Last year, the Dell XPS 14 was a brand-new product, and this year, it's got brand-new branding. Indeed, the Dell 14 Premium is one of the best 14-inch laptops on the market, and it's actually pretty unique.

Along with having the design and build quality you expect from an XPS a Dell Premium, it's not just a laptop that's a little bigger than the XPS 13 (there's no 13 Premium yet). It has dedicated graphics and a lot more power, although it does add some weight.

The zero-lattice keyboard may or may not be for you, but if it is, it's excellent, and the OLED display is best-in-class as always.

If you're in the market for this type of product, it's definitely the one to get. One thing that you do need to consider, which you may or may not care about, is that this isn't a Copilot+ PC, unlike the XPS 13.

Dell sent XDA the 14 Premium for review. It had no input on the contents of this article.

Dell 14 Premium pricing and availability

The Dell 14 Premium normally starts at $1,649, although right now, you can grab the base model for $1,499. That gets you a Core Ultra 7 255H, 16GB RAM, 512GB storage, and integrated graphics, along with a 2K 120Hz display.

However, Dell has another deal at the moment, which is $450 off the top-end model. Normally $2,449, $1,999 will get you a Core Ultra 255H, 32GB RAM, a 1TB SSD, RTX 4050 graphics, and the 3.2K 120Hz OLED display.

The product comes in two colors: Graphite and Platinum. Unlike XPS laptops from several years ago, the Platinum colorway does not come with white accessories.

It's still the Dell XPS 14

Same product philosophy, new branding

Earlier this year, Dell announced a rebranding of its entire portfolio. XPS, a brand that's possibly the most recognized name in premium computing, is no more. It's now Dell Premium. What I'm getting at is that yes, the Dell 14 Premium is the new XPS 14.

This year's model is very much a spec bump of last year's, which was the first generation of the XPS 14. The only visual change is a brand-new, more stylish and modernized Dell logo that's stamped in the lid. Internally, the CPU has been boosted to Core Ultra Series 2, specifically the Arrow Lake version of that because Intel's branding is purposely horrible and confusing.

It uses the wedge-shaped design that originated in the XPS 13 Plus back in 2022, coming in Graphite and Platinum colors and made out of machined aluminum. I like both styles, although currently I lean toward Graphite, which is the one Dell sent for review. However, I know Dell reads these reviews so I have to call out the team here. They need to put a white charger in the box with the Platinum model, something that the company used to do with white XPS systems before this design was introduced.

The Dell 14 Premium has three Thunderbolt 4 ports, two on the left and one on the right. This is weirdly rare in laptops, as so many companies tend to use two Thunderbolt ports and one USB 3.2 port, so having all three as Thunderbolt is something you'll never know how much you appreciate it. The reason you'll never know is that each port is just going to do what it's supposed to. There is nothing worse than trying to troubleshoot a dock that's not working, or figure out why your laptop isn't charging, only to realize that the port that looks identical to the rest doesn't do that thing.

My biggest complaint about the 14 Premium is the same one I had last year. It's 3.79 pounds, which is on the heavy side for a 14-inch ultrabook. It does come with more power, playing more in the MacBook Pro arena than the MacBook Air arena. If you want something that's actually light, Dell does have a product for you: the XPS 13 (it hasn't been refreshed since The Great Rebranding). With a screen only one inch smaller and a more compact footprint, it weighs in at only 2.6 pounds, so it's a big difference.

The best performance in a 14-inch ultrabook

Dedicated graphics puts it over the top

Alright, let's talk about the guts of this thing. It's not just the design that I love about the Dell 14 Premium; the internals are what make it one of my favorite laptops on the market. It's that combination of the build, the compact form factor, performance, and a tandem OLED display. They all just add up to this nearly perfect package.

To be clear, Intel's new Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake processors are just fine on their own. The integrated graphics in this generation pack a real punch, as the company has continued to take graphics seriously for the past several years now. But with an RTX 4050, the Dell 14 Premium takes it just a bit further.

I like it. It's also not for everyone. If it was for everyone, Dell would have discontinued the XPS 13. Note that the XPS 13 uses Intel Lunar Lake (there's a Snapdragon version as well), while the 14 Premium has Arrow Lake, but since the graphics on Core Ultra Series 2 have gotten so good, there's not as much of a boost between Lunar Lake and when Arrow Lake is boosted by an RTX 4050. There is a boost though.

For benchmarking, I compared the Dell 14 Premium to the Intel flavor of the XPS 13 and the AMD-powered OmniBook Ultra. AMD crushed it on CPU power this generation, but not on graphics power. You can see what while Ryzen wins on CPU-focused tests like Geekbench, it falls behind in every 3DMark test.

While both the XPS 13 and the 14 Premium are certainly capable of doing graphics-intensive tasks like video editing and gaming, the Dell 14 Premium is simply more equipped to do so.

