The Dell 14S also has more conventional ports than some of the more premium laptops out there. 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 had placed one of the Thunderbolt 4 ports on the right side, so the laptop could be charged from both sides.

Tough competition

Photography: Luke Larsen

The high-end configurations of the Dell 14S don’t make much sense, especially since this laptop has a lot in common with the Dell XPS 14. For $1,469, it comes with an eight-core Intel Core Ultra 7 355 processor, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. Notably, that’s 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 interesting silicon of 2026, the Core Ultra X7 or X9, but it will cost you a lot. The Core Ultra 7 355 is more modest, although it will certainly be plenty powerful for most users. The extra GPU performance on the X7 and X9 is really only necessary for gamers or content creators. According to my testing, 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, like the one found in the Dell 14 Plus. The company still sells that device at a starting price of $860, and that’s the problem. The Dell 14S I tested was 14 percent faster in graphics performance, which isn’t too noticeable.

However, the battery life is incredible. This is due to the fact that this laptop uses Intel’s latest Core Series Ultra Series 3 chips, which are much more efficient than in previous years. In my local video playback test, it took 20 hours for battery life to drop by 50 percent. Its battery backup is still not as good as Qualcomm-powered laptops. Lost half the battery life when left unplugged with the lid closed for a few days.