Ever since Dell announced the newly redesigned XPS 13 Plus at CES this year, there's been no end of controversy about it.
The Verge even wrote that the XPS 13 Plus is the most extreme of all the replacement design manufacturers.
To that end, WindowsCentral launched a reader survey that found 78 percent of readers liked the redesigned XPS 13 Plus, while the remaining 22 percent disagreed.
▲ I also voted Yes. image from: WindowsCentral
The disagreement is not over the overall design style, but mainly over a few "innovations" in the XPS 13 Plus that are specific to the traditional design.
One, touch-sensitive function keys, and two, a gridless keyboard, and a seamless touchpad.
▲ By 'seamless' I actually mean the B-side of the XPS 13 Plus. Image via: TheVerge
As for these controversial design changes, Dell officials say that the main focus is on the "seamlessness" concept and that this will be a major trend in the future of PCs, laptops, and that the XPS 13 Plus is leading the innovation.
XPS 13 Plus is essentially a traditional laptop
Thin and light is arguably one of the biggest labels for the Dell XPS.
▲ Dell XPS 13-9300.
The initial XPS was an instant hit with its extremely narrow bezel screen, and through the years the XPS line has been optimized based on traditional design styles, with the keyboard keys becoming larger, the bezels thinner, and the body becoming smaller.
It's just that the XPS line has never been able to break through, but has been somewhat stubborn due to past feats.
The XPS 13 Plus, on the other hand, completely upsets that balance with a re-divided lineup that certainly frees up the hands and feet.
The innovative industrial design can be described as future-focused and what a flagship product should look like today.
The touch-enabled function buttons are reminiscent of the Touch Bar found on the MacBook Pro - cool, but not practical.
▲ Touch Bar on MacBook Pro.
Dell's concept is actually not quite the same as the Touch Bar. It's still a touchable 'physical button' and will give some feedback using touch simulation.
In addition, when you press the Fn button on the keyboard, the "Media" button in the touch area switches to the F function key.
This design was actually market researched, and the traditional function buttons are less used but take up some space.
By 'optimizing' them to capacitive touch buttons, in addition to being more aesthetically pleasing, it also saves some space for laying out the heat sink and improving cooling performance.
If this is a more restrained change, the integrated palm rest and trackpad are far more radical.
Not only is the use of materials consistent, but for visual uniformity, Dell doesn't mark the boundaries of the trackpad, thereby potentially affecting the accuracy of dragging.
It's also the biggest point of contention about the XPS 13 Plus design, with the majority of the 22 percent of dissenting opinions in a WindowsCentral reader poll due to the all-in-one trackpad.
Dell has argued in interviews that people can easily develop muscle memory when using a laptop's trackpad, and will unconsciously remember the effective touch area, somewhat similar to keyboard blind typing.
This integrated design is not a case of 'putting the cart before the horse'.
The keyboard function area and trackpad have been made seamless, while the keyboard area has been given a similar treatment, removing the traditional laptop grid and enlarging each keycap to look as if a piece of aluminum has been cut into multiple keys.
However, the keyboard construction remains the traditional 'scissor foot' and the key travel remains 1mm, similar to the rest of the XPS.
The new design of the XPS 13 Plus is focused almost entirely on the B-side, and rather than 'seamless', 'integrated' would be more accurate.
With three major improvements that make its B-side more unified and completely distinguish it from traditional laptops, the XPS 13 Plus is radical and pioneering enough in terms of design language.
The A-side of the XPS 13 Plus is more similar to the XPS 13.
But back in terms of use, it's actually still geared towards the present day, with the traditional scissor-foot keyboard structure remaining virtually unchanged and the touch keys designed with great restraint.
As well, in terms of laptop form, the XPS 13 Plus remains traditional, with no 2-in-1 or 360-degree swivel.
At this point in time, the XPS 13 Plus looks more like a traditional laptop that introduces an 'all-in-one' design concept. It's still geared towards 'practicality' rather than radical innovation.
"Integration" is the future, but not the present
In fact, it is safe to conclude that almost all consumer electronic devices are evolving towards 'integration'.
The process of integration is not just a stylistic change in the industrial design of the exterior, it also requires a lot of technological upgrades behind the scenes.
The Tapic Engine in the iPhone simulates multiple levels of vibration. Image from: Dice Insight
The changes to the B-side of the Dell XPS 13 Plus, especially the touchpad integration and touch buttons, are a way for the development team to bring the touch feedback found on smartphones to laptops to give them a similar experience in terms of touch experience.
The XPS 13 Plus comes with 28W TDP Intel XII processors (i5-1240P and i7-1280P), which unleashes better performance compared to the previous 15W CPUs, which is actually an upgrade due to the increasing processor performance.
▲ Intel Core i7-1280P.
However, the XPS 13 Plus has reduced bezels, but still fails to pull away from other thin and light notebooks in terms of thickness and weight, and the x86 architecture processor still requires active cooling and is still a little bit away from being truly all-in-one.
The emergence of desktop CPU, or SoC, concepts in the Arm architecture in recent years, and especially the success of Apple's M1 series, has made it possible to create extremely thin and light products that are even more "all-in-one".
▲ Apple MacBook. image via: The Verge
Once Apple's MacBooks had extreme thickness, dramatically streamlined internals, and used only passive cooling in an attempt to make the MacBook line synonymous with extreme thinness by replacing the MacBook Air.
Unfortunately, the Core M series was not as energy efficient as it could be in the extreme space, and the corresponding MacBook series fell out of favor.
Then, with Apple's iPad line becoming "your next computer," the MacBook line came to a complete halt, and even with the advent of the M1 power-efficient SoC, the MacBook, which had the most potential to become an "all-in-one" laptop, was not revived.
On the other hand, with the M1 chip, iPad Pro's performance is already comparable to that of a Mac, and most importantly, iPad is already very close to being "all-in-one" and "seamless" in form. Whether or not it becomes the new personal PC is just a matter of waiting for the evolution of iPadOS.
The XPS 13 Plus is the ultimate traditional PC. Image from: Game News 24
The keyboard on a traditional PC has been relegated to an accessory for the iPad, a trade-off Apple has made with the all-in-one PC, and the iPad is good enough to move quickly toward all-in-one, just like smartphones.
It's just that among traditional manufacturers, laptops in traditional form still have mechanical structures such as spindles, keyboards, and fans, and even though it's like the XPS 13 Plus, which is considered to be the "future" of laptops, it's still not radical enough to get rid of these structures and become more integrated.
The Dell XPS 13 Plus is still essentially a traditional laptop, even in the brainy Microsoft Surface range, where 'all-in-one' isn't yet the main theme and the ever-changing form factor is, so they're both still geared towards the present rather than the 'future' in the true sense of the word.