Dell has announced a new XPS 13, and it is clearly aimed at the MacBook Neo, Apple's $599 budget laptop. The base model arrives in June 2026, with higher-spec versions coming later in the summer. It starts at $699 for everyone and $599 for students, which is $100 more than the Neo at both tiers. So Dell isn't undercutting Apple on price. What it is doing is throwing a lot more hardware at you for the money.
The standout for me is the display. You get a 13-inch 2.5K touchscreen that runs at up to 120Hz, with 500 nits of brightness, HDR, and Dolby Vision. The Neo's screen is lovely, but it tops out at 60Hz and isn't a touchscreen, so the XPS is sharper and smoother on paper. For a laptop in this price range, that's a really nice panel, and budget Windows laptops have been bad at this for years.
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Where it beats the MacBook Neo
The bigger win is RAM. The XPS 13 can be configured with up to 32GB of memory, and storage goes up to 1TB. That matters because the MacBook Neo is stuck at 8GB with no way to upgrade, which was my biggest gripe with it. If you run a lot of apps at once or do heavier work, the Dell gives you room the Neo simply doesn't. It's also light at 2.2 pounds; it's built from CNC-machined aluminum rather than plastic, and Dell claims up to 17 hours of streaming battery, a touch above Apple's 16-hour figure.
The rest is solid too. You get two USB-C ports, Wi-Fi 7, a Windows Hello webcam for face logins, quad speakers, and a backlit keyboard, in Storm or Sky colors. One odd cut: there's no headphone jack, which the cheaper Neo actually keeps. The XPS also uses dual fans, so it won't be silent the way the fanless Neo is.
Where it doesn't
The key issue is that the chips are Intel's, and Intel hasn't kept up with Apple's processors in terms of speed or efficiency for a while now. This is also a Windows laptop, and Windows is kind of a mess right now. So even with the better spec sheet, the day-to-day experience may not feel as clean as the Mac, especially for a first-time buyer or a student who just wants things to work.
Still, I'm happy to see this. Decent budget Windows laptops have been hard to find for a long time. If Apple jumping into the low end with the Neo is what's finally pushing companies like Dell to put better screens and more memory in cheap laptops, that's good news for everyone shopping at this price.
Read next: Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x review: Big value, minor trade-offs
[Image credit: Dell]