Battery life is rock solid. It does fall short of the highly-efficient Intel Lunar Lake and Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chips you'll find on the XPS 13, which comes as no surprise. Still, you're good for a solid eight hours with this machine, and unlike with Lunar Lake, it's a bit more comfortable to put it on balanced power settings when using it when not plugged in.

That's actually worth talking about a bit. Lunar Lake will get you great battery life, even when set to best performance, but there's a big dropoff when you set it to balanced. Arrow Lake isn't quite as efficient, but it holds onto more of its power when you use a more efficient profile.

It's not a Copilot+ laptop

If you care about that sort of thing

This is a bit of a confusing time for laptops. As I mentioned earlier, Intel has cleverly named all of its latest-gen processors Core Ultra Series 2, but they're not created equal, and they won't get you the same features in Windows. The Dell XPS 13 is a Copilot+ laptop; the Dell 14 and 16 Premium are not. The only reason is because Intel Lunar Lake and Qualcomm Snapdragon X have a dedicated NPU that meets the requirements for the suite of features, while Arrow Lake does not.

Do you care? Should you care? There are some neat features with Copilot+, such as Recall and Click to Do. Recall takes screenshots every few seconds and then indexes them so you can search through your history. Click to Do can look at your screen and let you click on parts of it to action it, such as asking Copilot, summarizing text, and more.

I've still not said to anyone that they should upgrade their laptop specifically because of Copilot+, but it's still something to think about when it comes to making a purchasing decision. Developers are adding new features and targeting NPUs. In general, it's worth thinking about future-proofing when you're spending so much money on a laptop.

But also, products in this performance range of products is using Arrow Lake, and therefore not Copilot+. If you want a Dell 14 Premium with these new features, it's going to arrive next year with Intel's next-gen processors.

It's the best 14-inch laptop

And it's still the most futuristic

Back in 2022 when Dell first introduced the XPS 13 Plus, it was the most futuristic laptop. The haptic touchpad is borderless, and it has capacitive function keys at the top that change when you hit the Fn key. It has a zero-lattice keyboard, something that we're now starting to see in machines from other companies like HP. Dell expanded the design across the XPS portfolio when it introduced the XPS 14 and XPS 16.

First of all, I'm a big fan of the function keys. They're divisive though, because if you use those keys frequently, you'll probably hate them. However, most people don't use them frequently. Personally, I don't use them often enough to even remember if hitting the button interacts with the F-key or the function by default. I absolutely love that the Dell 14 Premium changes the buttons when pressing the Fn key.

If you hate the capacitive keys, the borderless touchpad, or the zero-lattice keyboard, that's fine. This simply isn't the product for you. Dell sells other products. Dell Premium is the flagship product, and a Dell Plus has many of the same features, just without those 'futuristic' bells and whistles.

Now, let's talk about the screen. The model that Dell sent me comes with a 3.2k tandem OLED display, which was actually something Dell was using in the XPS 13 before it was even saying it. Apple made a big deal about tandem OLED in its iPads and Dell just kind of said, hey we have that already.

I need to say it, because you might not be intimately familiar with XPS laptops, but the display is excellent. Every color gamut test comes in at 100% or near 100%. But more importantly, you can just expect that from Dell's flagship laptops, at least in the high-end display configurations. FHD panels typically aren't as good.

This standard goes back to even before OLED panels were used in XPS laptops. Dell has always had the best high-end display panels in the industry. The playing field is a little more even now that so many laptops use OLED, and have for a while now, but Dell still comes out on top. Seriously, if you want the best display on a laptop, you buy a Dell Premium. That's an evergreen statement, and I'd tell you that with confidence on a brand new Dell Premium product I've never seen in real life. That's how confident I am in them by this point (I've also reviewed 28 other Dell XPS/Premium laptops over the years).

Should you buy the Dell 14 Premium?

You should buy the Dell 14 Premium if:

• You want a 14-inch laptop that's a little more powerful than the rest.
• You love the design, and want to stand out a little.
• You want the best display in a laptop.

You should NOT buy the Dell 14 Premium if:

• You care about current and future Copilot+ features.
• You want the lightest 14-inch laptop.

I absolutely love the Dell 14 Premium. It has a MacBook Pro feel, without trying to be a MacBook clone. It has the battery life, the power, the screen, and the rest. It's a bit heavy, which is also true of the 14-inch MacBook Pro, but it's also not a Copilot+ laptop. Microsoft is going to continue rolling out features for it, and you won't get them.

However, this is more of an Intel issue. More powerful laptops use Arrow Lake, and therefore don't have the more powerful NPU that's needed for it. That should change in the next generation though.

The Dell 14 Premium is as good as you can get. If you want the best, go for it.