Dell XPS 16 Review: Well-Rounded, Big-Screen Laptop With Spiky, Big-Time Price

8 / 10 Score Cnet Score CNET provides expert, unbiased reviews of products and services. When we assign a score, we use a scale of 1-10. Each product we score is evaluated by criteria specific to its category with most assessing pricing, quality, features and performance. Read more on: How we test Dell XPS 16 $2,350 at Dell Pros Stylish design with solid feel Beautiful 16-inch 3.2K OLED display Good balance between performance and battery life Physical keys in Function row Cons RTX-level price without RTX GPU Seams along the edges and below the keyboard are debris magnets Few ports, no SD card slot Can't upgrade RAM or SSD Table of Contents Dell XPS 16 Review: Well-Rounded, Big-Screen Laptop With Spiky, Big-Time Price Dell XPS 16 (2026) Dell XPS 16 performance Thin and light and latticeless Is the 2026 Dell XPS 16 worth buying? Geekbench 6 CPU (multi-core) Geekbench 6 CPU (single-core) Cinebench 2024 CPU (multi-core) Cinebench 2024 CPU (single-core) 3DMark Steel Nomad Geekbench AI (Neural engine quantized score) Online streaming battery drain test System configurations With the XPS 16, Dell seemingly has two objectives: re-establishing the XPS brand, which it shuttered last year before bringing it back at CES in January, and positioning it between heavier, pricier, but more powerful content creation laptops such as the Asus ProArt P16, Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 Aura Edition and Apple's 16-inch MacBook Pro and cheaper, thinner and lighter 16-inch models like the Asus Zenbook A16 and Acer Swift 16 AI. I'd say Dell succeeded on the first mission: the XPS 16 is a fantastic laptop befitting of the premium XPS name. Like the smaller XPS 14 I reviewed, it has sleek looks and a solid feel at a reasonable weight, as well as an optional OLED display that's worth the upgrade. For the second undertaking, the move to Intel's Panther Lake processors allows it to offer strong overall performance in an enclosure that's fairly thin and light for its size. It doesn't have discrete graphics, so it just doesn't have the muscle for more demanding graphics tasks, but editing content and doing a little gaming are possible. While the XPS 16 is a well-rounded laptop with a good balance between power and portability, I wish its price were closer to that of other 16-inch models with integrated GPUs. The configuration I tested costs well north of $2,000, which puts it squarely in Nvidia RTX territory. And that's something not on offer with the XPS 16, even as an upgrade that would further drive up the price.Dell XPS 16 (2026) Price as reviewed $2,350Display size/resolution 16-inch 3,200x2,000 120Hz touch OLEDCPU Intel Core Ultra X7 358HMemory 32GB LPDDR5-9600Graphics Intel Arc B390 (12 Xe3 cores)Storage 1TB SSDPorts USB-C Thunderbolt 4 (x3), combo audioNetworking Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0Operating system Windows 11 Home 25H2Weight 3.8 pounds (1.7 kilograms) Dell sells a handful of fixed configurations of the XPS 16 and a customizable model. Pricing starts at $1,750 for an Intel Core Ultra 5 325 CPU, 16GB of RAM, integrated Intel Graphics with four Xe3 cores, a 512GB SSD and a non-touch 1,920x1,200-pixel LCD.I tested the next model up in the line with a Core Ultra X7 358H, 32GB of RAM, integrated Intel Arc B390 with 12 Xe3 cores, a 1TB SSD and a 3.2K-resolution (3,200x2,000 pixels) touch OLED for $2,350. You can outfit the XPS 16 with up to a Core Ultra X9 388H, 64GB of RAM and a 4TB SSD for $3,550. Notably absent is any GPU upgrade. Your choice is either the basic…

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