Enlarge / Little changed from its predecessors, the Kaby Lake Dell XPS 13.

I was a big fan of the Dell XPS 13 in its Broadwell iteration, and the Skylake version of the machine was even better. It was a slim, attractive, comfortable-to-use laptop, and it included two of our favorite features: Thunderbolt 3 connectivity and a Precision Touchpad.

In bumping the XPS 13 up to Kaby Lake, Dell hasn’t changed a whole lot. The processor has been swapped out and so, too, has the Wi-Fi card; instead of the Dell-branded part, it’s now a Qualcomm-branded Killer part. The battery is slightly bigger (60Whr, up from 56Whr), too.

This means that the latest version has all the good points of its predecessors. I love the soft-touch interior that Dell uses. It’s actually better than the bare metal used by Apple, HP, and others; the edges of the machine are soft and don’t dig into your wrists, with the only downside being a tendency to attract fingerprints. The keyboard feels good, the Precision Touchpad is precise and handles gestures adeptly, and the narrow screen bezel continues to look elegant and allows the machine to have a smaller size than is typical for a 13-inch device.