Dell’s new Arm-powered Windows laptop is awesomely affordable

Huzzah! It’s a momentous occasion! For the first time since the disastrous Windows RT days, Dell has rejoined the Windows on Arm party. The laptop manufacturer recently unveiled its first laptop with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 processor, and at just $499 it won’t break the bank.

Laptops with power-efficient Arm processors tend to have stellar battery life and lightweight, fanless builds. They’re designed for people who are always on-the-go. The new Dell Inspiron 14 takes much of the same design cues as other Snapdragon-powered laptops. It’s thin, fanless, and—based on the specs and price—likely a good budget laptop all around.

The Inspiron 14 comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of SSD storage. That’s enough oomph for day-to-day tasks like checking e-mail, browsing the web, watching YouTube, and so on. The 14-inch display has a resolution of 1920×1080 and an aspect ratio of 16:9. The manufacturer even included a spiffy 1080p webcam, which is perfect for videoconferencing calls. The port selection is solid, too. You’re getting two USB Type-C ports, one USB Type-A, a microSD card reader, and a headphone jack.

As far as laptops go, it’s pretty basic, and Arm-based laptops work best with software from the Microsoft Store. However, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Some folks are perfectly happy with a barebones machine. It’s designed for everyday use so if you consider yourself a power user, you should probably look elsewhere. This machine comes in just one configuration. It costs $499.99 and, according to Dell’s webpage, you can expect it to arrive by March 23rd.