Dell 14S review: Higher price, better quality

The Dell 14S has more traditional ports than some of the more premium laptops available, too. 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. Many people will appreciate this combination of ports, although I was missing an SD card slot. I also wish Dell would put one of the Thunderbolt 4 ports on the right side, so the laptop can charge from both sides.

Intense competition

Photo: Luke Larsen

High-end configurations of the Dell 14S don’t make much sense, especially since this laptop has so much in common with… Dell XPS 14. For $1,469, it comes with an octa-core Intel Core Ultra 7 355 processor, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. Notably, this is still $170 more than the 13-inch MacBook Air and $30 less than the 15-inch MacBook Air.

You can configure the Dell 14S with some of the most exciting silicon of 2026, like the Core Ultra X7 or X9, but it’ll cost you a lot. The Core Ultra 7 355 is more modest, though it will certainly be too powerful for most users. The extra GPU performance in the X7 and X9 is only needed for gamers or content creators. According to my tests, the Core Ultra 7 355 falls somewhere between the Apple M4 and M5 in multi-core performance. It’s fast enough for most people, but so was the previous generation Core Ultra 7 258V, as found in the Dell 14 Plus. The company still sells this device Price starting at $860And this is the issue. The Dell 14S I tested was 14 percent faster in graphics performance, which isn’t overly noticeable.

The battery life is incredible, though. Thanks to the fact that this laptop uses the latest Intel hardware, Ultra Series 3 core chipswhich has become much more efficient than in previous years. In our local video playback test, it took 20 hours for battery life to drop by 50 percent. Battery backup still isn’t quite as good as it is on Qualcomm-powered laptops. It lost half its battery life when left unplugged with the lid closed for a few days.