Dell XPS 13 9345 Review: Snapdragon X Elite in the Thinnest XPS Yet

What You Need to Know Before Reading

• This is an ARM-based laptop. If your workflow depends on specific x86 software, check compatibility before buying. It matters more than the benchmark numbers.
• The XPS 13 9345 is the thinnest and lightest XPS laptop Dell has ever shipped, at 1.19kg and 15.3mm thick. That comes with trade-offs.
• Two USB-C ports. That is it: no USB-A, no headphone jack, no SD card slot. Plan accordingly.
• The Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 inside this machine leads the Cinebench 2024 multi-core charts in its class. The real-world performance backs that up.
• Battery life is one of the genuine strengths here. In extended real-world use, including streaming over hospital Wi-Fi for several hours at a stretch, it held up well beyond what most x86 ultrabooks would manage.

Introduction

This review was never supposed to happen the way it did. BonTech Labs’ first-ever hardware review was written, tested, and lived in during a hospital stay following emergency surgery for a serious and potentially life-threatening elbow infection. No controlled test environment, no desk setup, no ideal conditions. Just a Dell XPS 13 9345, a hospital overbed table, and whatever Wi-Fi the ward could offer. As first reviews go, it is not a conventional one. But in some ways, that makes it more useful than a lab test ever could be, because what you are about to read is what this laptop is actually like when real life does not give you a choice about where you use it. Spoiler: it held up better than expected, and rather well considering the circumstances.

Design and Build

Dell has always made attractive laptops, and the XPS 13 9345 continues that tradition. The CNC-machined aluminium chassis feels premium in the hand, the graphite finish is understated without looking boring, and at 1.19kg, it is genuinely light enough that you forget it is in your bag. The 15.3mm profile at its thickest point puts it in the same conversation as the MacBook Air in terms of physical presence, and that is not a comparison most Windows laptops earn.

The keyboard is a flat, low-travel design that divides opinion. Key travel is minimal, and there is no physical touchpad border, which takes some getting used to. After an extended typing session,s it is functional but not particularly satisfying. If you spend most of your day in a document or writing long pieces, it is worth trying in person before committing. The haptic touchpad works well once you adjust to the lack of a physical click, and the glass surface is smooth and accurate.

The display on our review unit is the 13.4-inch 2K non-touch panel at up to 120Hz with a claimed 500 nits brightness. In practice, it looks sharp and clean, colours are accurate for general use, and the 120Hz adaptive refresh keeps things fluid. Outdoor visibility is reasonable but not exceptional. In a bright room, it holds up; direct sunlight is a challenge, as with most glossy-finish panels at this size. The thin bezels are genuinely impressive for a 13-inch-class machine, and the InfinityEdge design means the laptop feels smaller than its screen size suggests.

The Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100

The chip inside the XPS 13 9345 is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100, a 12-core Arm-based SoC with a dual-core boost ceiling of 4GHz, integrated Qualcomm Adreno graphics, and a 45 TOPS NPU for Copilot+ PC features. This is the same silicon found in several competing Snapdragon X Elite machines, which makes the performance comparison straightforward.

What Qualcomm delivered here is genuinely impressive for a fanless or near-fanless 13-inch form factor. The architecture draws on the same efficiency advantages that have made Apple Silicon compelling since the M1, and the performance results reflect that.

Starting with Cinebench 2024, the XPS 13 9345 posts a multi-core score of 943 and a single-core score of 118. To put that in context, the Microsoft Surface Laptop 2024 13-inch, which runs the same Snapdragon X Elite silicon, scores 798 multi-core and 123 single-core. The XPS 13 leads in multi-core throughput by a clear margin, which suggests Dell’s thermal configuration is allowing the chip more sustained headroom than Microsoft’s chassis does. The HP OmniBook X 14 lands at 742 multi-core, the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED at 507, and the ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3, running an Intel Core Ultra processor, trails significantly at 318.

That multi-core lead is meaningful. It indicates that Dell has tuned the XPS 13’s thermal solution well for its size, allowing the Snapdragon X Elite to maintain boost frequencies longer under sustained load than some of its direct competitors.

Geekbench Pro 6.3 paints a broadly consistent picture. The XPS 13 leads the class on multi-core with 14,574, just ahead of the Surface Laptop’s 14,432. Single-core scores are effectively tied at the top, with the Surface Laptop marginally ahead at 2,825, compared with 2,821 for the XPS 13. The HP OmniBook X 14 posts 13,233 multi and 2,333 single. Across both benchmarks, the XPS 13 and Surface Laptop trade blows at the top of the Snapdragon X Elite class while comfortably leading the rest of the field.

