Dell XPS 14 2024 review - The multimedia laptop with the slowest RTX 4050 Laptop in the world

The new XPS' design is strongly inspired by last year's XPS 13 Plus. The old models' wedge-shaped design has been kept and Dell offers the device in Platinum or Graphite (dark gray). The base unit is tapered at the front, giving it the impression of being a slimmer device but when you pick it up, it becomes obvious how heavy it is and in general, how bulky the case actually is. Visually, the new XPS 14 makes a good impression and as soon as you open the lid, the continuous glass palm rest without a visible touchpad and the white keyboard without any spaces between the keys dominate. Fingerprints are not a problem on the palm rest, but you can see some slight marks on the lid.

The aluminium case's quality is outstanding, as the base unit cannot be dented or warped and we noted no creaking noises. The display is just as stable and the hinges have been set well, meaning it only wobbles a tiny bit when you adjust the lid's angle (max. 135 degrees). However, the shape of the front edge makes it difficult to open the lid with one hand.

The XPS 14 weighs almost 1.8 kg and it's also comparatively thick, measuring 19 mm. This makes it one of the heftiest devices within our comparison group—only the Surface Laptop Studio with its foldable screen is slightly thicker and heavier. Plus, the Blade 14 is slightly heavier but not quite as thick. Even the MacBook Pro, which appears quite hefty due to its design, is around 3.5 mm thinner. The 100-watt power supply adds another 352 grams to the scales.

Despite its relatively thick base unit, Dell relies solely on USB-C connections, all of which support Thunderbolt 4. The scope of delivery includes a small docking station with a USB-A connection as well as an HDMI output. In total, the new XPS 14 9440 trails behind the comparison devices and even the MacBook features an HDMI output directly attached to the device.

The right side of the device features a microSD card reader (feather mechanism) which takes in the compact memory cards almost completely. In combination with our reference card (Angelbird AV Pro V60), its transfer rates reached a maximum of around 200 MB/s and when copying image files, we measured a good 144 MB/s.

The WLAN module from Intel (AX211) supports the Wi-Fi 6E standard in 6-GHz frequencies and during our WLAN test using our reference router from Asus, its transfer rates were very high and stable. We also noted no problems when using other routers during this test. On the other hand, the XPS 14 9440 doesn't support Wi-Fi 7.

Dell has installed a 1080p webcam into the top of the display frame, as well as an IR camera for facial recognition via Windows Hello. The webcam's quality is fine in good lighting conditions. Furthermore, the camera supports studio effects (background soft focus, eye tracking, auto framing) as part of its operating system, meaning it works irrespective of which application is being used.

The new XPS 14 9440 is exclusively available with the new Core-Ultra-7 mobile processors (155H & 165H) from Intel and at most, the XPS can be equipped with 64 GB RAM—this is oftentimes not the case with its competitors. When it comes to RAM, you are faced with some limitations if you decide to go for a model without a GeForce GPU, as then you'll have to make do with slower LDPPR5-6400 RAM and a maximum of 32 GB. The faster LPDDR5x-7467 RAM is reserved for the dGPU models, although the integrated Arc iGPU would benefit from this in particular. 

Dell offers various energy profiles that can also be combined with the Windows performance settings. The default profile is Optimized, which we also used for the following benchmarks and measurements. The CPU's performance can be increased slightly with the Ultra Performance profile, but there are no differences in GPU performance and the RTX 4050 Laptop's maximum TGP is just 30 watts (although it is 40 watts according to the driver).

The Core Ultra 7 155H belongs to Intel's current Meteor Lake generation, offering a total of 16 cores (22 threads) with six fast performance cores that can clock at up to 4.8 GHz. This is the successor model to the Core i7-13700H and as there are no longer any P-series chips, the new Core Ultra 7 155H covers a further TDP area of 28-115 watts. In the case of the XPS 14 9440, the processor is able to consume up to 64 watts for a short time, after which its consumption quite quickly sinks to 30 watts. This means our test device was only able to succeed over the competitor devices during short tests, while under longer periods of load, its multi-core performance sank noticeably (approx. 30 %). Only the Acer Swift X was even slower in this case.

The new XPS often had to admit defeat to its competitors when it came to single-core performance, too—but this is a general problem the new Meteor Lake processors have to deal with. Of course, its performance is good enough for everyday use but as a customer, you can't help but ask why you don't get any better performance despite its thicker case and expensive price tag. 

In battery use, the processor quickly sinks from 64 to 28 watts and its multi-core performance is around 12 % worse. Further CPU benchmarks can be found in our tech section.

Subjectively, its performance is very good—but this is the case with virtually all expensive modern laptops. We faced no problems during the test, however, the competition came considerably ahead of the new XPS 14 9440 during the synthetic benchmarks.