Dell XPS 13 9345 Review – An ARM and a Leg

Unboxing the Dell XPS 13 9345

Starting off our Dell XPS 13 9345 review with the unboxing, the packaging consists of two boxes; a bigger black box and a smaller black box. Design elements are nearly non-existent here, with the exception being the branding. This is pretty much standard affair with Dell laptops as of late so nothing new here. The packaging itself is pretty much blank so it’s as minimalist as you can get. When you’ve opened up everything, you will find the following items:

• Documentations
• Power cable (USB-C)
• 60W Charging Brick
• The Dell XPS 13 9345 laptop itself

Specifications

CPU	Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 (12 cores, 12 threads) @ 3.4GHz dual-core boost up to 4GHz
RAM	32GB LPDDR5X-8448 (soldered)
GPU	Integrated: Qualcomm Adreno X1 GPU (3.8 TFLOPS)
NPU	Qualcomm Hexagon NPU (45 TOPS)
Storage	1TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD
Display	13.4″ 3K 16:10 InfinityEdge OLED 2880×1800@60Hz 400 nits, Dolby Vision, Anti-reflect, EyeSafe
Audio	Quad-speaker design (tweeter + woofer), Qualcomm® WSA8845, 2W x 4 = 8 W total
Webcam	1080p at 30 fps FHD RGB camera, Dual-array microphones 360p at 15 fps IR camera
I/O	2 x USB4 (40Gbps Type-C with DP and PD)
Connectivity	Qualcomm FastConnect 7800 Wi-Fi 7 2×2 + Bluetooth 5.4 Wireless Card
Battery	55Wh 3-cell Li-ion
Power Supply	60W, USB-C charger
Operating System	Windows 11 Home
Dimensions	295.4 x 199.1 x 14.8 mm
Weight	1.19kg

Performance

Storage

For our unit, the storage being used here is the 1TB Samsung PM9A1, a speedy PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD. As such, we expected the results to be pretty good and we’re proved right as seen in the screenshot above. Not only do you get a high capacity SSD, you also get a lightning-fast one at that too.

CPU

While I’m sure many of you are looking forward to this section to see how well a Snapdragon chip performs in a laptop, we need to make note of the charts so you can get a better understanding. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite uses a completely different design than what we’ve been known with Intel and AMD chips. Snapdragon, like the one found in Android smartphones, uses the ARM instruction set; meanwhile, Intel and AMD has relied on the x86 instruction set which has served the PC industry for more than 4 decades by now.

So where’s the problem? A lot of software in the market now do not have native support for ARM as they are design with x86 / x64 in mind. This can result in huge performance drops (like Cinebench R20), with multi-core performance being about the same as a 2-year-old laptop, but single-core performance is only comparable to a 6-year-old laptop at best.

However, if the apps does support ARM natively, then the performance can be powerful – we’re talking taking Intel’s top Meteor Lake chip (Core Ultra 9 185H) and AMD’s top Strix Point chip (Ryzen AI 9 HX 370) head on. It’s also hard to gauge the power draw as Qualcomm’s telemetry doesn’t provide the information to software like HWiNFO64. Simply put, the performance you see in the above screenshots will not be in its full potential.

GPU

Moving on to GPU benchmarks, it’s also important for me to preface this with the fact that the Adreno GPU doesn’t have DirectX 12 Ultimate support, which renders ray tracing unusable and thus, it won’t be able to run benchmarks like Port Royal and Speed Way. As for the benchmarks that it can run, it is certainly a few steps behind its competitors, so keep that in mind if you decide to play games on this laptop.

System

As NovaBench has both x86 and ARM versions, we’ll be showing you its performance for the ARM version as it shows the best case scenario. Running it in both Optimized and Ultra Performance profiles do not yield significant differences across the board but I can tell you with ease that if you compared the scores with the x86 version, we’re looking at about a 30 to 40% drop in all areas. As it stands now, it’s pretty decent, though it’s clearly lagging behind Intel and AMD-based machines of a similar nature.

Battery

As it’s not possible to run PCMark 10 due to its ARM architecture, we wanted to opt for UL Procyon’s battery life test with display being calibrated to 200 nits instead. However, due to it popping up errors over 10 times despite multiple reinstalls, restarts, and reformats, we opted to skip it in the interest of time. If we ever find out a solution for this, we will update the review again at a later date.

