Review Summary
Expert Rating
Dell’s XPS lineup is often considered the gold standard for business laptops. And, the sentiment couldn’t be truer for the all-new Dell XPS 14 9440. While plenty of devices compete for a buyer’s attention in the space, the XPS 14 9440 truly stands out, thanks to its svelte design, gorgeous display and capable performance. I’ve been using it for a while, and if you’ve been considering this machine, here’s all you need to know about the new XPS 14 9440.
Table of Contents
Design
I am smitten with Dell’s luxurious design ethos, and the XPS 14 9440 is—in my books—the most stylish consumer-grade business laptop on the market. I expressed my appreciation for the new design direction when I reviewed the Latitude 9450, which was a B2B machine. That said, consumers can readily purchase the XPS 14, which features a robust chassis made of CNC aluminium. The laptop, albeit exceptionally compact, is somewhat heavy and has a dense frame. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t notice any flex or give on the chassis – the hinge offered adequate friction, and the edges didn’t contort when subjected to pressure.
Most notably, the laptop has an ‘invisible’ glass touchpad with no discernible borders or edges. I initially had reservations about the touchpad, but it worked perfectly. I never had any trouble finding the right spot to use it for navigation or multi-finger gestures. The icing on the cake was that it didn’t detract from the laptop’s elegant design, either.
In addition, the keyboard deck feels exorbitantly silky to the touch. The laptop’s edges are flat, too, and the corners have been rounded off, ensuring the device feels comfortable to grip. It is available in two elegant hues, namely Platinum and Graphite. While I can’t speak for the Graphite variant, the Platinum colourway keeps smudges at bay, which is excellent.
Display and Audio
The Dell XPS 14 ships with a remarkably vivid touchscreen OLED display. The panel measures 14.5 inches and is bordered by extremely narrow bezels. Additionally, the screen is incredibly snappy and pixel-dense. To that end, the display sports a 3.2K resolution and refreshes at up to 120Hz, ensuring users revel in fluid animations. The screen gets reasonably bright, too, and I didn’t struggle to use it outdoors, under the sun. Quite frankly, I have no complaints about the XPS 14’s display, which has been my go-to for watching YouTube videos and Netflix series this past month. In addition, the panel does justice to games like Hades, which are replete with vibrant and captivating environments.
I was also elated with the laptop’s top-firing speakers. They provided a roaring sound output that didn’t feel weak or timid. When watching movies on the laptop, the dialogue and the SFX had a fullness to them that completely drew me in. Needless to say, the XPS 14 will serve movie buffs well.
Keyboard, Trackpad and I/O
The Dell XPS 14 9440 has an accommodating keyboard deck with sizeable keys. The layout is eerily similar to the ‘zero-lattice’ deck from the Latitude 9450. As such, you’ll notice that the keys don’t have too much space separating them. While your mileage may vary, I found this layout to my liking, and I could type accurately and speedily moments after setting up the laptop. I will admit, though, that the white LED backlighting sometimes made it difficult to see the legends clearly.
On the flip side, I was delighted with the capacitive function row, which worked flawlessly during my stint with the laptop. Once again, you may prefer physical keys as they offer better tactility. Additionally, they remove the guesswork from the equation, so you’ll definitively know if you’ve pressed a button to invoke an action. That said, the capacitive function row does elevate the laptop’s aesthetics more.
Unfortunately, the XPS 14 lacks a handful of connectors. In particular, it doesn’t come with any Type-A ports or an HDMI connector. Instead, the laptop’s left and right edges house three Thunderbolt 4 connectors, a headphone jack, and a microSDXC card reader. Thankfully, the unit does ship with a dongle in the box which has all the necessary connectors. But, I would’ve liked to see at least one Type-A port on the laptop itself.
Performance and Battery Life
The Dell XPS 14 is available in a handful of configurations. That said, the review unit sent to me comes with Intel’s Core Ultra 7 155H processor. The CPU has been paired with Nvidia’s RTX 4050 GPU with 40W TGP and 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM. Unsurprisingly, the laptop could comfortably handle my routine workload, which involved using Microsoft’s Office suite, Google Chrome and some communication apps like Slack and Teams.
Similarly, the laptop’s GeekBench scores were on par with the competition too. Having said that, the XPS 14 did edge out in GPU-centric benchmarks, which can be attributed to its RTX 4050 GPU. Correspondingly, the laptop’s Time Spy and Time Spy Extreme scores were significantly higher than competing business laptops.
That’s not to say that the device is a capable gaming laptop, though. It can hold its own when running indie games like Hades, Chained Echoes and Hollow Knight. However, the performance takes a big hit when running more demanding titles like Witcher 3, which, even at 1080p resolution and Medium graphics preset, tanks the in-game frame rate to the low twenties.
I noticed this issue crop up when I was zooming through villages and other population-dense areas of the map. The same goes for GTA V, which tops out at around 38FPS at 1200P resolution and High graphics preset. Additionally, the laptop gets quite toasty when under load, with some CPU cores touching 100 degrees. Consequently, while you can get playable FPS on the laptop – especially when leveraging Nvidia’s DLSS tech – the XPS 14 wouldn’t be my top pick for extensive gaming sessions.
I was expecting more from the laptop in the battery department. The XPS 14 can last around six hours off a full charge, which isn’t bad until you factor in the recently launched Snapdragon-powered Windows machines. To give you a better picture, the device ran for around eight hours in our battery loop test. The Snapdragon X Elite-powered Vivobook S 15 OLED lasted over 14 hours in the same test. Needless to say, the XPS 14’s battery life, while not bad, definitely falls short of the competition.
Verdict
The Dell XPS 14 costs Rs 2.5 lakh in India. For its asking price, the laptop ships with a gorgeous OLED display and comes wrapped in an alluring frame. I was quite happy with the laptop’s performance, too, and it could comfortably crunch through routine office work, casual games and handle basic creative tasks like editing photos or 1080p clips. The laptop’s battery life did leave me wanting more, though. If you can look past that, however (and its high MRP), then by all means, go for it: the XPS 14 will not disappoint you.
Editor’s Rating: 8.5 / 10
Pros:
- Gorgeous design
- Capable performance
- Elegant keyboard and trackpad layout
- Stunning OLED display
Cons:
- Can get toasty under load