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Dell’s consumer flagship XPS laptops always flaunt an extra-fancy feature or two. (We’re glad these days it’s an LED touch-strip key row instead of a webcam aimed up your nose.) The new XPS 14 (model 9440, starting at $1,699; $2,099 as tested) shows off the flashy top row and seamless haptic touchpad that premiered in the Dell XPS 13 Plus, plus Intel’s latest AI-enhanced silicon and Microsoft’s dedicated key for AI-enhanced Windows Copilot. The Dell XPS 14 is a sleek and swift performer, but its only advantages over other slimline laptops are a barely larger 14.5-inch display and an optional discrete GPU for more content-creation performance. With that, the Asus Zenbook 14X OLED (UX3404) remains our Editors’ Choice award holder for high-end ultraportable laptops, while Asus’ own Zenbook 14 OLED Touch (UM3406) presents a similar experience for half the XPS 14’s price.Configurations and Design: Meteor Lake or BustWhile Intel’s Core Ultra 7 155H is the only processor choice you have at checkout, our review unit has the $400-extra 6GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 in place of the standard Intel Arc integrated graphics. Otherwise, this unit has base-model specs with 16GB of memory, a 512GB NVMe solid-state drive, Windows 11 Home, and an IPS screen with a 1,920-by-1,200-pixel resolution and variable 60Hz or 120Hz refresh rate (no touch control here). A tempting $300 OLED touch panel with a 3,200-by-2,000-pixel resolution is available as an option.
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(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The XPS 14’s memory- and storage-ceiling options are dense (64GB and 4TB respectively). Relatively speaking, so is the laptop’s body, weighing 3.7 pounds (3.8 for OLED models), offsetting its trim size of 0.71 by 12.6 by 8.5 inches. By contrast, the HP Pavilion Plus 14 hits the scale at 3.04 pounds, and the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED Touch qualifies as an ultraportable at 2.82 pounds.Crafted from CNC machined aluminum in either Graphite (black) or Platinum, the Dell exhibits almost no flex if you torque the screen corners or press the keyboard deck. What the company calls an InfinityEdge display has fashion-model-thin bezels, though I was dismayed that the webcam centered above the screen has neither a sliding privacy shutter nor a keyboard camera-kill command. The camera has IR face recognition, which coupled with a fingerprint-reader power button gives you two ways to skip typing passwords with Windows Hello.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Like other Dell XPS notebooks, not to mention Apple Macbooks, the XPS 14 relies on USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports—two on the left edge and one on the right, the latter joined by an audio jack (shamefully missing from the Dell XPS 13) and a microSD card slot.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The laptop lacks USB Type-A and HDMI monitor ports, but you get one of each on a clever little dongle that, like the AC adapter, plugs into a USB-C port. You’ll find no mobile broadband option here, but Intel Killer Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth come standard.Using the Dell XPS 14: An Invisible Touchpad As on the XPS 13 Plus, the XPS 14 keyboard is a voguish lattice, a rectangle sliced into flush-fitting squares instead of raised or separate keys. Even when its backlighting is turned off, the top row of LED icons is illuminated. Along with the Escape and Delete keys as well as volume and brightness controls, the row includes Home and End keys, though Page Up and Page Down are combinations of the Fn key and up and down cursor arrows. These arrow keys are sadly half-size keys stacked between full-size left and right arrows, in the awkward row instead of the proper inverted T that I always complain about in HP laptop reviews.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Dell’s keyboard looks better than it feels: It’s quiet and responsive but noticeably shallow and stiff. I make more than my usual amount of errors with these keys, and they would be uncomfortable to type on for hours. By contrast, the seamless glass touchpad was friendlier than I expected; it’s placed so that muscle memory proves quite accurate for right-clicking (a tap at the bottom right), and it has a comfortable haptic click.The webcam records in 1080p resolution and supports the recently added Windows Studio Effects for automatic framing, eye-contact adjustment, and background blurring. It’s an above-average camera, capturing well-lit images even on a dark overcast day; we noted vivid color and no annoying noise or static.Dell’s entry-level IPS screen is impressively bright, with clean white backgrounds, though it doesn’t tilt back quite as far as I’d like. The display’s colors are rich and well-saturated, and it shows decently deep contrast and wide viewing angles. The screen’s details are sharp with no pixelation around the edges of letters.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Preinstalled on the system, the MyDell app works with the webcam to provide presence detection, locking and waking the PC as you walk away and return. This duo also protects your privacy by dimming the screen if you look away. MyDell also lets you fine-tune screen color tweaks such as gamma and temperature; choose optimized, quiet, or high-performance modes for cooling and fan noise; and launch a Killer networking dashboard to prioritize traffic for different apps and choose the strongest available Wi-Fi access point. One more MyDell feature lets you toggle 3D audio effects and pick from equalizer profiles ranging from acoustic and jazz to metal and hip-hop. A set of 8-watt quad speakers pumps out loud but rather hollow audio. You’ll hear a bit more bass than most laptops can muster, but drumbeats sound flat—at least it’s easy to make out overlapping tracks. Testing the Dell XPS 14: Dedicated Graphics Don’t Always DazzleWhile the XPS 14 stands alone with a 14.5-inch display, you’ll find plenty of 14-inch competitors on both sides of the 3-pound line that serves as our ultraportable cutoff. The Lenovo Slim 7i 14 Gen 9 and the Acer Swift Go 14 join the Dell in housing an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU and a 1,920-by-1,200-pixel screen, though the Lenovo laptop has OLED instead of IPS tech. The abovementioned HP Pavilion Plus 14 and Asus Zenbook 14 OLED Touch (UM3406) rely on AMD Ryzen instead of Intel processors.
