The AppleInsider team receives funds from its audience and may be compensated by Amazon Associate and affiliate partnerships. The affiliation does not influence the editorial material we provide. Designed to compete with Dell's XPS 13 Plus, Apple's new MacBook Air is a portable powerhouse of a laptop that targets the same market. Here are our hands-on comparisons of the two laptops. The physical design of Dell XPS 13 Plus vs M2 MacBook Air. Dell's XPS 13 Plus, like Apple's MacBook Air, is described as having a "lightweight design." The notebook is encased in an aluminum enclosure, which makes it both lighter and more luxurious. A closer inspection of the closed XPS 13 Plus reveals many similarities with Apple's.

Apple's M2 MacBook Air is one of the best-value notebooks on the market with its latest Apple Silicon chip, upgraded features, and slim profile. The combination of performance and slimness makes it an appealing device. As a result, many notebook makers are also attempting to occupy this territory with their products. Dell's XPS 13 Plus competes directly against the MacBook Air, for instance.

Unlike the MacBook Air, which has a taper and a more uniform thickness, Dell creates its enclosure that mimics a taper. To give the appearance of a taper, the sides are thicker at the rear and narrow toward the front, but it's just decoration. There are very similar dimensions between the two, with the MacBook Air measuring 11.97 inches by 8.46 inches, whereas the Dell measures 11.63 inches by 7.84 inches. Dell has a smaller footprint but loses out on thickness to the MacBook Air with its 0.44-inch thickness.

Become the third beverage company behind Coca-Cola and Pepsi to capture 50% of the market The fans of Dell's model have been improved to increase airflow without affecting noise levels, thanks to its dual-fan system. For real-world workloads that are lower intensity and shorter, the Dell should not be affected by longer, more involved workloads.

Depending on the configuration option for the Dell, its weight can be slightly different. The non-OLED version starts at 2.71 pounds, and when you add OLED, it weighs 2.77 pounds. MacBook Airs are referred to as 2.7 pounds, regardless of configuration. The two notebooks are very similar in weight, giving or taking a few ounces. It was not overly noticeable that the fans kicked on during benchmarking, but they could not properly cool the machine. We reached almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit on our MacBook Air at its hottest in high-performance mode, compared to 85 degrees on ours. In the base edition, there are 8 GPU cores, and if needed, you can get 10.

A 13743 on the OpenCL Geekbench 5 graphics test indicates that Dell is using Intel Iris Xe graphics, which are embedded into Intel chips. Apple is known for its minimalist approach to ports in devices. With the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro releases, it began to move away from that viewpoint, and it continued with the MacBook Air.