because dark grey-coloured devices tend to show fingerprints relatively more than other shades. 

The two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the left side are spaced enough for you to use them at the same time and the same is true for the HDMI port placed adjacent to these two as well. Likewise, the inclusion of an SD card slot, a USB Type-A port and a 3.5 audio jack is also pretty useful.

Keyboard And Trackpad

 

The Samsung Galaxy3 Pro 360 features a full-sized keyboard complete with a Numpad. The keys are not very clicky in the sense that they have less travel. Moreover, they are geared towards productivity and will remind you of a MacBook’s keyboard. It’s not a complaint though as it clearly defines this laptop’s niche and what its best use is. 

The touchpad also showcases some really appreciated improvements since the last generation. Including but not limited to a 39% increase in size when compared to its predecessor, the Galaxy Book2 Pro 360. The touchpad still includes no buttons and the left and right clicks continue to function as the previous generation. For the uninitiated, this laptop series’ touchpads have continued to retain a smooth finish to them and even in the latest generation register movements and clicks very precisely. 

One really clever design change in the Samsung Galaxy3 Pro 360 pertains to the touchpad’s new position. It is placed ever so slightly to the left, which prevents your palm from touching the trackpad, well mostly. It is an issue which is prevalent in quite a few laptops and Samsung’s new design change is very much appreciated here. 

Screen And Speakers

One of the main highlights of the Samsung Galaxy3 Pro 360, that name is becoming a mouthful at his point, is its screen. And full disclosure, I like the WUXGA+ displays. As a refresher, WUXGA stands for Widescreen Ultra Extended Graphics Array. It simply means that the screen on this laptop has more height than conventional displays that are locked in a 16:9 aspect ratio format. In layman’s terms, WUXGA means that a screen has a 16:10 aspect ratio and the “+” sign means that the pixel resolution is much higher than 1080p. For instance, the screen on the Samsung Galaxy3 Pro 360 has a maximum resolution of 2880 X 1800 pixels, which is also known as a 3K display resolution.

In terms of specifications, the screen supports two refresh rates - 60Hz and 120Hz. I personally like the fact that switching between them is easy and you can do so without restarting your laptop. Because in several gaming laptops, you have to restart your system in order for the effect to take place. In terms of colour volume though, we found the maximum DCI-P3 colour volume to be around 115% in the CIE l*a*b testing as well. 

Factory-calibrated colour profiles from Samsung are another really cool thing this laptop has. For instance, you can set your screen in the DCI-P3 profile if you wish to perform professional-grade colour correction or video editing or any other task which requires high colour accuracy. We tested the Colour accuracy in the DCI-P3 profile and found the average Delta E value to be 2.7 and a maximum Delta E value to be 5, which is really good for a laptop display. The maximum Delta E seems a bit high mainly because of the colours in the blue shades. 

Samsung has also baked five more colour profiles including - sRGB, Adobe RGB, OLED display standard and lastly a normal AMOLED profile into the laptop. We tested the colour gamut coverage in the DCI-P3 and sRGB colour space, which are mostly primarily used, and found them to be 100% in both cases. Additionally, the Greyscale Delta E value and the RGB balance as well in both colour spaces were at optimum levels. The RGB balance in the grey scale of the display is also very good in both of these colour spaces. Meanwhile, the speakers are downwards facing and they do sound loud as long as they're kept on a table or any flat surface. However, keep the laptop on the bed and the speaker's volume decreases significantly. Moreover, they lack base and although the sound is pretty clear the overall quality of the audio could have been a bit better.

Performance And Battery Life

The Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 uses the Intel 13th Gen Evo Core i7-1360P processor and it is a great choice for the kind of workload this laptop is made to handle. The EVO tag officially means that this laptop can give a tested battery life of 9.5 hours. Of course, this laptop can give a battery backup that long but in real-world conditions, the number comes down between 7.5 to 8 hours. And in our benchmark test, we found the figure to be 9 hours and 20 minutes with some tweaks to the brightness and battery performance settings. Windows 11 is also partially to blame here as it really is not good at battery optimization. The performance of the 1TB SSD onboard is also quite good, delivering a 5201 MB/s read speed and a 4954.92 MB/s write speed.

