Dell 14 Premium review: Power first, portability second

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The Dell 14 Premium isn’t what I expected.

With the XPS line-up rebranded to Premium, the Dell 14 Premium is now the most portable laptop in Dell’s flagship line-up. Because of that, I expected it might be more like the old Dell XPS 13, or a MacBook Air, or the Lenovo Yoga 9i.

In reality, this 14.5-inch laptop is more like a compact Windows workstation than an ultraportable. Whether that’s good or bad depends on your needs.

Dell 14 Premium: Specs and features

The Dell 14 Premium has an Intel Core Ultra 7 255H processor with a total of 16 cores—six performance, and eight efficient. The model I reviewed also had 32GB of memory and 1TB of solid state storage. Dell also provides the option to upgrade to Nvidia RTX 4050 graphics, though the model I tested had Intel’s Arc 140T.

• CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 255H
• Memory: 32GB LPDDR5X
• Graphics/GPU: Intel Arc 140T
• NPU: Intel AI Boost up to 13 TOPS
• Display: 1x 14.5-inch 3200×2000 OLED 120Hz
• Storage: 1TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD
• Webcam: 1080p 30 FPS
• Connectivity: 3x Thunderbolt 4 / USB-C, 3.5mm audio jack, MicroSD card reader
• Networking: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
• Biometrics: Facial recognition
• Battery capacity: 69.5 watt-hours
• Dimensions: 12.6 x 8.5 x 0.71 inches
• Weight: 3.79 pounds
• Operating System: Windows 11 Home
• Price: $2,049.99 MSRP, $1,899.99 typical retail

Pricing starts at $1,649.99 MSRP for a model with the same Intel processor but just 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a 2560×1440 non-touch display. The model Dell sent me had not only the upgraded RAM and storage mentioned above but also a 3200×2000 OLED display, which increases the price to $2,049.99. Models with the RTX 4050 start at $2,249.99 (with 32GB/1TB and the 2560×1440 non-touch display).

You likely won’t pay MSRP, though, as Dell frequently places laptops on sale. All models are currently $150 off, which puts the price of the model I reviewed at $1,899.99.

Contrary to what you might expect at a glance, the 14 Premium is clearly built to deliver strong performance, with portability taking a back seat to that goal.

Dell 14 Premium: Design and build quality

The Dell 14 Premium’s design is sleek, refined, and a bit controversial, though not for reasons that are immediately apparent.

Left closed, the 14 Premium is elegant but not distinct. The model I tested had a “graphite” finish that looks professional and refined though, like most laptops of similar color, it tends to show fingerprints. The laptop is also available in “platinum,” which is a silver-white finish.

Pick it up, though, and you’ll notice the 14 Premium is a chonk. It weighs 3.79 pounds (with OLED display, or 3.66 pounds without) and measures 0.71 inches thick. The Dell is a bit heavier and thicker than Apple’s MacBook Pro 14, and much heavier than the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13.8-inch or Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i, both of which dip under three pounds.

On the plus side, the weight and material quality provide a feel that’s, well, premium. Most high-end Windows laptops have a rigid chassis, but the 14 Premium is the most slate-like I’ve tried this year. Flex is exceptionally difficult to find. Even pressing very hard on the center of the keyboard, which usually does the trick, reveals only slight deflection. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a Windows laptop that’s more luxurious, though some Lenovo Yoga 9i models are in similar territory.

Dell 14 Premium: Keyboard, trackpad, mouse, and stylus

The keyboard is where the Dell 14 Premium’s design goes a bit sideways.

Dell has replaced the physical function row with a row of capacitive touch keys. This isn’t a new feature, as it was introduced by the previous XPS 14. Still, it’s controversial. Dell’s marketing suggests it provides a more luxurious look and also has a functional benefit, because pressing the function row causes the backlit icons to change (they change to Function key labels, from F1 to F12, when the Function key is pressed).

Personally, though, I’m not convinced. The capacitive touch keys are harder to find by touch. They also seem to take up a lot of physical room, which seems to push the keyboard down a bit. We’re talking a few millimeters, but users with large hands might find the keyboard too shallow.

