Dell XPS 13 (2015) picks up new BIOS and Trackpad Firmware

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Dell XPS 13
Dell XPS 13 (Image credit: Windows Central)

Dell's XPS 13 (2015) with its Infinity Display seems to be doing quite well this year with some outstanding reviews, making it one of our favorite devices. Tonight we were tinkering around with our Core i5 and Core i7 versions when we noticed Dell was rolling out some firmware updates for the popular Ultrabook.

Unfortunately, Dell's System Update app was not finding anything for our XPS 13, so we had to go to Dell's Drivers and Downloads on their website to see the new updates.

As it turns out there are quite a few updates that came out in March, including a new System BIOS update (A02 BIOS) released on March 22 and Dell Touchpad Firmware Update (18.1.48, A00) on March 20.

The System BIOS update lists 'Update Fan management' and 'Update Intel CPU microcode' under the Fixes and Enhancements. The Dell Touchpad Firmware Update unfortunately just listed 'initial release' under its notes, so it is unclear what (if anything) has changed. It sounds like the BIOS update has reduced fan usage on our XPS 13, although it may be too early to tell. It certainly hasn't made it any louder.

Finally, users are encouraged to download the Dell Command Power Manager 2.0 under System Utilities. The Thermal settings could be useful for configuring the fan/heat ratio in relation to system performance, in addition to observing battery health.

Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central. He is also the head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007, when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and watches. He has been reviewing laptops since 2015 and is particularly fond of 2-in-1 convertibles, ARM processors, new form factors, and thin-and-light PCs. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.