In terms of sheer performance, this laptop holds its ground well, to say the least. In the Cinebench R23 benchmark, the laptop scored 10485 in the multicore score and 1711 in the single-core test. And when you perform the same test to check the laptop’s sustained performance, the multicore score drops to 8140 and the single core score more or less remains the same. During an in-depth look at the chip’s performance, I found that it is primarily focused to deliver efficiency. The fan noise is kept to a minimum at room temperature and with the laptop running in high-performance mode, the fans rarely become audile under most normal use conditions.

The maximum CPU package power consumed during a Cinebench R23 run came out to be around 33W. Moreover, the CPU package temperature also remains below 85°C, which also helps in keeping the surface temperature down. The processor’s average clock speed remains between 2.5 to 2.1GHz. So simply put, the processor is limiting its power draw and therefore its performance in this case. Still, the overall performance it does end up delivering is more than enough for most productivity tasks like browsing the internet, editing documents and more. ​The laptop scored around 5400 in the PC Mark 10 Extended test, which extensively tests a device’s productivity, digital content creation and gaming capabilities. The laptop scored specifically high in the photo editing test, video conferencing and web browsing test. The laptop scored decently in gaming and overall Digital content creation due to a processor which is primarily focused on efficiency and the lack of a dedicated GPU. 

Touch Display Performance

There are things that aid the Book3 Pro 360’s touchscreen and some other features that are not in its favour as well. Firstly, the option to switch between the 120Hz and 60Hz refresh rates is very appreciated. A more responsive screen feels easier to draw on. Secondly, the screen’s overall brightness and vividness are also sure to bring to life whatever you choose to draw on it. 

With that said, the absence of palm detection is something which professional artists will likely feel missing. Moreover, the Samsung S Pen, a perfectly apt device in itself, is not as comparable to something like an Apple Pencil. Provided there is no other 2-in-1 laptop with this level of capability but with a price tag as high as this computer has a comparison of all of its capabilities to devices that do them best is sure to happen at one point or another. The 360-degree hinge allows you to draw economically and the solid hinge movement only makes this feature even better. So overall, the touch capabilities of the Samsung Book3 Pro 360 are good for a laptop but not comparable to a primarily touch-based device like a tablet. 

Verdict

The Samsung Book3 Pro 360 proves itself to be a premium 2-in-1 thin and light Windows laptop. It is well-built thanks to the Magnesium alloy chassis but because the laptop is so thin it can’t be described as rock solid. The keyboard and trackpad work very together in beautiful sync and the subtle redesign of the touchpad takes the ergonomics of the laptop to a new level. The 2-in-1 WGXGA+ 120Hz display offers more than 400 nits of brightness and colour-accurate colours in different popular colour spaces, thus making it ideal for content consumption and professional-grade creation. 

Speaking of content creation, the Intel Core i7-1360P features 12 cores in total, four of which are performance cores and 8 of which are geared towards efficiency essentially making this laptop suited for the latter. The four high-speed performance cores offer good performance for photo editing, internet browsing, document editing and other productivity tasks but not enough for demanding tasks like video editing or 3D animation. Additionally, the high battery life further ultimately gives this laptop a work and entertainment-focused characteristic instead of a performance powerhouse. 

Lastly, the inclusion of two thunderbolt ports, an HDMI slot, an SD card slot, a USB Type-A port and a 3.5mm jack is proof that laptops with a thin profile can still offer a variety of ports to make users' life easier. Go for the Samsung Book3 Pro 360 for its high battery life, great keyboard combination, high battery life and colour-accurate and vivid display. It is currently priced at Rs 1.79 lakh on the Samsung store for the Core i7-1360P, 16GB LPDDR5 RAM variant. 

