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As I spend a significant amount of my time — probably double-digits on most days — using my laptop, choosing the right laptop can have a big impact on my life. Choosing the wrong laptop even more so. It's also a very expensive purchase, the soft of thing you want to get right first time.

Back in December 2016 I needed to buy a new laptop. My then Acer laptop was rapidly becoming unusable. The keyboard on the laptop had always been its Achilles Heel, but it was getting worse and it was time to upgrade. You can read all about it in the post I made at the time. There you'll also find a comparison of the ten different laptops I thought might replace it.

In the end, after all the pros and cons had been balanced out, I ended up getting myself a Dell XPS 13 9360. Compared to most of the other possibilities it was an obvious step up. But in the end I was left torn between the XPS and the Razer Blade Stealth. The latter offered a much more exciting option, although the XPS had a larger screen in a smaller chassis. But what really tipped the balance was Dell's official support for Ubuntu, in comparison to what the Web suggested was patchy-at-best support on the Razer. I've experienced devices with poor Linux support in my time and it's not something I want to repeat.

In September 2020 I decided it was time to upgrade again. Having been pleased with the XPS, especially the good Linux support and lovely screen, I went for the XPS again. This time a Dell XPS 13 9300. It was a worthwhile upgrade and I didn't regret it.

Fast forwards to a couple of months ago. The letter "D" key on my XPS 13 9300 keyboard split into two. I type a lot, and it's not unusual for laptop keyboards to deteriorate over time, so it wasn't a massive shock. In addition, I'd been experiencing difficulties compiling some of my work projects on the device: 16GB of RAM just wasn't enough to reliably build the Gecko engine, and it was hitting the limit of many of the even relatively undemanding games I wanted to play.

So time for a replacement again. But Dell complicated things by announcing the Dell XPS 13 9320 Plus, a significant redesign over previous generations with some notable downgrades: a dubious touch-sensitive function key row, removal of the headphone jack, and no micro SD card slot. On the flip-side it supported much faster CPUs and better integrated graphics.

So with this in mind it's time for another laptop comparison. The laptop landscape has changed quite considerably since my last detailed comparison. Apple is now using ARM instead of Intel chips; AMD Ryzen chips are competing on performance with Intel; Linux support is far more widespread. Plus there are now niche brands that compete on features, price, size and screen resolution, such as the laptops from Framework and System 76. These latter options are particularly appealing given they're bringing something new to the scene; they'd be worth supporting for that reason alone, all other things being equal.

Below you can see the comparison table I put together for the main contenders. I've tried to be as polarised as possible — things are either good bad or neutral now — in order to simplify things and to ultimately be more decisive. For some of the categories such as battery size I've marked them all as acceptable. That may seem odd given the big differences in the actual values, but my experience has been that Linux never does particularly well when it comes to managing battery life, so I expect to be connected to the mains for the majority of my usage anyway. Hence the actual battery size has limited impact on my choice.

On the other hand, memory and number of cores plays a much larger role this time than for my previous purchasing decisions. Since the projects I now work on have become large enough for these factors to have a significant impact on my daily development routine. Hence the 16GB RAM limit of the Razor Blade 14 ultimately ruled it out. This is a real shame: the existence of the Tensorbook shows that Razer devices are now viable for use with Linux, so if a 32 GB option had been available, I might have gone for it.

In the end, and somewhat to my surprise, the numbers led me to the Dell XPS 13 Plus after all. It provides the best performance and features in the form factor for my needs. The removal of ports isn't something that's likely to affect me (I use Bluetooth audio exclusively). My main concern was the touch-bar function key row, but I decided to take the risk.

Now that I have the device I'm very happy with it. The touchpad and keyboard both feel practical and very comfortable. The function keys aren't great, but they're usable. The screen is wonderful once again and the Linux support has been excellent: everything works just as I need it to.

Here's the table with the full analysis. The first two columns containing the Dell XPS 13 9300 and the Lenovo Thinkpad P52S show the specs for my previous Dell laptop and my work laptop.

Colour coding:

Good

Acceptable

Bad

Current laptops

 

	Dell XPS 13 9300	Thinkpad P52S	Dell XPS 13 9320 Plus	Razer Blade 14	Dell XPS 15
Company	Dell	Lenovo	Dell	Razer	Dell
Review	Engadget	TechRadar	Engadget	Engadget	Engadget
Height (mm)	9.58	20.2	15.28	16.8	18.54
Width (mm)	295.65	365.8	295.3	319.7	344.4
Depth (mm)	198.68	252.8	199.04	220	230.1
Weight (kg)	1.207	1.99	1.26	1.78	2.1
Screen size (in)	13.4	15.6	13.4	14	15.6
Screen width (px)	3840	1920	3456	2560	3840
Screen height (px)	2400	1080	2160	1440	2400
Battery (Wh)	52	32	55	61.6	86
Touchscreen	✔	✘	✔	✘	✔
Fan	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Backlit keyboard	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Processor	i7-1065G7	i7-8550U	i7-1260P	Ryzen 9 6900HX	i9-12900HK
Cache (MB)	8	8	18	20	24
Frequency (GHz)	1.3	1.8	4.7	4.9	5.0
Cores	8	4	12	8	14
Memory (GB)	16	32	32	16	64
SSD (TB)	1	0.5	2	1	2
Graphics	Intel Iris ICL G2	Nvidia Quadro P500 Mobile	Intel Iris XE	Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080	Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050
OS	Ubuntu	Ubuntu	Ubuntu	Windows	Windows
Price (£)	1631.04	1966	2058	3600	3300
Pros	Small, light	Good specs for dev	Good specs, small	Ideal screen/size balance, design	Ideal specs
Cons	Underpowered	Big, heavy	Weak GPU, design	Too little RAM	Size, weight
Notes	16GB too low for dev	Too large for bag			Too large & heavy
	Razer Blade 15	Tensorbook	Framework Pro	Galago Pro	Lemur Pro
Company	Razer	Lambda Labs	Framework	System 76	System 76
Review	Engadget	The Verge	TechRadar	Ars Technica	OSNews
Height (mm)	16.99	16.9	15.85	17.5	15.5
Width (mm)	355	355	296.63	324.9	321
Depth (mm)	235	235	228.98	225	216
Weight (kg)	2.01	2.1	1.27	1.41	1.09
Screen size (in)	15.6	15.6	13.5	14.1	14.1
Screen width (px)	3840	2560	2256	1920	1920
Screen height (px)	2160	1440	1504	1080	1080
Battery (Wh)	80	80	55	49	73
Touchscreen	✘	✘	✘	✘	✘
Fan	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Backlit keyboard	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Processor	i9-12900H	i7-11800H	i7-1280P	i7-1165G7	i7-1165G7
Cache (MB)	24	24	24	12	12
Frequency (GHz)	5.0	4.6	4.8	4.7	4.7
Cores	14	8	14	4	4
Memory (GB)	32	64	32	32	32
SSD (TB)	1	2	2	2	2
Graphics	Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080	Nvidia RTX 3080	Intel Iris XE	Intel Iris XE	Intel Iris XE
OS	Window	Ubuntu	None	Ubuntu	Ubuntu
Price (£)	4200	2786	2134	1548.36	1287
Pros	GPU/Gaming	Ideal specs	Configurable, good specs	OS, size	OS, size
Cons	Size, weight	Size, weight	Screen, size	Screen, CPU	Screen, CPU, not yet available
Notes	Too large ∓ heavy	Too large ∓ heavy	Low-res screen	Low-res screen	Not yet available