Dell Resurrects Xps Brand With Slick New Laptop That's Smaller Than... (2026)

Fancy battery tech and tandem OLED screens are among the highlights.

Along with teasing some very skinny new Alienware laptops, one of the highlights of Dell's CES keynote was the return of the XPS brand in the form of some very slick new portable PCs. Notably, Dell isn't offering discrete graphics options with the new laptops, the implication being that the iGPU in the new Panther Lake CPU makes that unnecessary.

Putting aside the fact that killing off the XPS brand never seemed like a good idea, Dell's new laptops certainly look like a promising return for the XPS line. Initially, Dell is launching the XPS 14 and XPS 16, with a 13-inch model to follow.

Key attributes for the XPS 14 and 16 models include extremely high quality build quality, the "best battery life in the industry" and optional tandem OLED displays.

Chassis-wise, the laptops have an all-new design that has some similarities with previous XPS laptops, but does away with the capacitive function keys that proved so controversial, returning that top row of buttons to the keyboard proper.

Dell has also added subtle etching on the otherwise seamless glass trackpad panel below the keyboard, again addressing a design issue with the previous XPS design, which left users guessing exactly where the trackpad edges were.

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Next up is new battery tech. Dell claims it's the first to implement 900ED (energy density) battery cells. Our understanding is that existing battery tech in commercially available laptops tops out at around 700ED.

That's an increase of over 20% in terms of energy density and it has allowed Dell to make these laptops both extremely compact and very long lasting. Dells says the XPS 14, "is now more compact than the MacBook Air 13, taking up less desk space while giving you more screen space." Both models are just 14.6 mm thick.

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Source: PC Gamer