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Dell XPS 13 Plus Review: Where are all the IO options

The new Dell XPS 13 Plus features some immediately noticeable changes over its predecessors, the first being the keyboard. The capacitive touch bar that replaces the function keys didn’t feel like it served any additional purpose and felt more like a gimmick. The hardware inside the XPS 13 Plus is top-of-the-line, including the display, and Dell has put in an effort to wring more performance out of the XPS 13 Plus, including a performance mode that makes the laptop fans faster (and louder), but this does impact overall battery life as well. We certainly felt the lack of IO port options, even though the two remaining ports are Thunderbolt 4 ports (which are quite versatile). Overall, the Dell XPS 13 Plus is still a beast of a machine but it felt a bit lacking in certain aspects.

While Dell advertises the Dell XPS 13 Plus as a creator laptop, which competes with the likes of the Acer Swift 3 OLED we recently reviewed and Apple's MacBook Air, among others, at Digit we do not exactly consider these creator laptops. Within our testing categories, they would fall under premium thin and light laptops. While these are certainly fast and powerful machines, and should have no trouble with most creator workloads, they cannot compete with dedicated creator laptops such as MSI's Z16P and Gigabyte's AERO 16 which come with powerful dedicated GPUs as well to handle rendering workloads. 

With that said, the Dell XPS lineup of laptops has consistently been a top performer over the years, and the latest Dell XPS 13 Plus 9320 is certainly no slouch either. The unit we received came with a 12th gen Intel Core i7-1260P processor, 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, 1 TB of NVMe SSD storage and a beautiful, 16:10, 4K touch-screen display. Powering the graphics you have Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics, and all of this comes in a compact package that weighs a little over 1.2 kg. The specs are certainly fantastic on paper, read on to find out how the Dell XPS 13 Plus fared during our benchmarking.

Dell XPS 13 Plus - Build and Design

Let's start with the build and design first. The new Dell XPS 13 Plus stays pretty much in line with the XPS lineup of laptops when it comes to aesthetics, but there are some immediately noticeable changes with the new XPS 13 Plus once you open the lid. The first thing you'll notice is the keyboard. Dell has done away with the chiclet style keyboard and instead uses a more traditional keyboard layout; a welcome change in our opinion. 

There are no gaps between the keys and there are no traditional function keys as well. Instead, there's a capacitive touch bar that runs along the top of the keyboard. The entirety of the chassis' width is used for the keyboard, which allows for decently sized keys and an overall pleasant typing experience. Even with the low travel distance, this was probably our most enjoyable typing experience on a thin and light keyboard yet. The power button is at the top right corner of the keyboard, and doubles as a fingerprint scanner as well. Additionally, it's pretty slim, so as to not get into the way you're typing.

Coming to the capacitive bar with the function keys, this is located where the function keys would otherwise be, and is always lit up. The symbols will show you either the special functions associated with them, i.e., brightness control, volume control etc, or your usual F keys depending on whether or not you're holding down the Fn key. We were not big fans of the touch bar however. We didn't see it serving any additional purposes other than being a gimmick and it behaved a bit finicky at times as well. We would have preferred keys instead.

Next we come to the touchpad, which seamlessly blends with the palm rest area of the Dell XPS 13 Plus and uses a single piece of glass. If you're accustomed to using a touchpad you should have no problems, however, it can be a bit confusing to locate exactly where the touchpad begins and ends. Especially when you're trying to right click something.

The XPS 13 Plus has a screen-to-body ratio of 89 percent thanks to its narrow bezels; another point in its favour when it comes to the build and design.

The overall build of the XPS 13 Plus is very robust, thanks to its primarily aluminium body, and we saw no flex whatsoever in both the base and lid.

Dell XPS 13 Plus - IO Ports, Webcam

There's been a bit of a trend with the XPS laptops over the years with each iteration shedding ports. The new XPS 13 Plus comes with only two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports; one on either side, and that's it. They've done away with the 3.5 mm stereo jack and card reader which was present in the previous XPS 13. We honestly don't see why they've done this, but we definitely felt the lack of ports while we were using the XPS 13 Plus.