That aside, the keyboard is good. The layout is spacious and provides noticeably larger keys than most laptops in this category, which can be handy. Key travel is fine, if not remarkable, and the keys bottom out with a firm, satisfying action. Function row aside, I think it’s a good keyboard.

The touchpad is less impressive. Dell opts for a seamless look where the touchpad’s physical boundaries aren’t visible. You might think, then, that the touchpad is very large—that perhaps it even spans the entire width of the laptop—but the opposite is true. The touchpad’s usable surface is about 5.5 inches wide and three inches deep, which is average for a 14-inch laptop.

It does have a haptic click, though, which I enjoy. It feels better than most touchpads with a physical button action and functions no matter where you execute a left or right-button click.

Dell 14 Premium: Display, audio

The base Dell 14 Premium has a IPS-LCD 2560×1440 non-touch display, but the model I received had the upgrade to a 3200×2000 120Hz OLED panel. It’s an outstanding display for all the reasons OLED typically excels. The display’s contrast and color vibrancy are spectacular and provide a deep, immersive, alluring image.

Dell does have an edge in display size and resolution. Most competitors have a 14-inch OLED display with 2880×1880 resolution. That’s a bit less pixel-dense: the 14 Premium has about 260 pixels per inch, while competitors pack in about 245 pixels per inch. Dell’s 14.5-inch display is also about 7.25 percent larger (in overall display area) than a 14-inch competitor. These aren’t night-and-day differences but provide a slight advantage.

Choosing the OLED display also provides a touchscreen, which isn’t essential but nice to have. The 14 Premium isn’t a 2-in-1 (the display doesn’t even fold back to 180 degrees), but it’s small enough that you can sit it on your chest and use the touchscreen when you’re lounging on a couch or in bed.

The Dell 14 Premium’s sound system includes a pair of two-watt main speakers and two-watt tweeters. They provide great volume and a decent sound stage, but there’s not much bass, and that ultimately puts the 14 Premium a step behind audio leaders like the Lenovo Yoga Book 9i and Apple MacBook Pro 14. Still, it’s a fine sound system for most use, particularly at lower volumes where the lack of bass is less noticeable.

Dell 14 Premium: Webcam, microphone, biometrics

The Dell 14 Premium ships with a 1080p 30 FPS webcam and dual-array microphone. Video from the camera looks sharp and has good color reproduction even in a modestly lit room, and the microphone picks up good audio with great noise cancellation. With that said, a 1080p webcam is to be expected in this price range.

Biometric login is supported through a fingerprint sensor and IR cameras for facial recognition. Both work well, though I prefer the speed and reliability of Windows Hello facial recognition log-in. Once again, these features are typical for a laptop in this price range.

Dell 14 Premium: Connectivity

The Dell 14 Premium is all-in on Thunderbolt 4 and USB-C connectivity. This is a decision that’s starting to feel like the default for high-end Windows laptops, particularly those with a display size below 14 inches.

With that said, Dell executes the idea well. All three ports are Thunderbolt 4 / USB-C, so all three support Power Delivery to charge the laptop and DisplayPort for video output (either to a USB-C monitor or to a standard DisplayPort port with adapter). A 3.5mm combo audio jack and MicroSD card reader round out the options.

Many competitive laptops are a step behind here. The Yoga Slim 9i and HP EliteBook X Flip G1i, for example, have just two Thunderbolt 4 / USB-C ports, with the latter including a third USB-C without Thunderbolt.

On the other hand, plenty of 14-inch laptops provide USB-A and HDMI (among other ports). Examples include the Razer Blade 14 and Acer Travelmate P6 14 AI. These have fewer Thunderbolt and USB-C ports, though, so you’ll have to decide if high-speed modern connectivity or support for older peripherals ranks higher on your list of priorities.

Dell doesn’t miss on wireless connectivity, as the 14 Premium includes Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. These are the latest versions of each wireless standard. However, most competitive laptops also support these standards.

