A year after scrapping it, Dell reverses course and revives XPS, the premium segment of its laptops and a longstanding pillar of its product strategy.
The announcement, made at CES 2026 in Las Vegas, marks an admitted turning point by Jeff Clarke, the group’s chief operating officer, who acknowledges that the company had “drifted a bit” in steering its PC business.
An admission of a mistake and a return to fundamentals
“We didn’t listen to our customers. You were right about the branding,” Jeff Clarke said at a press briefing in Las Vegas. The executive, who took direct oversight of the PC division last year, spoke of a challenging year marked by “tariff costs, the unkept promise of AI” and “one of the slowest processor transitions in my career.”
This self-critique follows negative market feedback after the manufacturer had replaced the XPS name with the Dell Pro and Dell Pro Max labels, a nomenclature deemed too close to Apple’s and poorly received by the public as well as by partners.
The group now justifies this reversal by the need to clarify its lineup: Dell-branded models now target the consumer and mid-range professional segment, XPS regains its premium positioning, and Alienware remains dedicated to gaming.
Slimmer and better-optimized machines
The first two relaunches, the XPS 14 and XPS 16, rank among the thinnest laptops Dell has ever produced, measuring 14.6 mm in thickness and weighing 1.36 kg and 1.63 kg respectively. Their aluminum chassis, narrowed screen bezels, and minimalist design place them in direct competition with Apple’s 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air models.
Both machines carry the new Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processors, paired with Intel Arc graphics, touted to deliver up to 78% higher AI performance and an endurance of up to 27 hours in certain configurations. Dell also says it redesigned its cooling system to be quieter, thinner, and more energy-efficient.
The XPS 14 and 16 are available this week in the United States and Canada, starting at $2,000. An XPS 13 under 13 mm in thickness will be unveiled later this year.
A PC market under strain
The decision to revive XPS comes amid a tentative global PC market recovery. IDC estimates suggest sales could rise by 3 to 5% this year, after two years of contraction.
But Dell, like its rivals HP and Lenovo, remains confronted by higher production costs—notably due to rising memory prices—and demand that remains tempered by corporate caution.
Jeff Clarke acknowledged that artificial intelligence has not yet generated the anticipated refresh cycle, despite highlighting the built-in assistant features and local processing integrated into the new processors.
With the comeback of the XPS line, born in the 1990s, Dell hopes to regain market share in the premium segment.