The XPS 13 comes with a 720p webcam, which was a bit surprising; we were expecting a 1080p sensor. That said, the picture quality is decent in good lighting conditions.

Dell XPS 13 Plus - Display

The XPS 13 Plus comes with a UHD+ 4K touch display with a refresh rate of 60Hz. The display comes with an advertised brightness of 500 nits, but we got closer to 400 peak average brightness during our testing. 

Coming to colour accuracy, the Dell XPS 13 Plus scored 99.9% in sRGB coverage, and 82.2% in DCI-P3 coverage. While these are good scores, this is not the best display we've tested, even within this segment. Both the Lenovo Yoga 9i, and the Acer Swift 3 OLED score much higher in the display department. That said, it should work just fine for your photo and video creator workloads.

Dell XPS 13 Plus - Performance

Since the XPS 13 Plus is very similarly specced to the Lenovo Yoga 9i, we'll be drawing comparisons between the two laptops. The XPS 13 Plus comes with a top-of-the-line 12th gen Intel Core i7-1260P processor, which falls only slightly short of the i7-1280P processor which is present in the Lenovo Yoga 9i. The benchmark results reflect the same as well, but the XPS 13 Plus even manages to top Yoga 9 in some benchmarks. Either way, you will get great performance out of the XPS 13 Plus.

PCMark 10

Cinebench R20, R23

7-ZIP

Coming to memory, both the XPS 13 Plus and the Yoga 9i come with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM clocked at 5200 MHz. Looking at our scores on AIDA64, they're extremely close for the most part, but the Yoga 9i does have a slight edge.

AIDA64

When it comes to storage, again, both these laptops come with 1TB Samsung SSDs, however here the Dell XPS 13 Plus had the Yoga 9i beat in almost all aspects as can be seen in our CrystalDiskMark benchmarks, so you're certainly getting a superfast SSD for your mobile creator needs.

CrystalDiskMark

We did find that the Dell XPS 13 Plus throttles a lot more than the Yoga 9i, and the only solution would be to put the laptop on performance mode. While this certainly helps with performance, the fans start getting pretty loud. The laptop runs hotter overall too, so something to keep in mind.

This was most evident during our synthetic GPU benchmarks, which we ran for the integrated graphics. Once again, both laptops feature Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics, but the Dell XPS 13 Plus fell slightly short. The scores still aren't bad, and the presence of two Thunderbolt 4 ports means that you can utilise an external GPU for graphically intensive workloads. 

3DMark

The Dell XPS 13 Plus is certainly one of the more powerful premium thin and light laptops we’ve tested this year, but it fell short of being the best.

Dell XPS 13 Plus - Verdict

The new Dell XPS 13 Plus features some immediately noticeable changes over its predecessors, the first being the keyboard. The capacitive touch bar that replaces the function keys didn’t feel like it served any additional purpose and felt more like a gimmick. The hardware inside the XPS 13 Plus is top-of-the-line, including the display, and Dell has put in an effort to wring more performance out of the XPS 13 Plus, including a performance mode that makes the laptop fans faster (and louder), but this does impact overall battery life as well. We certainly felt the lack of IO port options, even though the two remaining ports are Thunderbolt 4 ports (which are quite versatile). Overall, the Dell XPS 13 Plus is still a beast of a machine but it felt a bit lacking in certain aspects.

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Dell Latitude 7430 Review: For the travelling businessman

The Dell Latitude 7430 features decent specs across the board, comes with a good display, is slim and lightweight, and looks stylish to boot. Pair that with above-average battery life and you've got a pretty decent business laptop offering here from Dell.

When considering a business laptop, there are a few factors that need to be taken into consideration. For starters, they generally tend to be light and compact, for those that are constantly on the move. A decent battery life is a given. Many business laptops now come with touchscreens as well, which makes it easier when doing presentations. They need to have decent specifications as well, with ample multi-tasking capabilities. Of course, even aesthetics can play an important role. With all that said, the laptop we're reviewing is the Dell Latitude 7430, which has been specifically designed for C-suite executives.

