Some laptops try to look flashy, others try to look invisible. So what about the Dell Pro 14 Premium (PA14250) with its OLED screen and Intel Core Ultra 7 268V? It walks into the room like someone wearing a tailored suit with crisp white sneakers. It’s polished enough for the boardroom, but you can tell it secretly binge‑watches Netflix with pizza on the weekends. And that’s the vibe of this ultrabook: sleek, professional, but surprisingly fun when you spend time with it.
Let’s break down how this machine actually lives up to its promises, how it feels to use day in and day out, and most importantly, is it worth spending north of Rs. 2 lakhs on this?
Table of Contents
Slim, Sharp, and Slightly Show‑Offy
The first thing you’ll notice is how premium this thing looks and feels. Dell has gone with recycled magnesium for the chassis, and it doesn’t just tick the eco‑friendly box, but it also makes the laptop lightweight without compromising on sturdiness. It’s the kind of machine you’d confidently plop on a conference room table without worrying about flex or creaks.
At around 1.3 kg, the Pro 14 Premium slips into a backpack like it belongs there, and the slim bezels mean you’re getting more screen in less footprint. The hinge is tight, smooth, and lets you open it with one hand. That’s always a win for professionals juggling phones, files, and coffee.
In terms of I/O ports, on the right side, there’s a Thunderbolt 4 port and a USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port for connecting legacy peripherals. Over to the left side, there’s an HDMI 2.1 port, another Thunderbolt 4 port, and a 3.5mm headset.
Connectivity is also future‑ready. You also get support for both WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, keeping things zippy wirelessly. Long story short, you can connect to literally anything without needing a messy hub.
Lookin’ Gorgeous, Soundin’ Average
Now, let’s talk about the star of the show, which is the Tandem OLED display. It’s a 14‑inch QHD+ panel with inky blacks, punchy colours, and a level of depth that makes regular IPS screens feel a bit washed out. Watching presentations, editing photos, or sneaking in a quick OTT binge all look stunning.
The colours pop without being cartoonish, which is a blessing if your work involves design or branding. Brightness is good but not mind‑blowing. Indoors, it’s perfect. Outdoors in direct sunlight? Still visible, but you’ll find yourself squinting a bit compared to Mini‑LED rivals. Also, while business users don’t necessarily require high refresh rate panels, putting a 60Hz panel at this price point definitely isn’t going to win Dell any praises. Nonetheless, for 95% of use cases, it’s still a gorgeous panel.
On the audio side, Dell has included downward‑firing speakers that are fine. They get the job done for video calls and casual music listening, but they’re not going to replace a pair of good headphones or a portable speaker. To be fair, they do get decently loud, and voices come through crisp. That said, bass lovers will be left wanting more.
Keys, Clicks, and Camera Tricks
If you type for a living, which includes emails, presentations, or the dreaded endless Teams chats, the Pro 14 Premium is a pretty comfy partner. The keyboard uses Dell’s zero-lattice layout, which means the keys are tightly packed with no gaps. Key travel is a little on the shallower side, though. Nonetheless, there’s enough tactile feedback to keep the words flowing without finger fatigue.
Adding to the experience is the white backlight underneath the keys. It’s bright enough to make late-night typing painless, yet subtle enough not to feel like you’re working at a disco. Better still, the soft white glow blends beautifully with the grey chassis, giving the laptop that extra dash of refinement. Honestly, it’s a small but classy detail that screams premium. The keyboard also hides a fingerprint scanner inside the power button for quick logins, which worked pretty swiftly in our testing.
The touchpad, however, is a bit of a mixed bag. It’s smooth and responsive, absolutely, but also a little on the smaller side. Compared to the sprawling pads on MacBooks or HP Spectres, this one feels modest. It works fine for casual use, but if you rely heavily on multi-finger gestures, you might find yourself wishing Dell had given it more breathing room.
The webcam, though, is where Dell clearly flexed. The 8MP sensor with IR support (plus a privacy shutter) makes video calls look sharp, bright, and professional. Natural colour tones mean you look like yourself and not like someone who crawled out of a basement. And with Windows Hello facial recognition, logging in feels effortless. For business pros who live on Zoom, this webcam alone feels like a genuine upgrade.
Power in a Slim Package
Under the hood, the Dell Pro 14 Premium flexes an Intel Core Ultra 7 268V, backed by 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM and a 1TB Gen4 NVMe SSD. As such, every day use is buttery smooth. Apps open in a snap, boot times are blink-and-you-miss-it quick, and even with 20 Chrome tabs, Spotify streaming, and a couple of PDFs lurking in the background, the machine doesn’t break a sweat.
Now, yes, Dell went with a Gen4 SSD instead of the fancier Gen5 drives. At this price, I did raise an eyebrow (a very judgmental one). But in practice, the difference isn’t deal-breaking unless you’re obsessed with raw sequential speeds. The overall experience is so fluid that you almost forget the spec sheet.
On the benchmarking front, the laptop did what it was supposed to: deliver. Our runs across Cinebench, Geekbench, PCMark, and 3DMark showed that the Core Ultra 7 268V isn’t just efficient, it’s impressively consistent. The integrated Intel Arc 140V iGPU also surprised us with results that, for an iGPU, were nothing short of impressive.
