CES 2026 marks a make-or-break moment for Dell’s consumer-computing business. Just ask the company's newly crowned vice chairman and chief operating officer, Jeff Clarke, who made the point abundantly clear in a speech at a CES preview event.
The trouble is simple and stark: Dell is losing market share in a critical sales segment, and the company is looking to win back buyers. As part of that plan, it's reviving a familiar name that it put out to pasture just a year ago. Yes, after all the hoopla about a rebranding, the XPS laptop brand is back in two new machines: a 14-inch model and a 16-inch model. (Clarke even donned a T-shirt with the XPS logo. How explicit can you get?)
I got the chance to go hands on with both laptops during a Dell preview event in New York, and I spent some more time at home with an XPS 14 pre-production model ahead of CES 2026. These definitely mark a return to form for Dell’s flagship laptop brand—and move it much closer to models from a major competitor. (Hint: Apple.)
Wait, XPS Is Back Already? Dell’s XPS Reverse, Explained
No, you’re not imagining things: The 2026 flagship consumer laptops from Dell will be known and branded as XPS. Dell has abandoned the “Dell Premium” branding that it adopted this year to replace the long-running XPS line.
Why the about-face? On stage, Clarke shared that 44% of the PCs that Dell ships are consumer-oriented devices. As of Q2 2025, Dell’s third-place 16.1% computer-market share in the US dropped to 14.5% year-over-year. (Lenovo is the leader.) Dell’s big rebrand, which launched in the middle of this somber stretch and saw the sunsetting of XPS and other familiar Dell brand names, did little to stem the flow.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Meanwhile, fourth-place Apple saw a tiny bump in the same period, slowly gaining ground on Dell’s spot. (Remember this point when I cover the XPS 14 redesign.) Plus, HP holds a healthy second-place lead over Dell, at 20.1% market share, so Dell has a lot of ground to cover if it wants to catch up.
Dell has nearly half of its business tied to a category in which it’s gradually losing ground, so drastic times call for drastic measures. Think of the return of the XPS like Robert Downey Jr.’s casting as Doctor Doom in the next big Marvel movie.
The 2026 Dell XPS 14 Explored: What’s New?
“New” is an interesting word when looking at the 2026 Dell XPS 14. In a vacuum, yes, almost everything about the XPS 14 redesign is new. This is a back-to-basics overhaul, with an overall design that feels premium but doesn't stand out from the crowd. Instead, Dell just highlights the machine's best features, namely its Tandem OLED display and updated, simpler keyboard.
However, the XPS 14 immediately looks and feels a lot less “new” next to a 13-inch or 15-inch Apple MacBook Air. Save for a few obvious outlying features, like its logos and different screen lid lip, the resemblance is uncanny. In this redesign, Dell’s stated goal of “getting back to our roots,” as Clarke put it, is crystal clear; however, I can’t help but feel that Dell has another target—an Apple-shaped one—in its sights.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Of course, PC makers have been chasing the MacBook Air for a long time now, and the XPS 14 isn’t the first one to emulate it so unabashedly. Remember Huawei’s MateBook laptops before the company's ban from the US?
The XPS 14 features an aluminum screen lid cover and a single-piece underside, complemented by a soft-touch-coated magnesium palm rest and a steel keyboard deck. The aluminum feels just as smooth under my fingers as the palm rest does, a testament to the laptop’s overall body finish.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Dell trimmed the XPS 14 compared with the Dell 14 Premium considerably: The new machine measures a slim 0.58 inch thick, down from 0.71 inch. It’s also much lighter, by more than half a pound, going from 3.66 pounds to 3 pounds in its OLED configuration. (The 13-inch MacBook Air comes in at 0.44 inch and 2.7 pounds.)
Speaking of which, the XPS 14 is available with either a 14-inch 1200p LCD non-touch screen or a souped-up 1800p Tandem OLED touch-screen option that looks simply gorgeous in person. (Tandem OLED screens add a second layer of LEDs for even brighter, more varied backlighting and color than basic OLED panels.) Even the regular Windows 11 operating system, on its own, looks better than ever on an OLED.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Dell’s Tandem OLED can also refresh its image anywhere from as slowly as 20Hz up to a snappy 120Hz, the former handy if you're looking at mostly static visuals that don't need a ton of refreshing, such as photos or webpages. (A slower screen refresh rate can save power.) This is something that the XPS 14 clearly holds over Apple’s head; the latter still leans on refined IPS LCD techniques to save power and deliver an above-average image.
The screen bezels, meanwhile, are barely visible, yet Dell still managed enough space for a proper webcam: an 8-megapixel 4K HDR model that delivers minimal noise and accurate colors in a live image. This is a meeting-ready laptop, without a doubt.
For connectivity, the XPS 14 has three Thunderbolt 4 ports with support for DisplayPort 2.1 and power delivery (meaning one of them will be dedicated to charging), as well as a basic audio jack. The laptop handles wireless connections via a Wi-Fi 7 radio with Bluetooth 6.0 on board.