 

Dell Latitude 7430 Specs

 

Coming to the specs on the New Dell Latitude 7430, you've got a range of processor options, from the Intel Core i5-1235U to the Intel Core i7-1270P. The U and P here signify whether the processor is 15W or 28W, respectively. The unit we received came with the Intel Core i5-1235U processor, which is the weakest, and also the cheapest variant. You've got a 14-inch multi-touch display, with Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7. RAM is customisable up to 32GB starting at 8GB; the unit we received came with 16GB. For OS options, you've got Windows 11 Pro and Home, and Windows 10 Pro. There are also two options when it comes to build, one with an aluminium body, and one using carbon. The carbon body which we received is around 70 grams lighter than the aluminium body variant, bringing the total weight to around 1.33kg.

Dell Latitude 7430 Build and Design

The Carbon Fibre model of the Dell Latitude 7430, which comes in black, is lighter than the aluminium model, but is also slightly thicker. The Carbon Fibre weave design on the lid looks very nice, however we personally like the brushed aluminium finish on the other option. It still looks great and would certainly catch eyeballs in a professional setting without looking too out of place.

 

We saw little to no flex when opening the lid, or even from the base during our time using the laptop. We were also pleasantly surprised by the keyboard on the Dell Latitude 7430 which had decent travel and feedback. Naturally, there's no numpad which is understandable considering this is a 14-inch laptop, but the spacing between the keys is also decent and the overall typing experience was decent. We certainly prefer this to the Lenovo Yoga 9i's keyboard which we recently reviewed.

 

The laptop features a touchpad with a glass surface. Decent size, but maybe a bit on the larger side.

 

At the bottom you've got two cutouts for the speakers, and a single ventilation grill for the fan. This pulls air in and blows it out through the vent on the side of the machine.

Dell Latitude 7430 IO ports

 

The model we received came with a uSIM card slot, two type-C Thunderbolt 4 ports with Power Delivery and DisplayPort, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 port with Power share, a universal audio jack, and an HDMI 2.0 port. As far as IO ports are concerned we have no complaints.

Dell Latitude 7430 Display

 

The Dell Latitude 7430 comes with a pretty decent 14-inch FHD IPS screen. It has good viewing angles, good sRGB coverage, but the DCI-P3 coverage indicates that you wouldn't want to use this laptop for work that involves video or media editing. The laptop comes with an advertised brightness of 300 nits, and we got around 272nits during our testing which is pretty close, albeit on the lower side. The difference is fairly minimal though, and you should have no trouble consuming media on the Dell Latitude 7430.

Dell Latitude 7430 Performance

Considering the Dell Latitude 7430 is a business laptop featuring a 12th gen Intel processor and Intel Xe Graphics, we compared it to the most recent 12th gen Intel business laptop we reviewed, which happens to be the Lenovo Yoga 9i.

 

Starting things off with PCMark10, the results here make sense considering the Yoga 9i we received came with a top of the line Intel Core-i7 1280P. That being said, the Intel Core-i5 1235U on the Dell Latitude is no slouch, and doesn't fall too far behind the Yoga 9i.

 

The same can be seen in the R23, and R20 scores as well. The single-core performance is almost the same on both laptops.

The higher number of cores and threads on the Yoga 9i helped it greatly with the Winrar benchmark, but again, the benchmark scores were almost the same in the 7zip benchmark.

 

We tested the RAM on the Latitude 7430 using AIDA64. The laptop uses 16GB of DDR4-3200 RAM, compared to the LPDDR5-5200 RAM on the Yoga 9i. As such, the Yoga 9i does outperform the Latitude, however, the scores are still good when compared to laptops with similar configurations.

 

The Latitude 7430 comes with a 256GB NVMe m.2 SSD; we would have preferred to have more storage space, especially considering the premium you're paying for one of these laptops. We tested read and write speeds using CrystalDisk and found them to be significantly slower than the Samsung SSD on the Yoga 9i. Once again, considering the price, the SSD speeds are pretty slow and we would have liked to see a faster SSD.

