JULY 2020 PCWorld 45projection. Browsing might slice off three to
four hours, depending on the websites and
how strong the Wi-Fi signal is. If you run a
GPU- or CPU-intensive chore, expect maybe
two hours of battery life at most.
What will have more of an impact on
overall battery life than the CPU or laptop you
pick is the resolution of the screen. Most of
the laptops in the 12-hour range have
standard-resolution screens such as 1080p.
Higher-resolution 4K and 4K+ screens have
about four times the pixels, creating more
work for the laptop’s backlighting—at the
expense of battery life.
If you look at our chart, it’s no surprise:
Laptops with the 4K panels get significantly
less run time. Take the Dell XPS 13 7380, for
example, and go with an FHD screen, and
we’re certain battery life will jump up to the
12-hour range.
Winner: Any XPS 13 with a standard-
resolution screen.WHICH XPS 13 IS THE BEST
VALUE
We looked at Dell.com and configured all
three laptops for what we think are very
decent specs: top-end Core i7 chips, 16GB of
RAM, 512GB SSD, and standard-resolution
screens without touch.
We do admit it’s a little unfair to the Dell
XPS 13 2-in-1 7390, as there is no option
without touch. Its price as configured with
Core i7-1065G7 and FHD+ touchscreen isWHICH XPS 13 IS BEST FOR
BATTERY LIFE
Our battery life test loops a 4K video file in
airplane mode, with earbuds attached and
the brightness set to 250 to 260 nits. With
modern CPUs, that’s pretty much cruise
control, as the CPU idles down while the
integrated graphics does most of the work.
The 12 hours or so of battery life is actually
realistic doing that.
Your mileage will greatly vary based on
what you do. If you switched to doing
Microsoft Office work for the entire time, we’d
probably slice off two to three hours from that
A laptop’s screen resolution usually has more of
an impact on battery life than the CPU model or
laptop model.
Dell XPS 13 9343Core i5-5200UDell XPS 13 9300Core i7-1065G7Dell XPS 13 9370Core i7-8550UDell XPS 13 2-in-1 7390
Core i7-1065G7
Dell XPS 13 7390Core i7-10710UDell XPS 13 9380Core i7-8565UDell XPS 13 9360Core i7-7500U4K Video Battery Life
MinutesLONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE828568751431758543707