Dell is bringing back the XPS 13 as a MacBook Neo competitor — with a temporary discount of up to $599

Dell is doing well A tease of CES Finally, the new XPS 13 is announced. The XPS 13 returns as a budget-friendly option, launching in July at a student promotional price of $599 — though this introductory deal only lasts until September for back-to-school shopping; It will start at $699 for everyone else. The $599 promotion is right in line with the starting price of the MacBook Neo, but students can actually get Apple’s budget laptop for $100 less. This means Dell has come a long way to proving that the XPS 13 is worth the extra money.

This will be Dell’s thinnest and lightest XPS yet, measuring 0.5in/12.7mm thick and weighing just 2.2lbs/1kg. It will only have two USB-C ports and no 3.5mm audio jack, just like that Latest XPS 13 Which costs much more. It’s a shame that it won’t even have a dedicated audio jack in the higher configurations that are scheduled to arrive later with Intel’s Panther Lake and Thunderbolt 4 chipsets – which will add up to 32GB of RAM.

The entry-level configuration will get you a six-core Intel Core 5 320 “Wildcat Lake” chip, 512GB of storage, and a low-end 8GB of RAM. (I notice direction.) But the good news is that every configuration of the new

The XPS 13 will also have a backlit keyboard and up to 17 hours of “streaming” battery life. Dell reps say it should be effective enough to last a student a full school day. There was no mincing words about what Dell is targeting with the XPS 13, as COO Jeff Clarke mentioned the MacBook Neo by name in an early media conference. But while the

Dell also teased something else it will show at Computex this week: the return of the XPS with discrete graphics. It should have some level of Nvidia RTX GPU, an ultra-bright tandem OLED display, a dedicated HDMI port, and an SD card slot. There are no other details yet, but this looks like a larger, more powerful XPS to compete with some of the MacBook Pros while the new XPS 13 comes with the Neo.

The XPS 14 and XPS 16, which Dell reintroduced at CES, corrected some of the company’s previous mistakes when Killing the XPS brand in 2025. But competing at $599/$699 with the MacBook Neo will be a tougher test for the revitalized brand.