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(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)As for the keyboard, Dell has finally abandoned the capacitive-touch LED-based row of function keys (F1 to F12) and returned to "real," traditional keys with switches beneath them. The experimental function-row setup was an admirable attempt to differentiate and innovate, but sometimes that’s just not what customers want.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Alas, the new board has some drawbacks. These new keys, for my taste, are too close together, with no spacing between them. My fingers don’t feel like they’ve safely landed on each key; if I'm touch-typing, it's tough to find the next letter in a word by dragging my fingers across the keyboard.
On the other hand, Dell added more definition to its seamless glass haptic touchpad, addressing a common complaint from users of the last few XPS/Dell Premium models who couldn’t tell where the tracking space ended. Now, subtle, elevated lines define the boundaries of the tracking surface on either side. You can see the faint lines here on the XPS 16 model...
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Inside, the XPS 14 will have access to Intel’s third-generation Core Ultra “Panther Lake” processors, starting with the midrange eight-core Intel Core Ultra 5 325 and topping out with the elite 16-core Core Ultra X9 388. Unlike "Lunar Lake," these chips offer expanded embedded memory options, ranging from 16GB to 64GB. The XPS 14 comes in its base model with 512GB of solid-state drive space and can accommodate up to 4TB. (The lower-capacity options run on the PCI Express Gen 4 standard, while the higher capacities, starting at 2TB, are PCIe Gen 5.)
These new Intel chips bring increased efficiency and AI power, as well as more graphics punch in the top-tier “Ultra X” sub-brand, which feature additional graphics cores. However, I haven’t run benchmarks on this pre-production model, since it’s not reflective of what you’ll get out of the box later this quarter.
Come back for our full review, which will include all the numbers, once we receive a final sample. For now, know that the XPS 14 is doing a nearly impeccable MacBook Air impression, and looks like a vastly improved laptop for it.
The 2026 Dell XPS 16: How Is It Different From the New XPS 14?
As expected, the 16-inch XPS laptop generally expands on its smaller sibling's features, components, and capacities, while maintaining all of its key elements. The touch screen gains two inches on the diagonal, allowing for a sharper maximum resolution of 3,200 by 2,000 pixels in the top-end option (from 1200p non-touch in the base model). Quite impressively, the laptop doesn’t gain any thickness in the transition—it's still just 0.58 inch thick—but it weighs a little more, at 3.65 pounds in its OLED configuration.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Oddly enough, the XPS 16 doesn’t receive any additional ports in its larger frame—just the same trio of Thunderbolt 4 connections. It also doesn’t gain a larger battery; the XPS 16 packs 70 watt-hours, like the 14-inch model. There's a reason for that, though: These laptops are the first testing ground for Dell’s new 900ED battery, which uses the highest-density power cells available to store more juice in a smaller space and restore it faster. This will certainly prove interesting in testing.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)The 16-incher also has access to the same level of processing power as the XPS 14, but it may prove less thermally constrained due to the laptop’s larger chassis. However, the laptop omits—glaringly—the option for discrete graphics. We’ll see what Intel’s fancy new Xe Graphics can pull off in its "Panther Lake" chips, but I’m pretty confident it won’t rival a true midrange dedicated GPU, even in its 12-GPU-core variant.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)All told, the XPS 16 appears to be a stunning answer to the 15-inch MacBook Air, but consumers might expect a response to the larger MacBook Pro at this level. Will Intel’s updated integrated graphics compete with the eventual M5 Pro or M5 Max? We’ll know for sure in short order. “Mac this” and “Mac that” aside, the XPS 16 looks head and shoulders above many PC laptops in its ultraportable class, such as the LG gram and Asus Zenbook lines, in design and appeal.
Dell Further Out: The Return of the XPS 13
Dell closed out its big XPS brand news with a look further forward: a brand-new XPS 13 laptop measuring less than 0.51 inch thick. Moving away from the top-end XPS 13 laptops of the past, however, Dell promises that this reboot will emphasize affordability.
Details are extremely thin on the new 13-inch clamshell—the one sample I saw was kept behind glass at the event I attended—but let's read the tea leaves a bit, based on what we know already. Previous XPS 13 laptops have been cutting-edge machines at the top of the price bracket.
(Credit: Dell)This model will instead likely try to deliver as much of that experience as possible for under $1,000. Of course, that entirely depends on factors such as tariffs and component pricing (especially RAM), which became big, costly X-factors in 2025 and show no signs of relenting.
For these reasons, Dell’s new XPS laptops are entering a highly competitive market in 2026. Will these drastic changes be enough to make people smile when they hear “Dude, it’s a Dell” again? We'll see during our full reviews.
Prepare Your Purses For XPS' Return
Dell's XPS 14 and XPS 16 laptops will be available starting on January 6 in specific configurations starting at $2,049 and $2,199.99, respectively. These are steep starting prices, but Dell promises to release more affordable configurations that will cost well less than two grand by February. Come back for our fully tested reviews soon.