I don't own a MBA, but I have owned a lot of Dell laptop's over the past decade (including some of their higher-end XPS laptops). I don't know how good the MBA

I don't own a MBA, but I have owned a lot of Dell laptop's over the past decade (including some of their higher-end XPS laptops). I don't know how good the MBA build-quality is, but if it's even slightly better-than-average, then this Dell is in no way a "competitor." I swore off buying Dell laptops after the last XPS I bought burnt through two separate motherboards (it's still warm to the touch when idling). Previous Dell laptops had an array of different issues: hinges that became brittle and broke, fans that stopped working, etc. Their hardware just seems ridiculously error prone, which explains why they're able to price themselves so competitively.