Now Dell has a mixed reality headset, and the XPS 13 has 8th-gen Intel CPUs

Dell has a wide array of products under its name and brands, including Alienware, but the company has never had its own mixed reality headset until now. Dell announced the Dell Visor ahead of this year's IFA conference, along with a number of updates to its XPS and Inspiron systems. Most notably, all of Dell's updated laptops and convertibles will have 8th-generation Intel processors, making them some of the first devices to launch with the new CPUs later this year.

Dell jumps into mixed reality

Dell has made a number of VR-ready desktops and laptops, but now it has its own VR headset to go along with them. The company's first mixed reality headset looks most like HP's or Acer's headset, with an oval-shaped ring that fits around your head with an attached, goggle-like viewfinder. The head-wrapping ring adjusts easily using a thumbwheel that expands and contracts the sides, similar to adjusting the length of a pair of over-ear headphones. With the ring opened just wide enough for your head, you can tilt the viewfinder up to put the device on, then snap it down into place when you're ready to enter a mixed reality experience.

Overall, the Visor feels less cumbersome on your face than an Oculus Rift. With no external sensors needed, it's also easier to set up than an HTC Vive. Users will still need to draw a five-by-seven-foot boundary for their mixed reality situations to live in, but that's done by simply hovering the headset over your boundary lines. The Visor connects to a compatible PC through a single USB Type-C connector, and you only have to manage that one cord, so it creates less of a mess around your PC. Similarly to HP's and Acer's headsets, it has 1440x1440 panels for each eye.

The Dell Visor has its own controllers, and they look nearly identical to the VR controllers that Microsoft announced earlier this year. The Visor with the controllers supports inside-out tracking, which means that the headset will identify the controllers and detect their movement. This happens without external sensors or webcams, making the system more manageable than other VR/AR devices.

Dell's a little late entering the VR/AR game, but, like other companies, it knows mixed reality isn't going away. A Dell representative emphasized the importance of mixed reality applications that aren't games, like employee training and brand experiences. The company wanted to make a device that's both easy to use and set at a decent price point to lower most barriers to entry that make many hesitant to invest in a VR/AR device.

The Visor will work with both apps from Microsoft's store and, as announced yesterday, SteamVR titles, though it won't support Oculus programs. It's also unclear if the Dell Visor will work with PCs other than XPS and Inspiron systems. Since it's a Dell device, the Visor is optimized to work with Dell's most popular systems. However, its USB Type-C connector should allow it to connect to any PC with that port.

XPS and Inspiron updates

The popular Dell XPS 13 is getting a small refresh—you won't notice anything different about the laptop as the new hardware is inside the chassis. The clamshell version of the XPS 13 will get one of Intel's 8th generation CPU, the Kaby Lake Refresh, and it'll be a quad-core chip rather than a dual-core chip. This should provide a good performance boost from the dual core Kaby Lake XPS 13 and a big difference from the Y-series chip in the XPS 2-in-1.

While Kaby Lake Refresh will bring better performance to any device that's upgrading from Intel's older chips, Dell has a feature called "dynamic power mode" that should make it even better. Dynamic power mode was included in previous XPS devices, and, in the new XPS 13, it'll continue to monitor the laptop's CPU, GPU, and heat production using sensors throughout the chassis.

These sensors combined with Dell's software allow dynamic power mode to push the laptop's performance as much as possible for maximum performance, without overworking the CPU or GPU to produce excess heat. Dell claims the XPS 13 using dynamic power mode will get 40-percent better performance than one running normally. We'll have to test that to prove its validity—and, of course, the tradeoff will be battery life, as dynamic power mode requires more battery power.

The XPS 13 isn't the only device to get the 8th-gen CPU update: Dell is adding it to its Inspiron 7000 line of convertibles and clamshells, too. Dell didn't mess with the convertibles' or the clamshells' designs too much, but both have narrower side bezels, giving the screen a more spacious feel. Both two-in-ones can be upgraded to have a 4K IPS display and Nvidia GeForce 940MX graphics, and you can opt for an Active Pen if you're a note-taker. Dell is also adding optional Optane memory to the two-in-ones in early 2018, for anyone who needs that extra performance boost.

In addition to the 8th-generation Intel CPUs, the 13-inch Inspiron clamshell will have an FHD IPS display reaching 300 nits, PCle NVMe SSD storage, Windows Hello IR camera and fingerprint reader options, and a 9.5-hour battery life. The 15-inch model will have up to a UHD display reaching 350 nits, optional discrete graphics with up to 4GB GDDR5 memory, dual drive options with up to 512GB PCle NVMe SSD and 1TB HDD, and a battery life of about nine hours. The new Dell XPS 13 will be available on September 12 starting at $799. The new Inspiron 7000 clamshells and two-in-ones will be available on October 3 starting at $799. The consumer version of the Dell Visor will be available in October for $349. A set of two Visor controllers will cost $99, and a bundle of the headset and controllers will cost $449.