When comparing Dell XPS 13 vs Microsoft Surface Book 2 (15-inch), the Slant community recommends Dell XPS 13 for most people. In the question“What are the best laptops for traveling and graphic design work?” Dell XPS 13 is ranked 2nd while Microsoft Surface Book 2 (15-inch) is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose Dell XPS 13 is:
Before buying you can choose between the 4K UHD- or full HD-resolution touch displays or a full HD non-touch one. However, Linux compatibility for super high resolution displays can be spotty at times, so you might be better off sticking with the full HD if you plan on running Linux. Display quality is very good as far as viewing angles, brightness and color reproduction go. It also has a very small bevel so the screen goes more or less edge-to-edge. It also has an output of 400 nit, putting it in the "really bright" category as far as displays go. As for color reproduction, XPS 13's display produces an impressive 107.2 percent of the sRGB color gamut.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Stunning display
Before buying you can choose between the 4K UHD- or full HD-resolution touch displays or a full HD non-touch one. However, Linux compatibility for super high resolution displays can be spotty at times, so you might be better off sticking with the full HD if you plan on running Linux.
Display quality is very good as far as viewing angles, brightness and color reproduction go. It also has a very small bevel so the screen goes more or less edge-to-edge.
It also has an output of 400 nit, putting it in the "really bright" category as far as displays go. As for color reproduction, XPS 13's display produces an impressive 107.2 percent of the sRGB color gamut.
Pro Great Linux support
You can configure the XPS 13 to come with Linux out of the box. Even if you pick the Windows version, the XPS 13 has Linux drivers for all of its features and most users have reported that the whole process of installing a Linux distribution on a Dell XPS 13 is very simple.
Pro Lightweight and portable
It's weight is only 2.7 lbs, making it very portable.
Pro Latest generation hardware
The XPS 13 was recently updated with all the latest generation hardware which means that it won't become outdated any time soon.
Pro Great build quality
The body has a slick and elegant design. It's a mix of aluminum, carbon fiber and magnesium which hardly ever flexes even when held with one hand.
Pro One of the best Windows trackpads available
The Dell's trackpad is one of the best Windows trackpads available. It has smooth and precise tracking and even supports three-finger gestures similar to the Macbook's.
Pro Great keyboard
The keyboard is high quality, feels great to type on and isn't too mushy or too shallow. Even though there's nothing very special about the keyboard, it's as good of a keyboard as you could want.
Pro Toggleable and customizable keyboard backlighting
Users can turn on or off the backlighting of the keyboard as well as adjust the brightness.
Pro Uses an SSD for faster operations on disk
Using an SSD greatly increases performance for every I/O operation, especially compared to laptops that use an HDD. The laptop will boot faster, programs that need to read and write to disk will run faster and scripts will compile much faster than on an HDD.
Pro Plenty of RAM for all programming needs
Building software typically takes more resources than running the final product. Having a lot of RAM helps building big complex applications faster.
Pro Decent speakers
The Dell XPS 13 has above average speakers for a laptop, they get very loud but at max volume tend to distort the music a little too much.
Pro Non-glossy
The build is non-glossy, so no fingerprint markings all over the thing.
Pro Great online customer service
Dell's customer service is one of the best in the industry. Especially the online customer service website. There you will find frequently asked questions which usually solve 90% of issues, if that's not enough, there's a live chat with a customer service representative, who are usually very helpful and very understanding about every issue that may arise.
Pro Gaming performance on-par with gaming laptops
The 15-inch version of the Surface Book 2 comes with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 GPU. This is a powerful, VR-ready card that handles intensive gaming tasks.
As for real-world performance, Hitman (1920 x 1080, ultra) runs at 71.9 frames per second, Grand Theft Auto V runs at 45 fps.
It should also be mentioned that you need to be using the dock in order to do graphic-intensive tasks since that's where the GPU is located; using the laptop in tablet-mode will yield poor results in this regard.
Pro One of the best performances found on a 15-inch laptop
Equiped with an Intel Core i7-8650U CPU, 8GB (or 16GB) of RAM and an SSD that goes up to 1TB, the Surface Book 2 certainly packs a punch. It handles multitasking perfectly; you can open dozens of Chrome tags, stream video, and draw using the built-in software without experiencing any lag even once.
As far as benchmarks go, on the Geekbench 4 overall performance benchmark, the Surface Book 2 got a score of 12,505, better than the 15-inch laptop average (11,004) coming third after the Dell XPS 15 (13,911) and the MacBook Pro (15,170).
Pro The hinge is quite stable as far as 2-in-1 laptops go
The new fulcrum hinge that Microsoft used for the Surface Book 2 is much more stable than the one found on the previous Surface Book or even other 2-in-1 laptops for that matter.
Pro Great display for creative professionals
This laptop's display is bright and vivid, making it perfect for people who do a lot of drawing, design, or video editing work. The display offers an excellent coverage of 131% of the sRGB colour gamut (the average for this price range is 101%). The colour coverage and the bright display which measures an average of 417 nits really makes colours truly pop out and offers lifelike pictures.
Pro The battery easily lasts a full work day on a single charge
The Surface Book 2 lasts on average 12 hours on a single charge. This should be more than enough to get anyone to the end of their workday on a single charge.
Pro Great tying experience
Even though the keyboard is rather shallow (just 1.2mm of travel), the typing experience is excellent. Keys have a great amount of feedback when clicking and you rarely (if ever) bottom out when typing.
Cons
Con Spongy keyboard
The keyboard feels a bit spongy and does not have a lot of travel to the keys. When bottoming out there is no feel of completion.
Con Webcam located in an odd place
Due to the narrow bezel of the infinity display, Dell moved the webcam to the bottom left corner. This results in an odd viewing angle and the webcam getting blocked while typing.
Con 13" is too small for many kinds of development
At these sizes, it is inches which start to matter, not only pixels.
Con The battery wears out quickly
After some use, the battery continues to fall at an alarming rate, to only 5-6 hours after a couple of months.
Con No upgrades
Ram is soldered on the board.
Con The touchscreen reflects light making it hard to see unless the lighting on the display is properly set
The screen for the touch-screen model is glossy instead of matte (non-touch screen). For what is a Linux notebook this does not make a lot of sense since most Linux users are the more tech savy who program. A glossy screen is more for multimedia, something Linux is not really known for excelling in.
Con Trackpad hardware (touch/feel/operation) is noticeably worse if coming from MacBook/MBP
Part of this is the hardware, and part seems to be the drivers. It's very unforgiving when accidentally brushing the trackpad with a different finger. Certain actions like double-clicks (tapping with two fingers) and scrolling (with two fingers) doesn't work reliably. This is true with other windows based laptops too. Not an issue if you spend a lot of time in a terminal/shell.
Con The battery does not last as long as advertised
The laptop never performs to the promised 11-15 hours, average usage is around 7-8 hours.
Con Phone support is very slow
Customers have reported waiting for up to 15 minutes to get connected to someone who will be able to help solve their issue.
Con No Thunderbolt port
For a laptop aimed at creative professionals, the missing Thunderbolt 3 port is surprising considering the fact that Thunderbolt 3 is used to connect a laptop to peripherals such as external GPUs or power-dual 4K displays.
Con The pen must be bought separately
If you want to use the Surface Book for drawing then you will probably have to buy the Surface Pen which unfortunately does not come bundled with the laptop (it costs an additional $99).
Con Disappointing audio performance
The audio that comes out of the speakers is quite average. It's enough to fill a small room but that's it.