All of that considered, do keep in mind that the Yoga 9i is around INR 50K pricier, and comes with better specs across the board.

Dell Latitude 7430 Battery life

 

We tested battery life using the PCMark10 battery test, and general video playback. Depending on your use case, you can easily pull between 8-11 hours out of a full charge, which is pretty decent. It's certainly on the higher side as far as business laptops are concerned.

Dell Latitude 7430 Gaming benchmarks

The Latitude 7430 understandably does not come with a dedicated GPU, but the integrated Intel Iris Xe Graphics are enough for some light gaming. We ran 3DMark benchmarks for TimeSpy, Night Raid, Fire Strike and WildLife. You should be able to play older AAA games at low settings and emulate games with no trouble.

 

 

 

 

 

Dell Latitude 7430 Noise and cooling

 

The laptop runs relatively quiet and cool for the most part. We didn't see the laptop get too loud at any time, plus the temps stayed fairly low, hovering around the 40 degree Celsius mark under high stress. No complaints from us in this department.

Dell Latitude 7430 verdict

The Dell Latitude 7430 features decent specs across the board, comes with a good display, is slim and lightweight, and looks stylish to boot. Pair that with above-average battery life and you've got a pretty decent business laptop offering here from Dell. There are plenty of options that are available which we didn't get to test with our unit, such as the 2-in-1 variant, and an included fingerprint sensor for instance, but it's nice that those options are available for those who want it. The touch displays are also compatible with a stylus, however, you do not get a stylus with the laptop. Even the keyboard is pleasant to type on. All of these features come at a premium though. The cheapest variant starts at close to INR 1.16 lakhs, and can go all the way up to INR 1.55 lakhs depending on your configuration.

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Alienware X14 Review: Sleek, stylish, powerful

The Alienware X14 is an impressive machine. It's compact, looks extremely stylish, and comes with some crazy specs. However, it could have done more in the specs department for the price, since you can get similar and in some cases even better gaming performance on cheaper laptops.

The Alienware X14 is Dell's self proclaimed "world's thinnest" laptop, and at a glance, this is certainly a very compact device. Don't let that fool you though, because it still comes packed with beastly specs for all your gaming needs. The latest 12th gen Intel processor, an RTX NVIDIA GPU, a crisp and bright display with a high refresh rate and more. Of course, all of this does not come cheap, with a Rs. 1,74,990 price tag. Is the Alienware X14 worth the price? Read our review to find out.

Alienware X14 Build and Design

The Alienware X14 is a sight to behold. This is the kind of laptop that immediately draws all attention in the room. To say that it looks like a spaceship or a hypercar would be fairly accurate. This IS an Alienware laptop through and through, and you will recognise it from across the room.

If it hasn't been established yet, this is a very cool looking laptop. Dell has put impressive attention to detail into this. Every aspect of the design, including the placement of the vents and hinges plays into the overall aesthetic of the laptop. It's well thought out, and feels secure and sturdy. The laptop's outer body is composed of magnesium alloy. The internal body makes use of aluminium and stainless steel. The vents and surfaces inside the laptop, such as the bezels and keyboard, use plastic. There's a good balance without compromising too much on weight. Plus, the outer frame is resistant to fingerprints, which is a nice touch.

The X14 comes with a new, patent pending hinge system. The hinge moves back and forth along a track which results in a more stable experience while using the lid. Opening and closing the lid is smooth, and there's just enough tension with little to no flex or wobble. Additionally, the lid doesn't sit completely flat when closed, and is at a slight angle to make opening the laptop easier.

With such a small form factor, understandably you do not get a full-sized keyboard. Things are squished to ensure everything you need is present, including the function keys, and even the trackpad. However, the keys themselves are pleasant to type on, have tactile feedback and decent travel as far as laptop keyboards are concerned. They're also RGB backlit, but it's not per-key, so no custom lighting layouts.

