Last year, I said the XPS 13 2019 was about as close to perfect as a compact laptop was going to get. Dell is back with another XPS 13 and—wait for it—it's even better.
It's a collection of small things that make this 2020 model better than the last. That doesn't mean you should toss the one you just bought in favor of this one, but if you're in the market for a powerful, portable, and stylish laptop, you'll be hard-pressed to find a better buy.
I own a 2018 Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition, and setting up this latest model—which Dell has numbered the XPS 13 9300—it's nearly impossible to tell them apart when they're sitting next to each other with the lids closed. The exterior design has remained the same for several years. Open them up, though, and the pair are wildly different.
The most obvious improvement in the 2020 edition is the larger screen. Dell's InfinityEdge display has always had some of the thinnest bezels on the market, on three sides anyway: The bottom of previous models retained a larger bezel. That's not the case anymore. Now there's a uniform, slim bezel all the way around, and this changes the screen aspect ratio to 16:10. What does that mean for you? It adds a noticeable bit of extra screen real estate.
I know what you're thinking. Does half an inch really make that much difference? I want to say no, because I don't feel like it should, but it totally does. It's really nice, and I miss it every time I go back to the older model. That little bit of extra headroom makes web pages more readable, staring at Slack less of a chore, and it means I can see my photos a little better when I edit them in Darktable.
The keyboard has seen a considerable revamp too. The old layout used split keys for the arrow keys, with (half) buttons for page up and page down on top of the left and right arrow keys. In the 2020 model, the dedicated page buttons are gone. Instead, the left and right arrow keys have become full-size buttons. To hit page up and page down, you need to hold down the Function key and hit the up and down arrow keys. As someone who never uses page keys, I much prefer the new layout, but you may hate the change.