Dell's XPS Brand May Return Just a Year After Being Retired, Report Claims

Dell is planning to bring back its XPS laptop branding, according to a news report, just one year after the company retired the storied name in favor of a simplified naming scheme that organized its consumer and professional lineup into Dell, Dell Pro and Dell Pro Max tiers. VideoCardz reported this week that Dell has presented an updated XPS lineup during prebriefings ahead of CES 2026, though the company has not officially confirmed the badge's return.

The reported reversal would come after Dell launched the Dell 14 Premium and Dell 16 Premium in mid-2025 as flagship consumer models meant to carry the XPS legacy forward. Those machines replaced the XPS 14 and XPS 16 in Dell's lineup.

I don't have good memories of "XPS"

[Gavino]

I've owned several Dell XPS laptops over the years, and each one has ended in disappointment. I've been attracted to the sleek thin designs, as they try and compete aesthetically with Apple Macbooks. But the tradeoff is that amd64 CPU arch generates more heat than a similarly performing aarch64 SKU, and the resultant heat causes thermal throttling, noisy fans and/or battery degradation, plus other heat-related reliability issues. My experiences have been far from pleasant.

I'm still on Dell, as where I am in the world I don't have access to the Framework goodness, but I go for the chunkier models with more ports and better cooling. For me - the XPS branding might as well be dead, as I'm never going near it again. Well, not as long as I'm on amd64. Maybe they should reserve XPS for future aarch64 products, but that would probably confuse the less tech savvy when they get one, and find that certain legacy apps don't run.

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[thegarbz]

and the resultant heat causes thermal throttling

Literally all laptops cause thermal throttling, including Apple's fancy ARM Macs, the only question is by how much. It's the absurdity of the thin design being related directly to performance more so than the choice of CPU that is in them.

Re: I don't have good memories of "XPS"

[umopapisdn69]

"Literally all laptops cause thermal throttling, including Apple's fancy ARM Macs, the only question is by how much. It's the absurdity of the thin design being related directly to performance more so than the choice of CPU that is in them."

Exactly this!
I'm looking at gaming laptops, even though I have no interest in games. But they're the only designs that emphasize cooling capacity. That or I'm going back to desktops.

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[fahrbot-bot]

I'm using a Dell XPS 420 desktop system a friend gave me a *while* ago right now - so old, it originally had Windows 7 on it.. It's currently my Windows 10 system and has always run Windows well, though I did add a SATA3 PCIe card and switch to a SSD.

I'm currently procrastinating my switch from using it full-time to my Linux Mint 22.2 (Cinnamon) system I assembled using an ASRock Z77 Extreme3 motherboard, a different friend gave me, on which I installed an Intel i7-377 and 32 GB RAM, SSD, etc... That s

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[labnet]

I'm typing this on a recent XPS i9-13900H
I've used XPS's for the 10 years and they have been mostly fine except for sleep issues.
They were one of the first wintels with 4k screens which is what drew me too them.

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[Gavino]

One of the killers for me was USB-C Alt mode. No matter what Wintel XPS laptop I got, it would have stability issues with my (cheap and cheerful) Gigabyte M27Q P gaming monitor. The monitor has AMD FreeSync Premium. Not sure if that has anything do with it, but my issues didn't go away until I ditched my third problematic XPS in a row and get a Dell laptop with AMD Ryzen AI Pro 9 HX CPU. That works fantastic, and I love that it has more ports that the XPS had - I'm not fishing around for dongles all the tim

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[proudindiv]

We put a cover over the keyboard and the cat loves to sleep on it all the time.

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[drinkypoo]

the tradeoff is that amd64 CPU arch generates more heat than a similarly performing aarch64 SKU, and the resultant heat causes thermal throttling

Apple laptops (and minis!) get better benchmark results if you put them in the refrigerator, and this is more true the longer the benchmark runs. They are absolutely, positively, and in all other ways thermally throttled. And because Apple makes the machines so slim, there's no room for good cooling, so they throttle earlier than they would have to if they weren't designed for appearance first.

TIL

[Anonymous Coward]

Today I learned that the XPS line had been retired at all.

Honestly I think it was a polarizing product line. People either really loved their XPS line because it was new and they were youtube shills / reddit bots, or hated the XPS because they actually bought one and used it for more than a month.

But at least XPS is memorable. I didn't even know "Dell Premium" was a thing. What an absurd name, who thought that was a good idea?

I still don't know the difference between the Latitude and Precision lines.

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[Randseed]

I still don't know the difference between the Latitude and Precision lines.

The Dell Latitude lines takes great latitudes in suckage. The Precision line precisely sucks.

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[_merlin]

Yeah, the product names were better - XPS for "prosumer", Alienware for gaming, Latitude for business/academic, and Precision for high performance (e.g. CAD, simulation). The "Premium", "Pro" and "Pro Max" names just sounded bland and generic.

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[ISoldat53]

Dell must have gotten a new VP. Seems like every time a new crop of suits moves in they cycle though their marketing strategy.

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[antdude]

Me too! ;)