Productivity Tests We run the same general productivity benchmarks across both mobile and desktop systems. Our first test is UL’s PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance and also includes a storage subtest for the primary drive. Three more benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 uses that company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Geekbench 5.5 Pro from Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. We also use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better). Finally, we run PugetBench for Photoshop by workstation maker Puget Systems, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe’s famous image editor to rate a PC’s performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It’s an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.
All five slimlines easily cleared the 4,000 points in PCMark 10, signaling excellent mainstream productivity for Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. The XPS 14 performed well enough in our CPU tests and posted a competitive score in Photoshop; it’s not meant for demanding workstation apps but is a fine choice as a daily driver. However, the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED Touch edged out the XPS 14 in several tests here, pointing toward competitive processing performance from AMD in this latest generation. Even more important, however, is that this Zenbook kept up with the XPS 14 for less than half the price at just $800 at the time of writing.Graphics Tests We test each Windows PC’s graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). Additionally, we run two tests from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which stresses both low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Car Chase tests are rendered offscreen to accommodate different display resolutions as well as exercise graphics and compute shaders using the OpenGL programming interface and hardware tessellation, respectively. The more frames per second (fps), the better.
The Dell’s GeForce GPU predictably outran its rivals’ integrated graphics in three of our four tests, though it laid down and died in Night Raid—a baffling lapse, since I tried the benchmark several times and configured Windows to use the RTX 4050 instead of Intel Arc Graphics. The others were hollow victories, with the XPS 14 underperforming by discrete-graphics standards, possibly because Dell’s specs say the GPU is tuned to a tiny 30W.This GPU wattage and performance weakens one of the Dell XPS 14’s advantages as a nearly ultraportable laptop for creators. It should be enough to drive photo editing work, which might be this laptop’s niche focus, but more intense visual work, like video editing and 3D content creation, would be better served by a higher-wattage chip.Battery and Display Tests We test each laptop’s battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off. To gauge display performance, we also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen’s color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
The XPS almost tied the Zenbook for the win in our battery rundown, with more than enough stamina to get you through an all-day workday. It joined the other IPS system, the Acer, in trailing the OLED displays but showed suitable color coverage for anything short of pre-press or professional graphics, and it was the brightest screen in the testing quintet.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Verdict: High Fashion, High Price Dell doesn’t make bad laptops, and the XPS 14 is an attractive, even elegant productivity partner with epic battery life. Unfortunately, it doesn’t contend for Editors’ Choice honors. Comparing base model with base model, the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED Touch crushes it on value. The Zenbook provides more-vivid color and contrast (with OLED versus IPS screen technology); it performs about as well, short of graphics tasks; it’s about a pound lighter; and it costs $900 less. (Likewise, Asus fills the high-end ultraportable Editors’ Choice slot with its still slightly cheaper Zenbook 14X OLED.) If you need an ultraportable laptop for photo editing specifically and little else creatively, then maybe the XPS 14 is a fit for you. Otherwise, Asus and even Apple have more affordable alternatives for that performance niche.
Pros
Slick touchpad and LED function row
Long battery life
Available GeForce RTX 4050 GPU
Ample memory and storage options
Effective webcam
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The Bottom Line
Dell’s XPS 14 is one of today’s classiest compact laptops, bolstered by an optional Nvidia GeForce GPU, lengthy battery staying power, and a sharp webcam—but it’s neither the lightest nor most affordable in its class.
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