The real-world encoding test tells the most compelling story. In HandBrake 1.8.0, transcoding a 12-minute 4K file to 1080p using the Fast 1080p30 preset, the XPS 13 9345 completes the task in 4 minutes 35 seconds. The Surface Laptop takes 5 minutes 9 seconds; the HP OmniBook X 14 takes 6 minutes 1 second; the Asus Zenbook takes 6 minutes 24 seconds; and the ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 takes over 10 minutes. The XPS 13 winning this test by such a margin over machines running the same chip reinforces the point about thermal tuning. Dell has done good work here.

On the UL Procyon Computer Vision benchmark, which tests Arm CPU performance specifically on AI-adjacent workloads, the XPS 13 scores 1,708. This places it third in a tight cluster, behind the HP OmniBook X 14 at 1,771 and HP EliteBook Ultra G1q at 1,762, and just ahead of the Surface Laptop 2024 at 1,705 and the Surface Pro 2024 at 1,694. The spread across this entire field is under 80 points, meaning these chips are essentially equivalent on this particular test, regardless of which OEM configured them.

Real-World Use: Testing Through a Hospital Stay

The most interesting part of this review is not the benchmark numbers. It is where the testing happened.

I used this machine extensively during a hospital admission following elbow surgery for a serious infection, which meant several days of genuine, unscripted, real-world use with limited power access, no desk setup, and relying on hospital Wi-Fi. If a laptop is going to show its weaknesses under those conditions, it will.

The XPS 13 did not show many. Streaming BBC iPlayer for extended sessions, light browsing and writing, and general use across several days all went smoothly. The display looked good propped up on a hospital overbed table, the colours were punchy enough to make streaming content enjoyable on a small screen, and the audio from the quad-speaker system was considerably better than what most laptops this thick can manage. There is actual bass response, the stereo separation is noticeable, and volume levels are more than adequate for a room environment.

Battery life under those conditions was excellent. Streaming video at moderate brightness with Wi-Fi active, the machine lasted well into an evening session on a morning charge without needing to be plugged in. Dell claims all-day battery life from the 55Wh cell and the Snapdragon X Elite’s efficiency, and in practical terms, that claim holds up. This is one of the areas where Arm architecture has a real and tangible advantage over comparable x86 ultrabooks running Intel or AMD silicon.

The 60W USB-C charger is compact and charges quickly when you do need to top up, which matters when power access is inconvenient.

Windows on Arm: The Honest Assessment

The Snapdragon X Elite is a capable chip. Windows on Arm in 2024 and into 2025 is considerably better than it was in 2019, but it is not completely transparent yet.

Most mainstream applications run without issue through Prism, Qualcomm’s x86 emulation layer. Microsoft Office, browsers, media players, and general productivity tools work fine. Where problems emerge is with older or niche software, particularly anything with kernel-level components, some VPN clients, certain creative tools, and a handful of games. If your workflow touches any of those categories, checking compatibility before buying is not optional advice; it is essential.

Native Arm64 application support has grown meaningfully. Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Spotify, VS Code, and a growing list of productivity apps run natively and feel snappy. The emulation performance for x86 apps that do run is generally acceptable for most tasks, though you will notice it in anything computationally intensive compared to native execution.

The Copilot+ PC features, including live captions, AI-generated image tools, and NPU-accelerated functions, work as advertised in supported apps. Whether those features are genuinely useful depends entirely on your workflow. They are there, they function, and they do not get in the way.

Ports: The One Area That May Frustrate You

Two USB4 40Gbps USB-C ports. That is the entire connectivity story on the XPS 13 9345. There is no USB-A, no headphone jack, no SD card slot, and no HDMI out natively. Both ports support DisplayPort and Power Delivery so that you can charge and connect a display simultaneously, but if you need more than two connections without a hub, you will need to buy one.

For anyone coming from a traditional laptop, this will require an adjustment. For travel use and light productivity,y it is manageable. For anyone with a desk setup involving multiple peripherals, a USB-C hub is effectively a required accessory, and that should be factored into the total cost of ownership.

Verdict

The Dell XPS 13 9345 with Snapdragon X Elite is one of the best 13-inch ultrabooks you can buy right now if the Windows on Arm compatibility question does not trip you up. It leads its class on Cinebench multi-core and HandBrake real-world encoding, matches the best single-core performance available in this segment, and backs those numbers up with genuinely excellent battery life in day-to-day use.

The design is premium without being flashy, the weight is class-leading, and the display is sharp and bright enough for most use cases. The keyboard takes getting used to; the port selection will frustrate anyone who needs more than two connections; and Windows on Arm still makes you think about compatibility in a way that x86 machines do not.

None of those caveats changes the core conclusion. For the target user, someone who wants a light, fast, compact Windows laptop with all-day battery life and does not depend on legacy x86 software, the XPS 13 9345 is genuinely excellent. The benchmarks say it, and several days of unplanned intensive real-world testing confirmed it.