Dell is resurrecting the XPS laptop line just one year after killing it off in what turned out to be a spectacular marketing blunder.
The company announced the return at CES 2026 yesterday, unveiling redesigned XPS 14 and XPS 16 models that address years of complaints from reviewers and customers alike.
In January last year, Dell scrapped its decades-old XPS, Inspiron, Precision, and Latitude branding in favor of a tiered system borrowed straight from Apple’s playbook: Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max.
The company claimed it would simplify things for consumers. Instead, it confused everyone and tanked Dell’s market share throughout 2025.
People kept searching for XPS laptops on Google and Dell’s own website months after the brand disappeared, according to Dell executives who spoke to press in December.
“I hope it demonstrates our ability to course-correct, to be humble,” Dell COO Jeff Clarke said about the reversal.
Dell’s new laptops reflect that humility. The company listened to the criticism and fixed what people hated most about recent XPS models. Gone is the controversial capacitive touch function row that reviewers complained about from 2022 through 2024.
The new XPS 14 and 16 have proper physical function keys that you can actually feel and press like a normal keyboard. The keyboard itself now has slightly deeper keys and can be removed for repairs.
Dell also addressed the invisible touchpad problem. Previous XPS models had a seamless glass touchpad that sat completely flush with the wrist rest, making it difficult to tell where the trackpad started and ended. The new versions have subtle etched lines around the edges so you can actually identify the active area.
Perhaps most important, Dell is putting the XPS logo on the laptop lids for the first time instead of just the Dell branding. It’s a small detail that fans have apparently been requesting for years, but it shows how seriously Dell is taking this brand revival.
READ: What to Expect From CES 2026 as Big Hardware Launches Slow
Hardware improvements are also present, as both the XPS 14 and XPS 16 are now the thinnest Dell laptops ever made at their respective sizes, starting at just 0.58 inches thick.
The XPS 14 weighs as little as 1.3kgs, making it lighter than the 2024 model. The XPS 16 comes in at 1.6kgs, shedding nearly half a kilo from its predecessor. Dell rebuilt the thermal system with larger, thinner fans to make this possible while maintaining performance.
Both laptops feature aluminum and Gorilla Glass construction, three modular Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, an 8MP camera, and a headphone jack.
They’ll launch with Intel’s new Panther Lake Core Ultra Series 3 processors, configurable up to the Core Ultra X7 at launch, with Core Ultra X9 options coming later. Both can be equipped with up to 64GB of RAM and 4TB of storage.
The display options include a base 2K LCD screen and an optional 2.8K OLED touchscreen. The LCD option has a major advantage, including variable refresh rate technology that scales from 120Hz down to 1Hz when displaying static content like emails or PDFs.
Dell claims these are the first laptops available with this power-saving feature, and it’s contributing to what the company calls exceptional battery life thanks to 70Whr battery cells.
Select configurations of the XPS 14 and XPS 16 go on sale today, starting at $2,050 (~ KES 264,000) and $2,200 (~ KES 283,000), respectively.
More affordable variants under $2,000 will launch in February. Dell also plans to release an Ubuntu version of the XPS 14 later this year.
The XPS revival will continue later this year with a new XPS 13 that Dell promises will be its thinnest and lightest XPS laptop ever at under 13mm thick.
It’ll also be the most affordable XPS model, featuring a return to a traditional chiclet-style keyboard rather than the edge-to-edge design of recent models. Dell’s design head Justin Lyles admitted this switch is “more cost efficient to execute.”
