41.13 Olive Dell XPS13 9380
20190310
The Dell XPS13 9380 (2019) was reviewed as the best 13 inch laptop at the time. Common pros are the keyboard, screen, fully USB-C with 3 USB-C, 2 with Thunderbolt and 1 Powershare to charge other devices, and a WebCam back at the top (compared to the previous model that received criticism for having nose-cam). It also has a 3.5mm audio jack and stereo speakers. The Cons are no HDMI nor USB-A and the powerful 4K display is a battery drain. The battery life is said to be 8 hours of typical use. It is a well built machine and gets a 5-star rating from PCMag as “the best ultra portable laptop you can buy.”
It’s 13.3 inch 4K display (336mm as I measure it) comes in a compact form factor (reputably an 11" form factor). This was a concern on first sight as being too small compared to a 14 inch laptop but quickly adapted to. It is a compact size without compromising performance and the keyboard is just fine.
The system was purchased for SGD $2300. Extras included official Dell sleeve, USB-C to VGA adaptor, a wireless mouse with USB-A, and a box of accessories including USB-C to USB-A, travel adaptor, earpods/microphone, USB card reader, keyboard protector, cable pouch, etc.
The laptop is used as a development machine for writing, compiling C and C++ programs, and interactively developing R and Python scripts for data science. It is also ultra portable and so when travelling and flying is used for programming.
Specifications
| Spec | Details |
|---|---|
| Machine | Dell XPS 13 9380 |
| CPU | 8 x Intel Core i7-8565U 1.80GHz |
| BogoMIPS | 4224 |
| Memory | 16GiB LPDDR3 Synchronous 2133MHz (0.5 ns) |
| Network | QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (ath10k) |
| Disk | PM981 NVMe Samsung 512GB |
| Video | Intel HD Graphics (i915) |
| Webcam | (uvcvideo) |
| Audio | (snd_hda_intel) |
| Touchpad | SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad () |
| Boot | Grub2 |
| Kernel | 4.15.0-46-generic |
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