For context, we pitted it against the HP OmniBook X Flip 14 with Core Ultra 7 258V and the Dell Pro 14 with AMD’s Ryzen AI 7 PRO 350. The 268V easily flexed its muscles, outpacing both rivals in most tests. The biggest win, however, is in the graphics department. The Arc 140V GPU left the AMD Radeon 860M looking like it needed a pep talk, at times scoring double the points. That said, AMD claws back with stronger multi-core results in Cinebench R23/R24 and a clear lead in Geekbench AI runs.
| Benchmark / Laptop Name | Dell Pro 14 Premium | HP OmniBook X Flip 14 | Dell Pro 14 |
| Cinebench R24 MT | 571 | 551 | 741 |
| Cinebench R24 ST | 122 | 121 | 110 |
| Cinebench R23 MT | 8769 | 9130 | 13444 |
| Cinebench R23 ST | 1927 | 1867 | 1862 |
| PCMark 10 | 6779 | 7195 | 6967 |
| PCMark 10 Extended | 7270 | 7613 | 5833 |
| Geek Bench 6 ST | 2827 | 2700 | 2674 |
| Geek Bench 6 MT | 11019 | 11160 | 10678 |
| Geek Bench OpenCL | 30488 | 29334 | 21941 |
| Geek Bench Vulcan | 35810 | 31656 | 24918 |
| CPU - ONNX - Single Precision | 2452 | 2412 | 3531 |
| CPU - ONNX - Half Precision | 1267 | 1223 | 1736 |
| CPU - ONNX - Quantized Score | 4989 | 4832 | 7243 |
| CPU - OpenVINO - Single Precision | 3152 | 3220 | 4594 |
| CPU - OpenVINO - Half Precision | 2215 | 2182 | 4598 |
| CPU - OpenVINO - Quantized Score | 8141 | 8302 | 13028 |
| 3DMark Time Spy Extreme | 2115 | 1885 | 885 |
| 3DMark Time Spy | 4449 | 3739 | 1906 |
| 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra | 2310 | 2272 | 1218 |
| 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme | 4368 | 4250 | 2119 |
| 3DMark Fire Strike | 9236 | 7688 | 3809 |
| 3DMark Night Raid | 34467 | 32096 | 15720 |
Of course, benchmarks only tell half the story. In real life, the Dell Pro 14 Premium feels more than powerful enough for the crowd it's targeting. The Intel Arc graphics aren't here for late-night Cyberpunk marathons, but still, 98 FPS in GTA V and 249 FPS in Valorant (Low, 1080p) isn't too shabby for an ultrabook. Where it truly shines is in light creative work: Photoshop edits are snappy, and basic video editing is perfectly doable. For a premium business ultrabook, it strikes that sweet spot between serious workhorse and a sneaky-fun-loving person.
Power Play with Coffee-Break Charging
Dell slipped in a 60Wh battery, and when you pair that with Intel's efficiency tricks, you're looking at a solid 8–10 hours of mixed use. That's a full workday of emails, browsing, video calls, and a bit of light editing sprinkled in. But we like numbers, not just vibes, so we ran the PCMark 10 Battery Video Loop test (at 80% brightness, Balanced profile). The result? The Dell Pro 14 Premium clocked an impressive 15 hours and 14 minutes. For context, that's even longer than the HP OmniBook X Flip 14, which managed 14 hours and 24 minutes on a slightly smaller 59Wh pack.
OLED also has a neat trick up its sleeve, which is that darker content draws less power. So if your work (or Netflix binges) leans into moody aesthetics, you might squeeze out a little extra juice. And when it's finally time to plug in, the 65W USB-C adapter swoops in with ExpressCharge magic: 0 to 80% in about an hour. So, plug it in at the start of a long client call, and by the time you've sat through all the "this could have been an email" chatter, you're ready to head out fully charged.
Verdict: Worth Its Weight in Lakhs?
In the US, this OLED + Ultra 7 268V variant costs about $2,500. If it lands in India, expect something in the ballpark of ₹2.3 lakh. That's rarefied air in ultrabook pricing, well above "casual buyer" territory. This is squarely aimed at business professionals, C-suite execs, and premium users who want a machine that not only works flawlessly but also doubles as a subtle status symbol. With its OLED screen, lightweight build, and AI-ready chops, the Dell Pro 14 Premium nails the brief. It's not cheap, but if polish and seamless performance matter, it feels worth every rupee.
Now, competition at this level is no joke. For a little over ₹2 lakh, the HP EliteBook 8 G1i is rocking the same Ultra 7 268V. It trades Dell's OLED sharpness for a lower 1200p resolution but fights back with an 800-nit panel and HP Sure View 5 for privacy hawks. Lenovo counters with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13, configurable with the same CPU, a 2.8K OLED 120Hz display, and of course, that legendary ThinkPad keyboard, all for around ₹2.4 lakh. And then there's the Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch: more powerhouse, more battery, more "status symbol" factor, if you're willing to live in macOS land.
So, where does Dell fit in? Right in the sweet spot. The Pro 14 Premium blends understated design, AI-ready performance, a pretty good OLED panel, and excellent reliability and customer service. It's not trying to shout, but it doesn't need to. Think of it as the German sedan of ultrabooks: classy, reliable, and just premium enough to turn heads without being flashy.
Editor's Rating: 8.3 / 10
Pros:
- Stunning OLED display with rich colours
- Lightweight, premium build quality
- Strong CPU and iGPU performance
- Excellent webcam for video calls
Cons:
- 60Hz refresh rate feels dated at this price
- Shallow keyboard travel
- Expensive
