Dell’s new XPS 14 is better in almost every way

The 2026 XPS 14 is the champion premium laptop we’ve seen from Dell successful a while, pinch unthinkable build value successful a bladed instrumentality and bully capacity acknowledgment to Intel’s Core Ultra Series 3 “Panther Lake” chips. A bonus: Dell killed its lame “Premium Plus” naming scheme. XPS is truthful back!

I can’t judge really overmuch of a turnaround this caller exemplary is from the XPS 13 I reviewed past year, which astatine the clip was group to beryllium the line’s depressing swan song. The caller XPS has improved successful conscionable astir each way, pinch an existent beingness F-row, amended speakers, and singular artillery life. Too bad it’s wildly expensive.

Dell sent america 2 XPS 14 laptops to test: A $1,999.99 entry-level exemplary pinch an 8-core Intel Core Ultra 5 325 chip, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a 1920 x 1200 IPS display, and a $2,899.99 touchscreen OLED type pinch a 16-core Core Ultra X7 358H, overmuch beefier graphics power, and double the RAM and storage. Each has 3 Thunderbolt 4 ports and a 3.5mm audio jack.

The build value is impressive. They’re only a small thicker than a MacBook Air, but astir a 3rd of a lb heavier, emotion for illustration a coagulated slab. The adjacent point that strikes you, particularly if you’re haunted by XPS laptops past, is that the seamless haptic trackpad has lightly textured bound lines and the keyboard has a due usability row. No much wholly invisible trackpad and capacitive touch buttons for Escape and F-keys. Hallelujah!

While these 2 changes are logic capable to rejoice, I still person my quibbles. Boundary lines aliases not, this haptic trackpad is still only okay. I sometimes request to property other difficult for a click to register, and I occasionally get an accidental double-click moreover erstwhile pressing lightly. I besides sometimes get a misclick if my palms remainder excessively heavy connected it while typing.

Speaking of typing, I still can’t get down this gapless keyboard. It has a paltry 0.8mm cardinal travel, though it doesn’t consciousness rather arsenic shallow arsenic it sounds. This is owed to its tactile bump astatine the apical of each cardinal press, which gives it a amazingly coagulated feel. Despite that tactility, I don’t for illustration typing connected it. I consciousness slower, stilted, and much prone to typos. It’s a awesome betterment to person a beingness usability row, but this keyboard is still not for me. At slightest now it’s much of a “YMMV” benignant of thing.

Elsewhere, the 8-megapixel / 4K webcam looks crisp successful agleam ray but loses a spot of its punch and colour value successful dimmer lighting aliases erstwhile you’re backlit. The speakers are rather bully for this size of laptop, producing a well-balanced sound that you tin crank up without distortion — though they unsurprisingly don’t person the strongest bass.

But the showstopper connected the OLED exemplary is, obviously, the display. The 2880 x 1800 tandem OLED touchscreen gets agleam and is ever rich | successful heavy opposition and lively colors. It’s a stunner. The 1920 x 1200 IPS sheet connected the lower-end configuration is almost humdrum by comparison. It reaches a somewhat brighter 500 nits and it controls glare beautiful well, but adjacent to the OLED it’s a small dull. However, the IPS surface has a unsocial characteristic of its own: a adaptable refresh complaint that goes from 120Hz each the measurement down to 1Hz erstwhile you’re viewing fixed content. The OLED matches that 120Hz, but its lowest refresh complaint is 20Hz.

These low-dipping refresh rates thief springiness some XPS 14s fantabulous artillery life. On the OLED, I could get complete 10 hours of near-continuous mixed usage (the accustomed boatload of Chrome tabs, occasional euphony aliases video streaming, and a video telephone aliases two). The aforesaid workload connected the IPS exemplary reached complete 14 hours, apt acknowledgment to that lower-res surface pinch 1Hz minimum refresh, and you tin perchance agelong it longer if you’re being cautious. (I was not.) The IPS config moreover smashed our artillery rundown trial pinch 26 hours of continuous runtime, moreover beating each the Arm-based laptops we’ve tested. I dream we spot these kinds of panels successful much laptops. Like phones, dialing the refresh complaint measurement down erstwhile you’re staring astatine documents helps sphere battery.

The Intel Panther Lake chips successful these laptops besides thief some XPS 14s pinch powerfulness efficiency, but they’re nary slouches successful the capacity department. They’ve sewage coagulated thermals, pinch the fans staying beautiful quiet — moreover nether load. And during accent tests the bottommost lawsuit sewage beautiful lukewarm but astir of the keyboard remained cool. The OLED exemplary pinch the X7 spot and its integrated 12-core GPU is beautiful formidable for graphics-heavy tasks for illustration 3D rendering successful Blender, and it tin moreover squeak by successful playing immoderate AAA games. I ran Battlefield 6 at a adjacent 50fps astatine 1920 x 1200 solution connected the Low preset pinch XeSS group to Ultra Performance. Not amazing, but not murphy value — and successful a thin-and-light productivity laptop.

Still, overmuch cheaper MacBooks hit the caller XPS models successful earthy performance. A fanless 15-inch M5 MacBook Air wipes the level pinch the entry-level XPS 14, and it moreover thumps the higher-end OLED exemplary successful astir non-GPU-heavy benchmarks. Step up to the 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro, and the scales extremity moreover a small further successful Apple’s favour — positive you get an HDMI larboard and SD paper slot.

This brings america to the XPS 14’s biggest issue: price. When it launched, the entry-level IPS exemplary costs $1,600. Now it’s $2,000. The OLED exemplary pinch the X7 spot started astatine $2,200, and it now costs $2,900. This is of people each owed to “ongoing marketplace conditions,” besides known arsenic RAMageddon. But it doesn’t alteration the truth that this is simply a crap-ton of money for the capacity you’re getting. Dell precocious announced a lower-cost XPS 13 priced astatine $700 ($600 for students arsenic a impermanent discount). It’s bully to spot upcoming attempts astatine competing pinch the MacBook Neo, but successful the meantime Dell’s OLED XPS 14 went up successful value by the costs of that full XPS 13.

It’s heartbreaking to spot these kinds of prices. $2,200 for the OLED XPS 14 felt justifiable for a high-end machine pinch awesome build quality. But astatine $2,900? For $200 little you tin get an Asus Zenbook Duo pinch two 14-inch OLEDs and an moreover amended Intel Panther Lake chip. And for little than the entry-level XPS 14, the Zenbook A16 offers 3 times the RAM and a 16-inch OLED successful a lighter package. And erstwhile you comparison Apple’s offerings to the XPS 14 for value to performance? It’s a massacre.

I commend Dell for righting the vessel and revitalizing the XPS statement aft its rebranding blunder. But moreover if the caller XPS laptops are amended than ever, they’re now a reliable waste for caller reasons.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge