Brandish, Keyboard and Trackpad

The 13.3-inch TFT IPS LCD display on the XPS thirteen comes in ane of 2 resolutions: 1920 x 1080 (Total HD), similar in the model I received to review, or 3200 10 1800 (QHD+). The sometime comes with a matte not-touch finish, while the QHD+ model adds in a touchscreen with a glossy coating. Battery life is 4 hours amend on the Full HD model, which depending on where yous put your priorities might be reason enough to ditch the higher resolution display.

I find a resolution of 1920 x 1080 to exist perfectly fine for a laptop of this size. It's high enough that text and images look well-baked, with minimal jaggies at a standard viewing distance. At the same time, it's non so high that I have to mess around with Windows scaling settings: I was able to employ this laptop perfectly with the display set to native 100% scaling, although admittedly for some people text might exist slightly as well modest.

If you practise opt for the QHD+ model, you'll definitely take to use Windows display scaling, which is still a massive mess. I believe this is something Microsoft is working on fixing in Windows ten, and then we might not have to wait too long until the OS scales things nicely. Of grade the QHD+ model has advantages in other areas, such equally crisper prototype and text reproduction overall.

I would have liked to run into a touchscreen option for the 1080p model, every bit I do find having impact capabilities on a laptop to exist useful on occasion, especially when scrolling through webpages and tapping on large icons. It'southward not something I'd utilise all the fourth dimension, though as Windows 8.1 and ten are touch-friendly operating systems, there'south no harm in having one.

The matte coating on the display - which tin can be included in the 1080p model as the display does not include a touchscreen - reduces glare and reflections, making the display very like shooting fish in a barrel to see indoors or out. Viewing angles are expert on this IPS-type panel, and maximum display brightness is easily good enough for usage in vivid weather. In a standard office environs, I had to plow down the brightness to around 50% to terminate my retinas from getting burned.

The matte coating does take a downside in that colors don't announced equally vibrant every bit they practice on glossy panels. However the colour quality of the XPS xiii'south brandish is even so very good, maybe not equally good as the Yoga 3 Pro, but with a healthy dose of saturation and by and large good dissimilarity ratio.

As for the keyboard, the XPS 13 has pretty much the perfect layout, which makes adjusting to typing on this laptop very easy. Travel isn't excellent, although this tends to be the case for near sparse laptops with chiclet keyboards, and I still found it quite alright to type this review on. For a keyboard that has been squished into an 11-inch torso I was surprised at how it didn't feel particularly cramped, fifty-fifty if it isn't as good as a desktop keyboard.

There's a bit of flex in the overall keyboard assembly, which shouldn't be there for a laptop of this toll. You get backlighting on all keys, handy for typing at night, and a ready of easy to access functions alongside the F-keys. Save for some of the most unused keys, each is large enough and easy to hit, peculiarly important keys similar shift, enter, backspace and space.

I wasn't nearly as impressed with the trackpad. Standard mouse movement, two-finger scrolling and left clicking, either through depressing the left side of the trackpad or but tapping, was fine, and the material used for the pad is decent. However I really struggled to correct click, ofttimes left clicking instead. The trackpad requires you click the lesser right button in a very specific position to right click, otherwise it will annals every bit a left click, which is very frustrating.

I also had a few issues highlighting text and performing other click-and-drag actions, although this can be resolved somewhat past adjusting palm rejection sensitivity in the device'south settings. Hopefully a software update tin can resolve problems with right-clicking and optimize click-and-drag, which would go a long way to improving the trackpad feel.