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Dell plans to offer consumers its own flavor of an 11.6-inch convertible laptop with Windows 8 by year’s end.
Due out in time for the 2013 holiday season, the Dell XPS 11 ultrabook will sport a hinged keyboard that allows it to transform into a Windows 8 tablet, The Wall Street Journal reported today.
Demoed at the Computex computer show in Taipei on Monday, the XPS 11 will offer a high-resolution screen with a 2,560×1,440 IPS (in-plane switching) display, say the folks at Engadget who checked out one of the prototypes. The IPS screen ensures that the display remains as bright from different angles as it is from straight on. The screen also will come with an active digitizer that can respond to pressure from a pen.
In contrast, Dell’s current XPS 13 offers a resolution of 1,920×1,080 pixels.
Weighing in at 2.5 pounds and measuring around half an inch, the XPS 11 offers a solid-state drive and Intel HD 4400 graphics and can run up to a Core i5 processor.
The debut of the XPS 11 at Computex on Monday is more of an unveiling than an official product launch, a Dell spokesperson told CNET. Details on pricing and availability won’t be released for a few more weeks.
The XPS 11 is clearly geared to compete with other 11-inch convertible ultrabooks, particularly Lenovo’s new Yoga 11S. The 11S is an 11.6-inch ultrabook that can bend into a tablet or stand up as a display device. The follow-up to the original Windows RT-based Yoga 11, the 11S comes with Windows 8.
The Yoga 11S’s multitouch HD screen provides a resolution of 1,366×768 pixels, and so can’t compare with the display found on Dell’s machine. But Lenovo has a head start of almost half a year over Dell. The Yoga 11S is already up for preorder with units set to reach consumers on June 23.
Updated 9:20 a.m. PT with information from Dell.
