Dell XPS 13 vs MacBook Neo (2026): Windows Finally Has an Answer!
This is the brand-new Dell XPS 13, and it's Windows' answer to the MacBook Neo. For the first time in a long time, we're getting Windows laptops at the same price point as Apple's most affordable Mac — and Dell came out swinging. In a lot of ways this is the better product, but the MacBook Neo still holds its own in some key areas that, for a lot of people, matter more. And I found something in testing I did not expect: under sustained load, this Dell pulls 35W for about 90 seconds, then cuts itself to 16W and stays there. That one number explains almost every benchmark in this comparison.
Quick Verdict
Both of these are genuinely good $700 laptops — not something I could say two years ago. The Dell XPS 13 is lighter, has a better display (120Hz touch), more RAM, faster ports, Windows Hello standard, and much better sustained-workload wins in short bursts. But the fanless MacBook Neo is silent, far stronger in the browser and anything GPU-heavy, and brighter. The whole story comes down to where each one holds back: Intel power-limits the Dell to 15W (it wins sprints, loses marathons), while Apple caps the Neo's cooling to stay silent. If you live in a browser and want silence, take the Neo. If you need Windows, more RAM, or the display, take the Dell.
Design and Build
Both are really light. The Dell is the lighter at 2.2 lb versus the Neo's 2.7 lb — half a pound. Thickness is identical (a half-inch at the thickest point), but the Dell has a smaller footprint, so it reads as the more compact machine. Honestly, out of the affordable Windows laptops I've tested recently, this XPS 13 feels more premium than it has any right to at this price. It's CNC aluminum, and if you push on both lids the flex is identical — which is wild, given one is a Dell budget laptop and the other is an Apple product. Both pass the one-handed-open test. If it weren't for Apple, we'd never have gotten a Windows laptop with this build quality at this price. Competition is a good thing.
Ports and Connectivity
Both have two USB-C ports, but the details differ. On the Dell, both are USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps). On the MacBook Neo, only one is 10Gbps — the other is USB 2.0 (480Mbps, 20× slower). The Neo wins one back with a headphone jack, which the Dell lacks — in 2026, on a laptop aimed at students, that's a real miss. The Dell also has Wi-Fi 7 versus the Neo's Wi-Fi 6E — not a dealbreaker, but nice if you have a Wi-Fi 7 router.
Keyboard, Trackpad, and Speakers
Neither has a numpad (normal at 13 inches). I actually prefer the MacBook's keys — a little bouncier, more actuation, softer — while the XPS 13's 0.8mm of travel gives a clickier press. But the Neo's downfall is that it has no keyboard backlighting whatsoever, not even an ambient light sensor. In 2026, a backlit keyboard should be standard. Biometrics also favor Dell: Windows Hello facial recognition is standard on every XPS 13, while the 256GB MacBook Neo has no fingerprint sensor at all — you have to jump to the $799 model for Touch ID.
Trackpads are a tie — both have great glass, both physically click (neither is haptic at this price). Speakers: the XPS 13 has four (bottom-firing), the MacBook has two (side-firing).
Display
The XPS 13's display shocked me for the price: 2560×1600 IPS, touchscreen, with a 120Hz refresh rate (it can drop to 30Hz to save battery). It does DisplayHDR 400 — not real HDR, but HDR content does look better than SDR — with good color accuracy, and it's 0.4 inches bigger than the Neo. Where the Neo wins is brightness: Apple's panel measures a bit over 500 nits SDR versus around 479 on the Dell, and it's slightly more saturated, so it's punchier. But it's 60Hz, smaller, and non-touch.
Performance: Dell Wins the Sprint, Loses the Marathon
The Dell's chip is the Wildcat Lake Intel Core i5 320 — six cores (two performance, four efficiency) on Intel's 18A node. Set expectations: this is not a Lunar Lake replacement, it's a tier below, Intel's budget silicon. But it punches harder than I expected in short tests:
| Test | Winner | Margin |
|---|---|---|
| Cinebench R26 single-core | Dell | +4% |
| Cinebench R26 multi-core | Dell | +11% |
| Photoshop | Dell | +32% (more RAM) |
| Speedometer (web apps) | Neo | +45% |
| Code compile | Neo | Dell takes 46% longer (79 min vs 54) |
| 3DMark Steel Nomad | Neo | +39% |
| Premiere Pro | Neo | +82% |
| Blender | Neo | ~3–4× faster |
Burst workloads go to Dell (Photoshop especially, thanks to twice the RAM — and the Neo can't be configured with more). But web apps go decisively to the Neo, and let's be honest about how people use a $700 laptop: they live in a browser. The GPU gap is brutal — the XPS 13's integrated GPU is genuinely terrible (Intel gave it only two graphics cores); Overwatch barely broke 22 FPS with constant drops. These aren't gaming laptops, but I want to be clear how weak that iGPU is.
Why the Dell Loses Every Long Test: It's Power-Limited, Not Thermal
I ran Y-Cruncher on the XPS 13 for 33 minutes straight and logged the whole way. Package power spikes to 35W (max turbo) at the start, then within ~90 seconds falls off a cliff and settles around 16W by the 8-minute mark — and stays there. Clock speed opens at 3.8GHz and settles at 2.9. But here's the surprise: temperature peaks near 100°C at the very start, then settles at a completely comfortable 82°C. The fan is doing its job — this thing isn't thermally throttled, it's power-limited. Intel set the sustained target at 15W and the chip sits right on it. Dell could put a bigger fan in and it would change nothing. Any benchmark shorter than about two minutes is testing a machine you don't actually own.
The Neo plays the same game from the other side: it's fanless, so it throttles from ~3.3 to ~2.3GHz under sustained load and gets hot doing it (north of 100°C). People have found that $20 of thermal pads restores 3.3GHz and roughly doubles gaming performance — meaning Apple left performance on the table to stay silent. Both machines hold back; they just choose different places to give up.
Noise, Battery, and Internals
The Dell has a fan but it's not loud — 42dB on performance, 40dB balanced, 36dB efficiency (40dB is a quiet office). The Neo is silent, zero.
Battery isn't close: the XPS 13 hit 26 hours 15 minutes in PCMark 10 Modern Office. That runs on Windows so it's not apples-to-apples, but independent testing that runs the same web-surfing test on both puts the XPS 13 at ~14.5 hours and the Neo at ~13.5.
Inside the Dell: a 52Wh battery, two fans, a copper heat pipe, and bottom-firing speakers. The Wi-Fi card and RAM are soldered — the only upgradeable part is the 2240 NVMe SSD, which gets much better read/write speeds than the MacBook Neo.
Who Should Buy Which?
Grab a piece of paper, write down the pros and cons, and rank them for your own priorities. For me:
- Take the MacBook Neo if you live in a browser and want it completely silent.
- Take the Dell XPS 13 if you need Windows software, more RAM, or that 120Hz touch display — and probably for longevity too.
- If you're doing anything GPU-heavy at all, buy a MacBook Air, or the Dell XPS 13 if your budget permits.
Either way, these are both good laptops at $700 — and that's thanks to competition.
Where to Buy
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Published: July 2026
