The Dell Pro 13 Premium (PA13250) is a stylish, compact and lightweight powerhouse of a laptop. The review sample Dell sent over was running Windows 11 Pro on an Intel Core Ultra 7 268V processor.
Weighing in at just over a kilogram, the svelte device’s magnesium chassis still feels robust and offers a stylish, premium look and feel. The backlit chiclet keyboard is nice to type on, and the 13.3” 2560×1600 touchscreen is big enough to get your work done. Measuring just over 295mm x 208mm with a height of only 18mm, the Dell Pro 13 will slip nicely into your bag.
Whilst primarily marketed as a premium portable office machine, under the hood, the laptop sports some impressive components. The Intel Core Ultra 7 processor features an on-chip Intel 48 TOPS neural processing unit (NPU), an Intel ARC 140V GPU, and an 8-core CPU that runs at up to 5.0 GHz.
The Intel NPU is what makes the laptop a Copilot+ PC. This means that AI tasks are passed to the NPU rather than the CPU. Mainly, these are background tasks, but Copilot+ PCs also add AI features to Windows searches and a range of other AI-enabled applications. You’ll find that Copilot+ PCs unlock a lot of the AI features within Windows that come with modern AI-enabled mobile phones, such as image manipulation and text editing. This aspect of modern laptops could easily be overlooked, but will become more important as applications make better use of powerful on-chip NPUs.
The Intel Core Ultra 7 processor is complemented by 32GB of Micron LPDDR5x, 8533 MT/s memory, making it a viable platform for more creative endeavours such as video and photo editing.
The 512GB Hynix PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe SSD tested with a max read speed of 6481 and a max right speed of 4666 MB/s. These speeds are reasonable for a PCIe 4.0 x4 SSD and mean that you should expect lightning-fast boot-ups and data transfers.
Dell have provided plenty of connectivity options. Two 40Gbps Thunderbolt 4/USB Type-C/USB4 ports also function as DisplayPort (for external monitors) and power outputs. The single USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) Type-A is also a PowerShare port. There is also an HDMI 2.1 port (for an external monitor or TV) and a headphone jack. Wireless connectivity is via an Intel BE201 Wi-Fi 7 2×2 card that also provides Bluetooth 5.4 support.
There’s no Ethernet port for wired networking, but you can easily slot an adapter or hub into one of those Thunderbolt 4 ports and have all the connectivity options that you could wish for.
The 13.3” QHD+ (2560×1600) touchscreen is not an HDR screen panel. Even so, the display is still crisp with a great colour range and deep blacks. At the top of the display is an 8 megapixel HDR and infrared camera with presence detection.
With a PC Mark 10 score of 7007, the Dell Pro 13 outperforms a lot of office laptops, edging into gaming laptop territory. Which is pretty impressive. The detailed results confirm that the laptop will not only perform well in productivity applications but also in digital content creation.
Unfortunately, the laptop didn’t fare as well in the 3D Mark benchmark tests, but it’s not a gaming laptop. That being said, the computer does hold its own against Asus’s Xbox Ally X handheld PC. The Dell Pro 13 scored 1853 for the Time Spy Extreme benchmark, compared to the handheld PC’s 1489. The Xbox Ally X beat the Dell laptop in the slightly more technical Port Royal benchmark with 1983 to the Dell laptop’s 1784.
There was not a lot between the results for the latest Speedway benchmark, with the laptop scoring 442 and the handheld gaming console’s 442. These results suggest that whilst the Dell laptop does not have gaming laptop-level performance, the machine’s Intel ARC GPU will allow you to play games with a bit of tweaking.
The laptop did well as my portable office companion during the review period. I was able to write and edit photos for review whilst on the go. I even used SketchUp to make some models for 3D printing. During some downtime, I jumped back into the award-winning role-playing game, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, using Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud gaming service. The camera, paired with a Dell Pro Plus Wireless Speakerphone, allowed me to join Teams meetings when out and about, as if I were still in the office.
The Dell Pro 13’s lightweight and compact form factor houses enough power to conduct the functions of an office PC as well as more creative endeavours, with the odd game on the side. Anyone wanting a powerful all-around laptop that’ll easily slip into their bag is going to be very happy with this machine.
The Dell Pro 13 Premium laptop was provided on loan by the manufacturer for evaluation. This review was written independently, and without compensation from the manufacturer or retailer. All opinions expressed are based solely on my own experience with the device and are not influenced by promotional considerations.