Dell XPS 14 Review: Good Idea, Uneven Execution
Our full Dell XPS 14 review after two weeks of testing: measured performance, battery figures, and whether it is worth £1749.
Tech Daily Review Desk
The short version
The Dell XPS 14 is Dell's 2024 entry in a crowded laptops market, and at £1749 it is competing against some of the strongest hardware we have tested. After a fortnight of daily use, the headline is straightforward: it delivers a stunning OLED panel.
Verdict in one line: Buy it for a stunning OLED panel. Think twice if this would bother you daily: a capacitive function row with no feedback.
Build and materials
There is nothing experimental here, which is mostly to the Dell XPS 14's credit. The detail worth calling out is that the capacitive row cannot be used without looking at it. Against the rest of the laptops category it feels considered rather than novel.
How it performs
Our testing runs the same suite on every device so figures stay comparable across years. The figure worth quoting is Runtime: 9h mixed use. That places it mid-table at best for its price bracket.
| Specification | Dell XPS 14 |
|---|---|
| Display | 14.5in OLED, 3200 x 2000, 120Hz |
| Chip | Core Ultra 7 155H |
| RAM | 32GB |
| Storage | 1TB |
| Battery | 69.5Wh |
| Weight | 1.68kg |
| Runtime | 9h mixed use |
How we tested
Every figure quoted above comes from the same protocol, run on every unit in this category. This one spent two working weeks as a primary machine, on battery wherever possible. Display at 150 nits, keyboard backlight off, the manufacturer’s balanced power profile, and the same browser profile with thirty tabs restored on every machine.
| What we measure | How |
|---|---|
| Battery life | A looped workday script — document editing, video calls, browsing — run to shutdown, three times, averaged. |
| Sustained CPU | A thirty-minute all-core render, reporting the settled clock speed rather than the boost figure. |
| Fan noise | Measured at 50cm from the display hinge during that render, in a room with a 28dB floor. |
| Chassis heat | Palm rest and underside temperatures after the render, since that is where it is actually felt. |
| Display | Brightness and contrast from a colorimeter, at the panel’s native setting rather than a boosted HDR mode. |
We deliberately do not report single-core burst scores, which almost nothing outside a benchmark actually produces.
The honest caveat: Sustained figures depend on ambient temperature. A warm room costs most thin laptops several percent.
What we liked
- A stunning OLED panel
- Genuinely premium construction
- Strong CPU performance
Taken together, those strengths make it a natural fit for buyers who prize industrial design over input ergonomics.
What we did not like
- A capacitive function row with no feedback
- Invisible trackpad edges
- No USB-A or HDMI
- Runs warm
None of these are dealbreakers on their own. Whether they matter depends entirely on how you intend to use it, which is why the section below matters more than the score.
How it compares
The closest alternatives on price are ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 and HP Spectre x360 14. All three have been through the same tests, so the figures below are directly comparable rather than collected from different reviews.
| Model | Price | Our score | Standout | Weak point |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dell XPS 14 (this review) | £1749 | 3 / 5 | A stunning OLED panel | A capacitive function row with no feedback |
| ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 | £1649 | 4 / 5 | The best keyboard on any laptop | A merely adequate display |
| HP Spectre x360 14 | £1499 | 4 / 5 | A genuinely usable convertible hinge | Heavier than a comparable clamshell |
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 scores higher at £1649, so the Dell XPS 14 has to win on a stunning OLED panel rather than on the total.
Is it worth the money?
At £1749 the Dell XPS 14 asks £206 more than the category average of £1543, against an average score of 3.7 out of 5 across the laptops we have tested. Its own 3 works out at roughly £583 per point. Paying above average for a below-average score only makes sense if buyers who prize industrial design over input ergonomics describes you precisely.
If the budget is the binding constraint, the Acer Aspire 14 AI at £649 is the floor we would still recommend — below that the compromises stop being ones you can live with.
Two weeks in
Two weeks in, the figure that stopped mattering was display — 14.5in OLED, 3200 x 2000, 120Hz is more than adequate and you forget about it by the third day. What kept surfacing instead was that a capacitive function row with no feedback, which is easy to shrug off in a spec comparison and harder to ignore at 6pm on a Friday. On the other side, the capacitive row cannot be used without looking at it turns out to be the sort of detail you only appreciate after living with the alternative.
Who should buy it
Buy the Dell XPS 14 if you are buyers who prize industrial design over input ergonomics. Skip it if this is something you would notice every day: a capacitive function row with no feedback.
Buy it if:
- Buyers who prize industrial design over input ergonomics
- You want a stunning OLED panel
- You value genuinely premium construction
Skip it if:
- You need a capacitive function row with no feedback to be a solved problem
- The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 at £1649 already covers what you need
- You upgraded within the last two years — the gap is not worth the outlay
Verdict
Buy it for a stunning OLED panel. Think twice if this would bother you daily: a capacitive function row with no feedback.
Score: 3 / 5 · £1749 at the time of writing.
Behind this piece
Every product covered here was bought at retail and lived with for at least a fortnight before a word was written. Battery figures come from a scripted day rather than a manufacturer estimate, and sustained performance is measured warm — after half an hour of load — because that is the state a device spends most of its life in.
Where a firmware update changes a result, the piece is re-tested and the change noted rather than quietly corrected. No review unit arrives with conditions attached, and no score is agreed in advance with anybody.
Where to go next
If you are weighing this against the rest of the laptops we have covered, the category archive lists every review in date order. The closest comparisons we have published are Dell XPS 14 vs ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED: Is the 2025 Model Worth the Change? and Dell XPS 14 vs Framework Laptop 13: Where the Framework Laptop 13 Pulls Ahead.
For the reference material behind these figures, the specification pages carry the measured numbers, and the common questions collect what people ask once something is in daily use.
