Dell Inspiron 14 Plus (Snapdragon)
A fine debut for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Plus chip, and great speakers, but what a shame about the screen
TSCORE ★★★ PRICE As reviewed, £874 (£1,049 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk
he Inspiron 14 Plus marks two interrelated firsts: it’s the first Copilot+ PC to include a Snapdragon X Plus chip rather than X Elite, and the first to duck under the £1,000 mark. If Dell had sent us this version of the 14 Plus with a 512GB
SSD rather than 1TB then that’s the price you would see above.
That’s because it uses the X1P-64100 chip, with “P” standing for Plus. It has ten cores to the Elite’s 12, slower clock speeds and slower graphics. In single-core tasks, it’s almost identical to the X1E-78-100 in the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x ( see p57), but switch to core-intensive applications and the Yoga pulls ahead – particularly in Cinebench 2024, with 1,044 versus 683.
Don’t imagine that this laptop is slow, however, because Windows is just as nippy as with all the other Copilot+ PCs I’ve tested. As ever, gaming is its Achilles’ heel, with paltry frame rates – only breaking 30fps in the Lowest settings of
Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Dirt 5 at 1200p – and spotty compatibility.
Battery life is once again phenomenal, lasting for 15hrs 57mins in PCMark’s light-use Modern Office test and 24hrs 7mins when left idling. And it charged up to 50% from empty in half an hour, which is good going from a standard-issue 65W Dell charger. Where it loses out compared to the XPS 13 and Yoga Slim is for portability, weighing 1.4kg, while the chassis measures a comparatively chunky 16.9mm at its thickest. This, alongside the dull grey silver design, makes it far less visually attractive than its Copilot+ PC rivals.
Dell’s most visible cost-cutting measure is the screen. There’s nothing wrong with its 2,560 x 1,600 resolution, but the whites are clearly off and no fiddling with colour temperature apps is going to fix this. I found the best option was to push brightness to its 485cd/m2 peak, which lessened the effect. This panel also covers only 70% of the DCI-P3 gamut, so it isn’t a laptop for photographers or film lovers. I expected the speakers to be similarly limp, but they proved the surprise package. Not only do they go loud, but there’s audible bass (two woofers help) and clear vocals. The speakers sit either side of the keyboard, which is well laid out and benefits from large keys. There isn’t much cushioning to their action, and the backplate bends in the middle if you bash hard, but that’s the only sign of cost-cutting. Unless you count a non-glass touchpad, but it’s still responsive.
A fingerprint sensor accompanies the
IR webcam, and this is a match for more expensive laptops, with crisp detail, excellent colours and all the fancy effects I’ve come to expect with AI PCs (the portrait blur is arguably the best).
Dell takes a pragmatic approach to ports, with twin USB-C 4 ports on the left alongside a microSD card slot, while a slowish USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port and 3.5mm combo
“Dell’s most visible costcutting measure is to the screen. Its whites are clearly off and no fiddling is going to fix this”
jack sit on the right. Nor are you left behind for wireless, with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 both present.
Upgrades are limited. The 16GB of memory is integrated, while any replacement SSD must comply with the M.2 2230 form factor – don’t think this equates to slow, however, as the Inspiron’s 1TB drive hit 6,191MB/sec sequential reads and 4,824MB/sec writes. You can also replace the M.2 Wi-Fi card and 54Wh battery.
Where Dell knocks things out of the park compared to rivals is through its warranty, with three years of Dell Premium Support – which covers on-site repair if suitable, but more impressively covers hardware faults throughout. You could argue that this alone adds £200 of value to this laptop.
All of which leaves me shaking my head despairingly at whoever decided to fit such a mediocre panel. Every other budget decision makes sense, but not the display – the item you’ll be looking at every day. So, it’s harsh, but this is why I’m only giving Dell three stars for the Inspiron.
SPECIFICATIONS
10-core Qualcomm Snapdragon X1P-64-100 SoC Qualcomm Adreno graphics 16GB LPDDR5X RAM 14in 120Hz IPS touchscreen, 2,560 x 1,600 resolution 1TB M.2 PCI-E Gen4 SSD Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 5.4 1080p IR webcam 2 x USB-C 4 USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 3.5mm combo jack microSD card slot 54Wh battery Windows 11 Home 314 x 224 x 16.9mm (WDH) 1.4kg 3yr Premium on-site warranty