If you prefer an older model to save cost, check out our Dell XPS 13 9320 review by clicking right here.

The Good

There are a number of good reasons to consider getting the Dell XPS 13 9345. For starters, the laptop has an eye-catching premium design with its CNC-machined aluminum unibody. Like with other recent XPS models, the keyboard, along with the row of capacitive function keys, sits flush within the body, giving a sense of elegance and style you can’t find elsewhere. Furthermore, at 1.19kg and 14.8mm thin, it’s so compact and portable that you’d easily mistaken it for a tablet when carrying it around.

You also get a high quality display, with this in particular being OLED with 3K+ resolution, while Dell also has variants for 2K and Full HD with IPS instead. With 500 nits of brightness, the colors are quite punchy and it work great for a wide variety of use cases, just that I wouldn’t necessarily use this for creative work that requires color accurate displays. With ultra-thin bezels making it look extra good and the Full HD webcam, it’s a luxury for productivity.

Adding into that, the speakers sound way better than I expected. It uses quad speakers that can give you 360° audio with Dolby Atmos, and while the 3D surround sound might not be the best given the size, the sound quality is surprisingly detailed with a good separation of sounds while volume is certainly more than adequate. There is a slight hint of bass here but given that it’s built-in laptop speakers, it would be unrealistic to expect more. On its own, it’s an ultracompact multimedia beast.

While we demonstrated its performance via benchmarks, you might be wondering how the Snapdragon X Elite chip performs and I can say with ease that it’s quite powerful if you’re not looking to play games. For day-to-day use of productivity tools, web browsing, conference calls, watching videos, it ran perfectly smooth with no issues whatsoever. Multitasking is certainly of no issue, especially with the large 32GB RAM capacity. If you’re sticking to cloud-based software solutions or software from known companies, you should be fine but your mileage may vary with custom / in-house software, but more on that later.

Lastly, and this is particularly important for futureproofing, is that it has Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 support. Most consumers are still in the midst of moving into Wi-Fi 6 / 6E, which is already great but when usage of Wi-Fi 7 becomes widespread, you can be sure that this Dell XPS 13 9345 will be ready to take full advantage of it. Even without it right now, you would be able to enjoy a more stable Wi-Fi connection with longer range compared to standard Wi-Fi 6 chips, but your mileage will still depend on the router it is connected to.

The Bad

Of course, the Dell XPS 13 9345 has its share of drawbacks. For starters, while the capacitive function row gives the laptop a cleaner, elegant look, I’m still not a fan of it. Not only is it hard to tell if you’ve properly “pressed” it due to a lack of haptic feedback, it is also prone to accidental taps. I would have preferred physical buttons in the same style as the keyboard itself.

Next up, wired connectivity is quite limited here as you only get two USB-C ports and nothing more. Yes, you don’t even get a headphone jack here. Granted, the two ports here are USB4 with bandwidths ranging from 20Gbps to 40Gbps with support for Power Delivery and DisplayPort but there simply isn’t enough ports. If you’re getting this laptop, you definitely need to get a USB-C dock, preferably the ones with HDMI, LAN, and a few USB-A and USB-C ports, for ease of use.

Lastly, and this is the part I mentioned about trouble with in-house software, is the ARM-based architecture. With most software being developed for x86 and x64 systems, you will need to use software that is designed for ARM if you want to use it as its full potential. As seen in our benchmarks, there is a noticeable difference when running the ARM version of a software compared to x86 emulation. Most software should still work fine with some performance drops but keep in mind that it might not be as stable. This is not an issue that is exclusive to this laptop as it’s shared with other Snapdragon-based ones as well, but support is expected to improve over time.

Dell XPS 13 9345 Verdict

The Dell XPS 13 9345 could very well be the best productivity laptop for its size. It’s powerful, ultracompact, and is quite a multimedia beast. Between a tablet (iPads included) and this, I would choose this laptop in a heartbeat but ultimately, it depends on whether your workflow / use case requires specific software or not, and if you can afford its asking price of RM8,899. To me, having this package along with Dell’s class-leading aftersales support makes it worth the investment.

At the end of our Dell XPS 13 9345 review, I award this laptop with our coveted Gold Pokdeward.

Big thanks to Dell Malaysia for sending us this laptop for the purpose of this review.