Dell XPS is officially back, and this time it actually feels like a comeback, not just another spec bump with a shiny press release stapled on top. The new XPS 14 and XPS 16 mark a reset for a brand that had drifted into “nice, but annoying” territory, and the story of their return is really about Dell quietly undoing its worst experiments while doubling down on the things people loved in the first place.​

For the last few years, XPS has been in a weird spot. The machines still looked premium, but the user experience was full of little friction points: the capacitive function row that no one asked for, the invisible touchpad that felt clever in renders but frustrating in real life, and a design language that leaned more toward “showpiece” than daily driver. Reviewers and long-time XPS fans kept saying the same thing: stop trying to reinvent the keyboard and just make a great laptop again. Dell clearly listened. The 2026 lineup is very obviously a response to that criticism, right down to the most basic controls.​

The first sign that XPS is “back” is the hardware you touch every day. Dell has dumped the virtual function keys and brought back a traditional function row, with real switches, real travel, and predictable behavior. The touchpad is no longer a guessing game either; it’s still a seamless glass slab, but now there’s subtle etching around the active area so your fingers know exactly where the pad begins and ends. Under your hands, the zero-lattice keyboard has been tuned for more tactile feedback, and early hands-on impressions say it finally feels crisp rather than mushy, which was a common complaint about the previous generation.​

Design-wise, Dell is treating XPS less like a corporate box and more like an object people are proud to carry. The unibody base now integrates structural sidewalls for extra rigidity, so the chassis feels dense and solid without creaks. CNC-milled aluminum and Gorilla Glass are still the core materials, but the industrial design has been stripped of visual clutter: fewer parting lines, a calmer tonal color palette, and an overall aesthetic that looks more like an expensive ultraportable than a business laptop that wandered into Best Buy by accident. Even the branding has changed. For the first time, the XPS logo is on the lid instead of the Dell badge, which sounds minor but instantly shifts the vibe from “generic Dell laptop” to “this is the XPS you bought on purpose.”​

The portability story is also very different from the fat-and-heavy “performance” trend of the last few years. The XPS 14 and XPS 16 are now Dell’s thinnest XPS laptops, coming in at around 14.6mm thick, which puts them firmly in ultrabook territory despite their size. Weight has dropped significantly: the XPS 14 starts at roughly three pounds, more than half a pound lighter than its predecessor, while the XPS 16 sits around 3.6 to 3.65 pounds, almost a full pound lighter than the previous 16‑inch model. That leanness isn’t just for marketing slides. Dell is using smaller, higher‑energy‑density 900ED battery cells and an aggressively compact thermal design to shave grams while still promising serious runtimes.​

One of the bolder claims is how compact the 14‑inch model really is. Dell says the XPS 14 actually has a smaller footprint than a 13‑inch MacBook Air, while still giving you more display area thanks to those razor‑thin InfinityEdge bezels. That’s the kind of spec flex that only really matters when you put the machines side by side on a coffee shop table—but if you travel a lot or hot-desk, that extra half-inch of elbow room on a cramped surface is the sort of detail people remember. And with both models using some of the thinnest 8MP/4K laptop cameras Dell has ever shipped, you don’t pay for bezel slimness with a potato webcam anymore.​

Under the hood, the “return of XPS” has a twist: right now, it’s all-in on integrated graphics. Both the XPS 14 and XPS 16 are built around Intel’s new Core Ultra Series 3 chips with built-in Arc graphics, and there’s no discrete GPU option at launch. That’s a big philosophical shift for a line that used to offer RTX configurations, and it says a lot about how much faith Dell—and Intel—have in the latest integrated Xe cores. Dell is talking about up to roughly 50 percent better graphics and significantly higher AI performance compared with previous XPS models, thanks to those updated GPUs and dedicated AI blocks in the new processors. Hands-on reports from CES note that the machines feel snappy and responsive, but the real test will be whether Intel’s latest integrated graphics can keep creators happy once heavy timelines, large RAW files, and GPU‑leaning AI tools get thrown at them.​

