It’s been about a month since the HP OmniBook X was crowned the laptop battery life champion, and now that champion has been beaten.
HP’s Snapdragon X Elite-powered notebook lasted an impressive 16 hours and 22 minutes in Tom’s Guide’s battery life test, easily beating both the MacBook Air 13-inch M3 and the MacBook Air 15-inch M3 by more than an hour.
That’s an incredible feat for a Windows 11 laptop, and one we didn’t expect to see beaten for a while, but we’ve just reviewed another Windows laptop, the new Dell XPS 13 (2024), which outlasted any MacBook or consumer laptop we’ve tested.
Swipe to scroll horizontallyComparing Dell XPS 13 Battery to Competitive ProductsHeaderCell – Column 0 Time (Hours:Minutes)Dell XPS 13 (2024)19:41MacBook Pro 14″ M317:16HP Omnibook X16:22Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 (13″)15:44MacBook Air 13″ M315:10MacBook Air 13″ M315:03
We reviewed the entry-level Dell XPS 13 ($1,299), which has a 13.4-inch (1,920 x 1,200) IPS non-touch display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 chip, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of SSD storage. We put the laptop through our battery test, which loads a web page and plays a video at 150 nits of screen brightness, and the Dell XPS 13 averaged 19 hours and 41 minutes of battery life, which is better than any consumer laptop we’ve reviewed to date.
In the table above, we compare the Dell XPS 13 to the best Windows laptops and best MacBooks we’ve tested and reviewed. Note that we haven’t included rugged laptops, which are in a class of their own. So let’s compare the Dell XPS 13 with the Snapdragon X Elite to other laptops.
Dell XPS 13 (2024) vs MacBook
Of the Copilot+ PCs with Snapdragon X Elite chips we tested prior to the Dell XPS 13, the longest lasting were the HP OmniBook X (16:22) and the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 (15:44). These results are impressive considering that many of the Windows laptops we tested had average battery life of 8-12 hours (though there were exceptions). We now have Windows laptops that last nearly 20 hours under our testing conditions.
The Dell XPS 13’s battery life averages 19 hours and 41 minutes, which is better durability than any consumer laptop we’ve reviewed to date.
Both MacBook Air M3 models lasted just over 15 hours, which is great. The Omnibook X and Surface Laptop 7 lasted longer, but neither came close to the MacBook Pro 14″ M3, which lasted 17 hours and 16 minutes. Of course, the new Dell XPS 13 lasts nearly 2.5 hours longer than that.
The MacBook Pro 16-inch with the M2 Max chip is the longest-lasting laptop we’ve reviewed to date, lasting 18 hours and 56 minutes. While this MacBook isn’t a direct competitor to the Dell XPS 13, we wanted to use it as a reference to demonstrate the durability of Dell’s machine.
The new battery life champion
MacBooks with M-series chips have been the absolute champions of battery life since 2020. But that’s no longer the case, as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chips are giving Apple’s notebooks some serious competition when it comes to durability. We’re in a real arms race (pun intended) and we’re reaping the rewards.
Apple’s MacBook may reclaim its place as the longest-lasting laptop when the first batch of M4-equipped machines arrive. For now, no MacBook can match the new Dell XPS 13 for battery life.
