The 2022 Dell XPS 13 is a 2.6 pound notebook with Intel Alder Lake-U and Windows or Ubuntu support

Dell’s XPS 13 laptops have long stood out for their ultracompact designs, but this year’s Dell XPS 13 (9315) is even thinner and lighter than usual, measuring just 0.55 inches thick and having a starting weight of 2.59 pounds.

The new laptop is available today for $999 and up.

In order to shrink the physical size of the laptop while packing new features, Dell reduced the size of the motherboard – it’s 1.8X smaller than last year’s model. Among other things, that allows for larger speaker enclosures for better-sounding audio without increasing the size of the chassis.

But Dell did prioritize mobility over performance by opting to equip the laptop with 9-watt Intel Alder Lake-U chips rather than the 15-watt parts used in previous-gen models. The 2022 Dell XPS 13 is available with either an Intel Core i5-1230U or Intel Core i7-1250U processor. Those are both 10-core, 12-thread chips with 2 Performance cores and 8 efficiency cores and Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics.

If you need more horsepower, Dell does have an option for that. It’s just a little larger and a little pricier. The company’s Dell XPS 13 Plus laptop went on sale in April and features a 28-watt Intel Alder Lake-P processor. That model has a starting weight of 2.73 pounds and a list price of $1200. It also has capacitive touch buttons where the Fn keys are usually found.

Dell is also launching a new XPS 13 2-in-1 tablet with a detachable keyboard and optional 5G support later this summer.

Here’s a run-down of key specs for the new Dell XPS 13 (9315):

While there are three different display options, they all support up to 500 nits brightness. Dell also notes that the laptop supports fast charging, allowing you to take the 51 Wh battery from 0 to 80% in under an hour. And if Windows isn’t your jam, there’s a Dell XPS 13 (9315) Developer Edition model that ships with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Linux instead.

If the laptop has any shortcomings though, it’s that the RAM is not user upgradeable, and there are only two ports. The new Dell XPS 13 has two Thunderbolt 4 ports that can be used for charging, data, or video output. But those are the only ports. There’s no headphone jack, card reader, or full-sized USB or HDMI ports, although Dell does include a USB-C to USB-A adapter and an optional USB-C to 3.5mm audio adapter.

That means that you’re probably going to want to pick up a hub if you need to be able to charge the laptop and plug in more than one additional peripheral at a time.