Dell is eating humble pie and bringing back the XPS brand

Nearly one year ago to the day, Dell killed off its long-standing XPS brand name in favor of milquetoast Premium, Plus, Pro, and Pro Max monikers — but it’s back for CES 2026. The new XPS 14 and XPS 16 laptops look to win back fans of the “Extreme Performance System” with Dell’s thinnest designs to date, a row of proper function keys, improved battery life, and Intel’s new Panther Lake Core Ultra Series 3 processors. Dell even went as far as putting the XPS brand name on the lid, and finally marking the edges of its seamless haptic trackpad with subtle glass etching lines.

The XPS 14 and 16 are launching in select configurations on January 6th, with entry-level and higher-end configs coming in February. For now, the XPS 14 at launch starts at $2,049 and the XPS 16 at $2,199.99. If you’re growing increasingly Windows-averse, Dell says an XPS 14 running Ubuntu 24.04 will come “later this year.”

The new XPS laptops sport three USB-C / Thunderbolt 4 ports, 10W speakers, and weigh as little as 3 pounds / 1.36 kg (14-inch) or 3.65 pounds / 1.65 kg (16-inch). They’re set to start with 1920 x 1200 IPS displays, 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, a 512GB SSD, and Intel’s Core Ultra 5 325 chip. Both sizes can be configured with extra-bright tandem OLEDs (2880 x 1800 for the 14-inch and 3200 x 2000 for the 16-inch) that are each a little thinner and lighter, and chip options will go up to Intel’s Core Ultra X9 388H (coming later).

Neither the XPS 14 or 16 offer discrete graphics, but Dell is touting these new laptops as battery champs, thanks in part to their 70Whr cells and variable refresh displays that go from a maximum 120Hz all the way down to 1Hz when viewing static subjects like emails and photos. (Yes, even the base IPS displays can reach 1Hz.)

I had a brief hands-on with the new XPS 14 and 16 laptops at an early preview event Dell hosted in December, where COO Jeff Clarke came out onstage wearing an XPS shirt, hat metaphorically in hand about last year’s branding change. “We’ve been a bit off-course in our PC business,” Clarke said to a room full of media he was trying hard to sway. He promised that Dell is going to “get back on course” and “get back to our roots.” Onstage T-shirt messaging from executives still makes me cringe, but the new XPS laptops look promising.

The all-aluminum build on the early units felt very sleek. And just the addition of the trackpad etchings and physical function row should go part of the way to remedying my many issues with the last XPS 13. Sadly, the latticeless keyboard I loathe is here to stay on the new models — though not all of them.

That’s because Dell is also teasing a new XPS 13 coming later in 2026, and it’s claiming it will be the thinnest and lightest XPS laptop ever, with a thickness of less than 13mm. For reference, a 13-inch M4 MacBook Air is 11.3mm thick, and the new XPS 14 and XPS 16 are as thin as 14.62mm when each is outfitted with an OLED. One big change for the XPS 13 will be a switch back to a traditional chiclet-style keyboard. Dell’s design head, Justin Lyles, tells The Verge it’s “more cost efficient to execute on a chiclet-style keyboard.” And Dell is aiming for a lower price point with the XPS 13.

Dell didn’t fully reverse course on last year’s awkward branding change, but this revitalization of XPS laptops seems like a step in the right direction. For years, XPS laptops were a go-to option for Windows users who wanted a MacBook Pro-like laptop for Windows. The new XPS 14 and XPS 16 certainly look the part, and my behind-glass glimpse of the XPS 13 (which I wasn’t allowed to photograph) was practically a MacBook Air impersonator. If Dell is dialing back some of the originality in its designs in favor of improved functionality and clearer branding, I’ll take it.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Correction, January 5th: Dell changed the launch pricing of the XPS 14 and XPS 16 right before embargo time. We have updated the article to reflect the new, higher launch configuration pricing.