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I have been wanting to get my palms on Dell’s 2026 XPS lineup. If you do not know, the collection briefly disappeared final 12 months throughout a rebranding effort that changed the units with the “Plus” and “Premium” traces. Buyer response wasn’t essentially the most optimistic. Followers needed the previous collection and its defining options again. For 2026, Dell delivered.
I’ll admit that I used to be slightly jealous when my colleague and ZDNET editor Kyle Kucharski acquired first dibs when he reviewed the XPS 14 final month. Now I lastly have my flip with the Dell XPS 16 — and it could be my favourite laptop computer of 2026. This is not only a return to kind; it is an evolution. Dell refined many facets of its flagship machine, making it a powerful case for probably the greatest computer systems of the 12 months.
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Premium design
I am a giant fan of the laptop computer’s aesthetics. The Graphite end wrapping the whole chassis provides Dell’s machine a clean, refined look. I merely love the colour. It does decide up some fingerprints, however nothing too dangerous or tremendous distracting.
One factor you may discover within the picture is how skinny this laptop computer is. The corporate states the XPS 16 weighs 3.65 kilos and is 14.6mm (0.57 inches) thick, making it straightforward to slide right into a backpack with loads of room to spare. In response to Dell, the machine is made primarily of CNC-machined aluminum, and the show out of Gorilla Glass 3.
These supplies give the laptop computer a sturdy kind issue. I did not exit of my solution to check its sturdiness, though I can verify it feels stable sufficient to deal with the occasional drop.
The most important downside is the port choice. You solely get three Thunderbolt 4 ports and a headphone jack; nothing extra.
Like earlier fashions, the XPS 16 sports activities a flat keyboard that sits flush with the wrist relaxation. The keys are a bit mushy. Actually not the worst I’ve ever felt, however not on the identical degree as keyboards with 1.5mm journey distance. One notable change is the elimination of the touch-sensitive perform row, changed by conventional bodily keys.
I did not thoughts the contact row from earlier than; nonetheless, I do suppose the bodily keys are a pleasant return and will attraction to extra individuals.
Within the older XPS collection, the trackpad was utterly invisible. There have been no visible indicators. This time, the trackpad is printed by faint stripes in a special shade of black. You’ll be able to see them within the picture above. In use, it is wonderful: responsive, clean, and spacious.
Multimedia powerhouse
Above the keyboard sits a shocking 16-inch 3.2K OLED touchscreen. It’s simply one of many highlights of the XPS 16. The panel delivers wealthy, correct colours with wonderful sharpness, making it an excellent selection for content material creators. Its ultra-thin bezels assist create an immersive expertise. The finer particulars in objects stand out clearly. I might see particular person strands of my hair on the display screen whereas utilizing the webcam.
Talking of which, above the show sits an 8MP digicam able to capturing sharp, vibrant 4K video. Picture high quality is top-notch due to HDR assist. Backing all this up is a robust quad-speaker system comprising twin 3W foremost audio system and twin 2W tweeters, tuned with Waves MaxxAudio Professional.
There is not a devoted subwoofer, however the laptop computer does not want one. The primary audio system ship sufficient bass. Nothing feels lacking. Whether or not you are listening to spoken phrase, music, or YouTube movies, audio high quality is evident, loud, and well-balanced.
Efficiency
For the evaluate, I examined the top-end prebuilt configuration at the moment out there from Dell. It housed an Intel Core Extremely X7 358H processor, 32GB of RAM, an built-in Intel Arc graphics card, and a 1TB SSD. That is a powerful, well-rounded setup. It is able to dealing with video enhancing, photograph work, and coding tasks with none bother. In day-to-day use, the machine delivers quick, dependable efficiency that feels near a top-tier desktop PC.
The desk above compares a number of benchmark scores with these of different flagship laptops, equivalent to Samsung’s Galaxy Book6 Extremely and the M5 MacBook Air. You will discover that the XPS 16 beats a lot of the different laptops in uncooked processing energy, indicating its top-notch efficiency. It’s crushed by Apple’s machine, though not by a lot.
Within the Cinebench exams, Dell’s machine falls considerably behind the Galaxy Book6 Extremely and the ThinkPad P1. It is value noting that these two laptops home devoted Nvidia graphics playing cards. So, naturally, they are going to be higher. Nonetheless, a Cinebench 2026 rating of 4,065 for an built-in Intel Arc GPU is fairly good. These numbers present that the XPS 16 can deal with heavy inventive workloads fairly nicely. Plus, it is considerably cheaper.
Earlier than I’m going into the pricing, I wish to rapidly point out the battery.
My evaluate unit lasted about 14 hours on a single cost, which is stable for a laptop computer in its efficiency class. You may get by a whole workday on this machine. If battery life is a prime precedence for you, the bottom mannequin could be the higher choice. Dell claims the lower-end mannequin can last as long as 31 hours earlier than tapping out.
ZDNET’s shopping for recommendation
Pricing for the Dell XPS 16 begins at $1,900. The bottom configuration consists of an Intel Core Extremely 7 325 processor, built-in graphics, 16GB of LPDDR5x RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 16-inch 2K show. My evaluate unit has two distinctive presents connected.
The $2,350 model features a copy of Battlefield 6, the survival sport Everwind, and entry to each Adobe Premiere Professional and the Inventive Cloud Images Plan. The $2,460 Dell XPS 16 consists of the identical software program, plus one 12 months of Adobe Categorical Premium, McAfee+ Premium, and Dell Care Premium.
I might advocate the XPS 16 to anybody searching for a premium Home windows 11 machine, particularly in case you’re a content material creator who desires a dependable workstation on the go.
