- Sharp, bright display
- Attractive, all-aluminum enclosure
- Strong overall performance from Core Ultra CPU
- Outstanding battery life
The 14-inch, 16:10 display makes the Inspiron 14 Plus a versatile machine, giving you enough screen space to be productive without feeling too cramped while also being compact enough for daily travel, even if it’s a tad heavy for its class. And with lengthy battery life, you can roam for long stretches with the Inspiron 14 Plus between charges. Priced at $1,000, the Inspiron 14 Plus is a well-rounded, well-built mainstream laptop.
We received the baseline Inspiron 14 Plus 7440 model. It costs $1,000 for a configuration with a Core Ultra 7 155H CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and a 14-inch IPS display with a 2,240×1,400-pixel resolution. The only upgrades Dell offers for the system are doubling the RAM to 32GB and a higher-resolution 2,880×1,800-pixel display. Each upgrade adds $100 to the price. You can upgrade the display without doubling the memory, but if you opt for 32GB of RAM, you are forced to upgrade the display.
The Dell Inspiron 14 Plus, based on a 13th-gen Intel processor, starts at £599 in the UK; Core Ultra-based models are not yet available. The Inspiron 14 Plus is not available in Australia, but the larger Inspiron 16 Plus is for sale there starting at AU$1,999.
The Inspiron 14 Plus proved to be a strong overall performer in lab testing. It produced positive results on our benchmarks and kept pace with the Acer Swift Go 14 and HP Spectre x360 14, each of which features the same Intel Core Ultra 7 155H as the Inspiron 14 Plus. It easily outpaced the HP Pavilion Laptop 15t-eg300 that features a previous 13th-gen Core i7 U-series processor throughout testing. It also lasted 13.5 hours on our online streaming video battery drain test, which is an outstanding runtime, particularly when you factor in the laptop’s high-resolution and bright display. You can scroll to the end of this review to see the full results of our testing.
Heavy, bright and icy blue
An all-aluminum case isn’t a given at $1,000. Frequently, laptops at this price have plastic shells or provide an aluminum top cover but a plastic keyboard deck and bottom panel. The Inspiron 14 Plus supplies a brushed aluminum chassis with a hint of blue. Dell calls the color Ice Blue, and it’s just different enough to let the Inspiron 14 Plus stand out from the standard silver color found on so many laptops.