Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 Review

The Inspiron 14 2-in-1, Dell’s least expensive and bulkiest consumer-grade laptop, has a metal lid, a fingerprint reader, surprisingly good speakers, and a sharp touchscreen that flips into tablet mode. However, closer examination exposes the compromised areas.

Several issues with this laptop make it less desirable than comparable high-end machines, including a poor display, a plastic chassis, a touchpad with a cheap click mechanism, and a heavyweight. The Inspiron 14 2-in-1 has a few drawbacks, but if you can get it for less than its $1,049 MSRP, it could be worth it.

Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 Specification

Crafting and presenting

The Inspiron 14 2-in-1 only comes in one colour, “Mist Blue,” but it is so muted that it’s hard to distinguish the grey matte plastic chassis from the aluminium lid. When you pick up a laptop by its corners, you won’t hear a single creak, and the keyboard won’t budge too much. The 1080p touchscreen’s glossy coating and edge-to-edge glass enhance the laptop’s high-end appearance. The screen’s base folds under the keyboard in clamshell mode to create a higher surface to type. The screen can rotate 360 degrees to become a tablet, and it even works with a stylus (although a pen isn’t provided). However, even at its maximum brightness of 250 nits, this is a screen whose brightness you’ll want to retain at its maximum setting even in brightly lit surroundings. Another telltale sign of a subpar screen was the gradual dimming I saw at the screen’s top.

Mouse and keypad

The Inspiron 14 2-in-1 from Dell has a decent keyboard. The keys aren’t too large or responsive, but they have a pleasing bounce when depressed and don’t have any of the squishy or wobbly qualities of lesser keyboards. They produce almost no noise and have two brightness settings for the accompanying backlighting. The trackpad is a bigger problem, especially for those who would instead use a mouse or trackpad than tap the screen. The trackpad’s click mechanism becomes somewhat rigid at approximately the midpoint, causing it to shake ever so little beneath your finger before you press it down. Despite the touchpad’s exceptionally smooth surface, there is a bit more friction than on ultraportables.

Integrated audio, video, and webcam security

The 720p camera on the Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 is standard fare compared to other Windows laptops. It shoots poor video in low light but works fine for video conferencing in bright settings. The vocals sound thin since the microphone quality isn’t excellent. The camera has a privacy shutter, which is a great feature usually reserved for more expensive notebooks. The fingerprint reader in the keyboard’s power button makes up for the absence of facial recognition capabilities. Another pleasant surprise is the Inspiron 14 2-in-1’s speaker quality, among the loudest and most powerful you’ll hear on a Windows laptop. Videos and conference calls will never again require you to crank the volume to uncomfortable levels just to listen to what’s happening.

Performance

Considering that it has an AMD Ryzen 7 5700U CPU, the Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1’s performance is about par for the course. It’s fast enough for online surfing and document processing and rips through multi-threaded jobs like video encoding. Although I had several programmes open, internet tabs open, and downloads happening simultaneously, the laptop never got hot or noisy. Futuremark’s PCMark 10 test, which mimics various office activities, online surfing, and creative tasks, demonstrated the Inspiron 14 2-in-1’s competence in these areas. It was superior to other 2-in-1 laptops we’ve examined recently, including the HP Envy x360 15 at a comparable price and sporting the same CPU. Despite HP’s laptop regaining the lead in our Handbrake test, which includes transcoding a huge video file, both laptops have a significant advantage over similar 2-in-1s with Intel CPUs. Compared to AMD’s eight-core Ryzen 7 5700U, Intel’s quad-core i7-1165G7 CPU performs poorly in this benchmark.

Conclusion

The Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 delivers a lot for the money, especially considering the frequent price drops that bring it down to the $800 range. It’s a powerful laptop with a flexible display, powerful speakers, and a fingerprint reader for further security. However, the sacrifices you’ll have to make in exchange for the reduced price may prevent you from truly appreciating it, especially the dark display and the stiff touchpad.