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Jun 02, 2020 2 mins, 4 secs

We spent this weekend going hands-on with a pair of 2020 model Dell XPS 13 laptops—one standard edition running Windows 10 Pro, and one Developer Edition running Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

The XPS 13 is among Dell's most popular models, and for good reason—it's a sleek, solid-feeling laptop that usually has top-of-the-line hardware and good battery life.

Unfortunately, both of the XPS 13 models we tested had driver issues—particularly the Windows laptop, which has a Killer AX1650 Wi-Fi card.

It turns out that the problem was the "Killer Control Center"—a software application associated with the Killer AX1650 Wi-Fi card.

The XPS 13 did score far better for battery life than the Zephyrus G14 did, though.

Physically, the only difference between the XPS 13 Developer Edition and the plain-vanilla XPS 13 we had already tested is the color—where the Windows system had the optional, $50 more expensive "Alpine White" interior, the Developer Edition system used the standard "Black.".

There were some significant hardware differences, as well—you can't buy the regular XPS 13 with more than 16GiB RAM in it, while the XPS 13 Developer Edition can be spec'd up to 32GiB.

The XPS 13 Developer Edition came pre-loaded with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, and for the most part, it's pretty standard and won't offer experienced Ubuntu users any surprises.

Although our Developer Edition laptop was thankfully free of the Killer Control Center and its associated extreme CPU thrashing, it wasn't without driver issues of its own.

The last thing we want to cover on the XPS 13 Developer Edition is battery life.

Choice of browser didn't make much difference: the laptop reported 23-percent lower battery after an hour watching the fullscreen 1080p video in Firefox, and 24-percent lower battery after an identical hour in Google Chrome.

HP's Dragonfly Elite G1 lost only 16-percent battery life in the same test, and its screen was at full brightness while the XPS 13's was at 30 percent.

The choice of the Killer AX1650 Wi-Fi card over the plain-vanilla Intel AX200 was a poor one for the market.

With integrated graphics only, we don't see the XPS 13 as being anybody's first choice of "gamer elite" laptop, and the more complex Killer driver and software stack is of dubious value, even when it does work right.

The laptop itself physically looks and feels great.

The closest competitor to the XPS 13 that we've reviewed is HP's Dragonfly Elite.

Overall, we'd give the nod to the Dragonfly Elite for quality—it's marginally smaller, has better battery life, and the 2019 model wasn't plagued with driver weirdness.

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