Sleek, slender powerhouse -

The Dell XPS has for long offered the crème de la crème of Dell’s laptop line-up. I swapped my primary laptop with the latest Dell XPS 14 (9440) over the last week and here’s what it has to offer.

Design

The Dell XPS 14 gets the most polished design aspects across Dell’s line-up. With an aluminum chassis, the machine is super sleek and looks refined.

The 14 inch Dell XPS 14 (2024) | Photo Credit: Bijoy Ghosh

Weighing in at 1.74kg, the XPS is by no stretch the lightest 14-inch laptop. However, the weight is well balanced across the chassis. It was easy to carry in my backpack, with the compact 100-watt USB charger.

Multimedia

The display features a 14.5-inch 3.2K (3200 x 2000) OLED touchscreen with a peak brightness of 400 nits. The display was perfect for watching movies in 4K. I enjoyed watching Top Gun: Maverick on Amazon Prime and Dune on Netflix in pure cinematic colours on the 100 per cent DCI-P3 screen.

With an OLED screen, the blacks were as dark as they could get. The colour saturation and tint were just right to watch the brilliant cinematography in both movies. The device features 2W top-firing speakers on either side of the keyboard and 2W down-firing tweeters. The sound was clear enough. The depth was a little better once I tweaked the audio settings in the MyDell app. I enjoyed listening to Illuminati from Aavesham at full volume - a pleasure to hear without any distortion at the lower and upper scales of the track, along with clear vocals.

Keyboard

The device features a zero-lattice keyboard with no space between the keys and larger keycaps. I liked the larger keycaps and the 1 mm of key travel. It delivers the perfect tactile experience while typing without feeling too “shallow”, giving it a slight edge over the Mac keyboards that I’m used to typing on. The only spot of bother is the capacitive touch function row at the top of the keyboard, which lacks haptics that would make it tactile.

The seamless glass haptic touchpad worked well with the left and right click being easily distinguishable, but has no visual demarcation. Palm rejection is also quite accurate on the touchpad.

Performance

The unit that I reviewed featured an Intel Core Ultra 7 Processor 155H with 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, and an NVIDIA RTX 4050 GPU. These specs look great on paper and had the benchmark scores to show that it was a powerful performer.

On CineBench R24, the Dell XPS 14 scored 5,343 points on GPU features, just below the Apple M1 Ultra. It scored 87 on CPU (single core) and 100 points on multi-core, securing the tenth rank. This could be due to the slight throttling when multitasking over an extended amount of time.

While the RTX 4050 laptop GPU has only a 30-watt TDP, it works well for a device that is quite sleek and has a metal body with slim fans and a basic cooling system. The laptop comfortably delivered 40-55 fps on medium settings in Crackdown 3 and around 60 FPS on high settings in Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, making the XPS an ideal work-and-play ultrabook. The laptop also features a 1080p webcam, which delivered sharp videos, good colour balance, and great edge separation, with the background blur during the occasional Micrsoft Teams meetings.

Connectivity

The laptop has ample ports with three Thunderbolt 4 (USB Type-C), a charging port, a microSD card reader, and a 3.5mm headphone/microphone combo jack. The device ships with a USB-C adapter, which also gives access to a USB-A and HDMI port, which lends the device enough flexibility in legacy environments where HDMI or external peripherals have to be connected via USB-A.

Battery

The Dell XPS 14 features a 69.5 Whr battery, which lasts about 5.5-6 hours while writing, watching movies, and listening to music on Spotify. The laptop stayed on for close to two hours, with casual gaming unplugged, along with a short burst of video editing on DaVinci Resolve, and a bit of editing on Audacity. This augurs well for content creators as well as corporate professionals looking for a portable machine with ample battery life to keep the system going. The 100-watt portable USB-C charger was quite light and was able to charge the device in under two hours.

Verdict

The Dell XPS 14 (9440)offers the best-in-class performance and portability in this package. With a premium build quality and a powerful processor at a compact 14 inches across, it stands out as a desirable device to own.

Price: ₹1,99, 990 onwards

(The unit I reviewed is priced at ₹2,44,490)

Pros: Excellent build, great performance, display and sound

Cons: Expensive, shallow capacitive touch function bar.