Thermals are one of the quiet heroes of this redesign. Dell has reworked the cooling system with what it calls its largest and thinnest fans yet, pushing more airflow through a very slim chassis. In theory, that means better sustained performance, cooler surfaces, and quieter fans, all at the same time; in practice, early demos hint at loud but effective cooling in noisy show-floor conditions, with reviewers reserving judgment until they can really punish the machines in controlled environments. What’s clear is that the entire internal layout has been built around this balance of thinness, power, and battery life rather than just bolting a hotter chip into last year’s shell.​

The display situation is where Dell leans hard into the “flagship” narrative. Both the XPS 14 and 16 come with a choice of high‑resolution 2K‑class LCDs or new tandem OLED panels, the same display tech Dell debuted in its 2024 laptops. Tandem OLED stacks multiple emissive layers to improve brightness and efficiency, which should mean brighter HDR, more stable colors over time, and less burn‑in anxiety compared with older OLED laptop panels. Early eyes-on impressions from the show floor describe the OLEDs as bright and punchy, with the 16‑inch model offering a sprawling canvas and the 14‑inch panel still feeling generous for everyday work and media.​

Battery life is where Dell is really swinging. Internally, the company is claiming “best battery life in the industry” for these configurations, with numbers like roughly 27 hours of general use and over 40 hours of local video playback under lab conditions on the LCD models. Those figures always come with asterisks—brightness set around 150 nits, Wi-Fi conditions, and so on—but even with real‑world haircutting, these are the sort of machines that should comfortably get through a full workday plus an evening of streaming without touching a charger. A big part of that is the panel tech: the LCDs support a 1‑to‑120Hz variable refresh rate, dropping down to 1Hz for static content like reading documents and scaling up to 120Hz for scrolling or video, which adds a lot of efficiency with almost zero user awareness.​

There’s another story running quietly underneath all the spec talk: repairability and sustainability. Dell is making modular USB‑C ports standard on XPS for the first time, so those high‑wear connectors can be replaced more easily instead of sending the whole board to recycling. Keyboards are designed to be removed with less drama, and the company is leaning heavily on recycled materials: recycled steel in the hinges, recycled cobalt and copper in the batteries, plus recycled plastics, magnesium, aluminum, and glass across the chassis. The new machines meet the latest EPEAT 2.0 standards, which is the sort of thing that matters more and more to buyers who expect premium laptops to last longer than a couple of upgrade cycles.​

Price-wise, Dell knows it can’t just talk about “accessible” and then start at three grand. Launch configurations for the XPS 14 and XPS 16 kick off at around $2,049.99 and $2,199.99 in the US, respectively, with limited configurations going on sale right after CES and broader, lower‑priced options coming in February, “well under $2000”. That still puts XPS squarely in premium territory, but Dell’s pitch is that you’re getting a genuinely high‑end design with big‑battery endurance, modern Intel silicon, and bleeding‑edge displays, not just a reputation tax.​

And the revival isn’t just about the 14 and 16. Dell has already teased a new XPS 13 coming later this year, promising its thinnest and lightest XPS yet at under 13mm thick. It will bring the same InfinityEdge screen philosophy and premium build to a more “everyday” footprint and, crucially, Dell is calling this the most affordable entry point into the XPS family so far. There’s also an Ubuntu 24.04 option planned for the XPS 14, which is a nice nod to developers and power users who remember the old XPS 13 Developer Edition era fondly.​

If you zoom out, the new XPS lineup feels less like a radical reinvention and more like a thoughtful course correction—XPS returning to what made it matter in the first place. The physical function row is back. The touchpad is visible again. The chassis is cleaner, lighter, and more portable without sacrificing the sense of heft that makes a laptop feel dependable. The trade-off is that, at least for now, the line is betting everything on Intel’s integrated graphics instead of discrete GPUs, which will either look brave or shortsighted depending on how those Arc cores perform in real‑world creative workloads.​

But as a statement of intent, “This is XPS now” genuinely lands. The brand no longer feels like it’s coasting on past glory; it looks like Dell has listened to the backlash, fixed the obvious pain points, and built a platform it can iterate on for the rest of the decade. For anyone who had quietly moved on to MacBooks or other Windows flagships after the last few missteps, the 2026 XPS lineup is, at the very least, worth a fresh look. XPS never really disappeared—but this is the first time in a while it feels like it has truly returned.