72 TECH ADVISOR • OCTOBER 2019BUYING GUIDE
Lake U in the XPS 13. The Kaby Lake R Core i7 is only
about 13 percent slower on paper than the Whiskey
LakeU.A winis a winthough,andtheXPS 139380
stilltops the chart.
Both of the previous loads test fairly short runs.
Since laptops have limited ability to dissipate heat, their
CPUs have to run at slower clocks when they’re under a
sustained load. To test a longer task, we use Handbrake
0.9.9 and transcode a 30GB 1080p MKV file using the
built-in Android Tablet preset. The workload takes
around an hour or more for laptops to complete.
Besides measuring CPU performance, this test also
lets us gauge how well laptops deal with heat. Some
laptop makers decide to crank up fan speeds or crank
downclockspeeds.Othersdecidetolettheshellofthe
laptopheatup,too.Delltendstoswingforthefences
in performance and you see thatreflected here.