Dell XPS 13 Kabylake Makes For A Great Linux Laptop

While idling, the Dell XPS 13 had an average power draw of just above 4.1 Watts with a peak of 5.4 Watts. The average power draw was just under two Watts lower than the Broadwell X1 Carbon and well below the ASUS Haswell/IvyBridge laptops pulling 10~11 Watts at idle.

I didn't run into any thermal issues with the Dell XPS 9370 during testing. While idling, the i7-8550U had an average CPU core temperature of about 41 Celsius.

The UHD Graphics 620 on the Dell XPS 13 9370 aren't enough for any demanding Linux OpenGL/Vulkan games, but does work out for lighter titles at 1080p or less. The UHD Graphics 620 are a noticeable upgrade if you are currently using a Haswell or older laptop.

On a performance-per-Watt basis while running this OpenGL Linux game, the Dell XPS 13 Kabylake-R was a small bump ahead of the Broadwell X1 Carbon, but about twice as good as the Haswell/Ivybridge test candidates.

During the graphics tests, the Dell XPS 13 core temperature got up to 63C on average with a peak of 67 Watts. Under GpuTest the average power draw was 24.1 Watts.