Dell improved upon an already excellent laptop with this latest model. And thanks to its almost bezel-less screen, you can focus on what matters. Although many of these races were close, the XPS 13 dominated in the end with its long battery life, faster SSD, bright display and sleek design. The Surface Laptop 4 is a great choice, but the XPS 13 managed to pull ahead in nearly every category. The XPS 13 managed 11:07 before powering down while the Surface Laptop 4 clocked in at 10:46. Tested under the Laptop Mag Battery Test, both lasted longer than the 10 hour and 19 minute premium laptop average. Intel’s Tiger Lake processors have contributed in greatly improving battery life, which is especially evident with the XPS 13 and Surface Laptop 4.

We'll give the XPS 13 the win for its speedier SSD. This is faster than both the Surface Laptop 4 (562.7 MBps) and the category average (630.5 MBps). The XPS 13 excelled when duplicating 25GB of multimedia files, managing a speed of 729.3 megabytes per second. The XPS 13 took 18 minutes and 22 seconds, but neither were faster than the 16:17 category average.

On the other hand, the Surface Laptop 4 did better on the Handbrake test, taking 17 minutes and 1 second to convert a 4K video to 1080p resolution. Even then, both laptops exceed the 4,368 premium laptop average. On the Geekbench 5.4 overall performance benchmark, the Surface Laptop 4 scored a 4,829, falling short of the XPS 13 (5,319).

Laptop go vs laptop 4