What’s the difference between a Dell XPS 14 laptop and a Dell XPS 14 ultrabook? A solid state disk.
Dell’s new 14 inch notebook is a thin and light laptop that has all the features you’d expect from an ultrabook — but one of those features is optional. In order to  meet Intel’s requirements, an ultrabook has to have a solid state disk, but Dell is offering the XPS 14 with the choice of a SSD or a slower (and cheaper) spinning hard drive.
Recently Dell introduced the Inspiron 13z and Inspiron 14z ultraportable notebooks. Today the company is fleshing out its lineup with the high-performance XPS 14 and XPS 15 laptops.
As you may have guessed from the names, the Dell XPS 14 has a 14 inch display while the XPS 15 has a 15.6 inch display. That model also has a larger, thicker case and dooesn’t qualify as an ultrabook.
The XPS 14 measures 0.81 inches thick and weighs 4.6 pounds. It has a starting price of $1099, but Dell offers configurations with up to a Core i7 processor, up to a 512GB solid state disk, and up to 8GB of RAM. There’s also an optional NVIDIA GeForce GT 630m graphics card with 1GB of video memory.
The base model features Intel HD 4000 graphics, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, and a 14 inch, 1600 x 900 pixel display with Corning Gorilla Glass. Dell says the laptop gets up to 11 hours of battery life (although Engadget only managed to get a little over 6 hours in their tests).
Dell’s larger XPS 15 laptop measures 0.91 inches thick and weighs 5.8 pounds. It supports up to 16GB of memory, has a Blu-ray disk drive, and can be configured with an NVIDIA GeForce GT 640m graphics card with 2GB of video memory.
The XPS 15 has a starting price of $1299 and gets up to 8 hours of battery life. It features a 1920 x 1080 pixel display.