The "world's thinnest" laptop is only 1.4cm thick and at 1.8kg fairly light as well. You should have no trouble with portability when it comes to this laptop. It's even more impressive when you consider the specs on this laptop. There are two variants of the X14, the one we received has a 3050Ti, but there's a variant with an RTX 3060, more RAM, and storage capacity as well, which will set you back by Rs. 2,05,989.

Alienware X14 Specs at a glance

Display Resolution: 1920 x 1080, 144Hz Processor: 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700H Graphics: Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti Memory: 16GB LPDDR5, 5200 MHz OS: Windows 11 Home Storage: 512GB NVMe SSD Ports: 1x USB 3.2 Gen 1 port, 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C with PD and DisplayPort, 2 x Thunderbolt 4 port with PD and DisplayPort, 1 x headset combo port, 1 x HDMI 2.1 port, 1 x MicroSD Port Connectivity: Intel AX211, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2 Battery: 80 wHr Dimensions: 321.5mm x 262.77mm x 14.5mm (WxDxH) Weight: 1.8kg Price: Rs. 1,74,990

As you can see from the images, the laptop hinge is not at the very back, but slightly forward, which is why we said it kind of gave off a hypercar look. This rear section is where you will find all the laptop's IO ports.

Alienware X14 IO Ports

Speaking of IO ports, you've got plenty of options. A USB 3.2 Gen 1 port, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, and two Thunderbolt 4 ports. You've also got an audio combo jack, an HDMI 2.1 port and a MicroSD slot as well. While the laptop does not have an ethernet port, an adapter is provided along with it in the box.

Alienware X14 Display

A 14-inch display might be on the smaller side for a lot of people. However, it should more than suffice. During our time with the laptop, we didn't at any point think that the smaller display was hindering our enjoyment. The 1080p display is crisp, with vivid colours, which our benchmarks can attest to. It's also bright, reaching close to 400nits at peak brightness. The 144Hz refresh rate is also nice, especially for gaming. You should have no trouble hitting those frames as well, considering the hardware onboard.

Alienware X14 performance

The X14 comes packed with the latest 12th gen Intel Core i7-12700H processor. The 14 cores and 20 threads should have no trouble meeting any and all of your multitasking needs, as can be seen on our Cinebench R20, R23 and PCMark10 benchmark results.

We tested the 16GB LPDDR5 memory several times on AIDA64; however we did come across an anomaly where the L1 read and write speeds were always far too low to be right. However, the memory read and write speed speaks for itself.

The X14 also has fast NVMe storage, with our variant having 512GB of storage. We were getting close to 6500 MB/s read speeds and 4000 MB/s write speeds in our tests, which are close to as advertised and fantastic.

Next we come to the 3DMark performance. On paper, the Alienware X14 has great specs. For the most part, this reflects on our benchmark results as well. However, when compared to the similarly specced Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3i which has the same processor and GPU, the X14 just barely falls short in some benchmarks.

The same continues with real-world gaming benchmarks as well, with the X14 at par or slightly behind the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3i. This may well have to do with the X14 running comparatively hotter due to its compact nature.

Alienware X14 Noise and Heat

The X14 is no slouch when it comes to gaming. However, with a laptop so compact, it becomes hard to find a proper cooling solution while trying to keep the noise down. The X14 has two fans, each independently controlled to cool the CPU and GPU. While this certainly keeps the temps somewhat in check, you could be forgiven for thinking the X14 was about to take off of a runway. It does actually get that loud. But the tradeoff is worth it in our opinion, better to be loud than hot. At least in the case of a gaming laptop.

Alienware X14 Verdict

All things said and done, the Alienware X14 is an impressive machine. It's compact, looks extremely stylish, and comes with some crazy specs. However, it could have done more in the specs department for the price, since you can get similar and in some cases even better gaming performance on cheaper laptops, such as some of the ASUS TUF laptops, and even the Lenovo Gaming 3i we compared the X14 against in this review. That being said, we totally wouldn't fault you for going for this just for its looks if you have the moolah for it.

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