Dell 14S Review: High Price, Good Quality

The Dell 14S has more ports than other high-end laptops out there. There are two USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, one on each side, as well as HDMI 2.1, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, and a headphone jack. Most people appreciate the mix of ports, although I was missing an SD card slot. I also wish that Dell had placed one of the Thunderbolt 4 ports on the right side, so that the laptop could charge from both sides.

Tough Competition

Photo: Luke Larsen

The advanced configuration of the Dell 14S is not clear, especially since this laptop is very similar to Dell XPS 14. For $1,469, it comes with an eight-core Intel Core Ultra 7 355 processor, 16 GB of RAM, and 512 GB of storage. In particular, it is still $170 more than the 13-inch MacBook Air and $30 less than the 15-inch MacBook Air.

You can fix the Dell 14S with the most exciting silicon in 2026, Core Ultra X7 or X9, but it will cost you a lot of money. Core Ultra 7 355 is very modest, although it will be very powerful for many users. The extra GPU performance in the X7 and X9 is only needed by gamers or developers. According to my tests, the Core Ultra 7 355 falls somewhere between the Apple M4 and M5 in terms of performance. It’s fast enough for most people, but so is the older version of the Core Ultra 7 258V, found in the Dell 14 Plus. The company still sells the device for a starting price of $860and that is the problem. The Dell 14S I tested was 14 percent faster in graphics mode, which isn’t very noticeable.

Battery life is amazing, though. That’s because this laptop uses the latest Intel processors, Core Series Ultra Series 3 chipswhich works much better than previous years. In my video playback tests, it took 20 hours for the battery life to drop by 50 percent. The standby battery wasn’t as good as what’s in a Qualcomm-powered laptop. It lost half of its battery life after being left unplugged with the lid closed for several days.