Dell 14 Premium: Performance

Most Dell 14 Premium laptops  ship with an Intel Core Ultra 7 255H processor. It’s a 16-core chip with six performance cores, eight efficient cores, and a maximum Turbo frequency of 5.1GHz. Though it’s easy to miss, this is an important point. Intel’s H-Series is quite a bit more performant than the Core Ultra V-series, and that comes through in benchmarks.

Dell gets off to a good start in PCMark, where the 14 Premium turned in a score of 7,453. As the graph shows, that’s an excellent score for a 14-inch laptop. It basically ties the dual-screen Lenovo Yoga Book 9, which also had an Intel Core Ultra 7 255H, and easily outruns Intel Core Ultra V-series laptops. Only the HP OmniBook Ultra 14 takes a notable lead.

Next up is Handbrake, where we transcode a feature-length film using the CPU. The Dell 14 Premium does extremely well here, tearing through the task in a bit more than 14 minutes. It was only a bit behind the Lenovo Yoga Book 9, which had the same processor, and much quicker than 14-inch laptops and an Intel Core Ultra 7 V-Series. The 14 Premium was also a tad quicker than the HP OmniBook Ultra 14 with AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375.

Cinebench 2023, a heavily multi-threaded CPU test, again had favorable things to say about the Dell 14 Premium’s performance. It scored better than the Yoga Book 9i, and much better than the thinner, lighter Acer TravelMate P16 14 AI. The OmniBook Ultra 14 with AMD Ryzen AI 9 struck back against Intel, though, taking a lead overall.

It’s clear the Dell 14 Premium is a strong contender in CPU tests, and this could be a key reason to buy the Dell over a competitive 14-inch laptop. Contrary to what you might expect at a glance, the 14 Premium is clearly built to deliver strong performance, with portability taking a back seat to that goal.

But what about graphics?

As mentioned, the model I tested had Intel’s Arc 140T. An Nvidia RTX 4050 with 30 watts of graphics power is available as an upgrade. Still, Arc 140T is a decent pick if you have modest 3D needs. The Dell 14 Premium’s score in Night Raid is not the best we’ve seen from Intel Arc integrated graphics, but it represents a major step up from laptops with Intel Arc 130V or AMD’s Radeon 860M.

In practice, you can expect to play older 3D games at 60 frames per second at 1080p and medium detail, or 30 FPS at 1080p at higher settings. Newer and more demanding titles can also be enjoyed, but only at low detail settings and with significant image upscaling. The Intel Arc 140T is fine for light-duty 3D work too, like simple models in Blender or using SketchUp.

Dell 14 Premium: Battery life and portability

The Dell 14 Premium offers solid performance, but that comes with a compromise in battery life. Intel’s Core Ultra 255H beats the pants off the 256V/258V in part because it draws more power, which leads to much shorter runtimes in battery life tests.

PC World’s battery test, which involves looping a 4K file of the short film Tears of Steel, sucked the Dell’s battery dry in a little over nine hours.

That’s not bad, and certainly usable. However, as the graph shows, it falls way behind what the most miserly laptops can achieve in 2025. Battery life is where the Intel Core Ultra V-Series parts make their case, with endurance figures that can more than double what the 14 Premium offers.

As a result, I wouldn’t recommend the Dell 14 Premium if you often need all-day battery life, and then some.

The good news is that Dell ships the laptop with a compact 60-watt charger. It’s roughly 2.5 inches x 2 inches by 0.6 inches and is among the smallest chargers I’ve seen shipped with a Windows laptop. You’ll likely need the charger, but packing it isn’t a hassle.

Dell 14 Premium: Conclusion

The Dell 14 Premium isn’t a large laptop, but its focus is less on portability than on a premium look and feel and strong performance. That comes at the cost of increased weight and disappointing battery life. If you’re looking for a grab-and-go laptop for daily meetings around town or cross-country flights, though, this isn’t the laptop for you. But shoppers who want a 14-inch Windows laptop that can handle many tasks well, with fast connectivity and a great OLED display, will like the 14 Premium.

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