Dell XPS 14 (2024) review: Style and substance come at too high a price

IDG / Mark Knapp

IDG / Mark Knapp

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    </div></figure><p class="imageCredit">IDG / Mark Knapp</p></div>

The design of the Dell XPS 14 calls for a lot of aluminum and glass, and in that way, it has much in common with the latest smartphones. The whole exterior is wrapped up in metal, which Dell says is 75 percent recycled aluminum. The display is covered up in Gorilla Glass Victus, a hard glass made to resist scratches and cracks that should be more than up the abuse it’ll get from frequent touchscreen use. The newer trackpad design, which effectively hides the trackpad sees the whole area under the keyboard covered in a single piece of Gorilla Glass 3. 

It’s a regal look that can certainly go toe to toe with Apple’s MacBook Air, right down to the wedge-like design. The XPS 14 has sneaky ventilation slits along the bottom sides and porting out just below the display — a design that risks creating a bottleneck for heat escape if the lid is open enough to touch whatever table or desk it sits on. 

Dell’s design is sleek, but has points of contention. With the remodel in 2022, Dell shifted to a new keyboard design that’s present on the XPS 14. This uses perfectly square, rather flat keys with minimal gaps between one another that can take some getting used to. The stealthy trackpad also can be tricky to find the bounds of. Then there’s the function row, which is now a series of illuminated capacitive buttons that show either secondary functions or F1-12. Dell says this allows for more cooling underneath the keys, but it doesn’t make getting used to capacitive buttons any easier. They simply don’t have the haptic feedback of an actual key. 

Where the XPS 13 sees its keyboard run all the way to the sides of the laptop, the XPS 14 has a little extra space and fits top-firing speakers in at the sides, just like the XPS 16 I tested but a little smaller. The bezels around the display are thin, even at the bottom thanks to the 16:10 aspect ratio, but Dell still managed to squeeze a discreet Windows Hello-capable webcam above the screen.

Overall, the build of the laptop feels sturdy and well put together, though the premium materials come with their own downsides. Despite being a thin laptop, the Dell XPS 14 weighs in at 3.95 pounds, effectively reversing the trend of laptops towards lighter and lighter weights. The iGPU-only model should be lighter, but I also have a 14-inch Lenovo Legion Slim 5 14APH8 with an RTX 4060 inside that weighs less than the XPS 14.

Dell XPS 14 (2024): Keyboard, trackpad

IDG / Mark Knapp

            <div class="lightbox-image-container foundry-lightbox"><div class="extendedBlock-wrapper block-coreImage undefined"><figure class="wp-block-image size-large enlarged-image"><img decoding="async" data-wp-bind--src="selectors.core.image.enlargedImgSrc" data-wp-style--object-fit="selectors.core.image.lightboxObjectFit" src="" alt="Dell XPS 14 keyboard" class="wp-image-2309655" width="1200" height="675" loading="lazy" /></figure><p class="imageCredit">IDG / Mark Knapp</p></div>

    </div></figure><p class="imageCredit">IDG / Mark Knapp</p></div>

I’ve had some time to get used to Dell’s new keyboard design, having tested the first XPS 13 Plus and more recently the Dell XPS 16. But no matter how I come at it, I can’t quite get past the discomfort of it. Between the minimal dish of the caps and the very tight spacing — such that you can’t feel the edge of a key without also having a finger overlap the neighboring key — it’s difficult to ever feel quite at home on. 

In use, I was able to reach a typing speed of 118 words per minute in Monkeytype with 95 percent accuracy. While the speed is sufficient, the accuracy is an issue, and low enough that autocorrect isn’t likely to clean up every mistake. While it might seem decent, the Dell Inspiron 14 Plus, with its more basic keyboard design, let me reach 128 words per minute with 100 percent accuracy within minutes of picking it up. More than a week into testing the XPS 14, and I can’t even come close. The switches are poppy and have surprisingly high actuation force, which helps keep the keyboard from feeling even less predictable.

The capacitive function row is no more pleasant to use. Tapping the Delete key more than once is awkward, as it provides no feedback, and it often misses taps in a series. Hitting Ctrl + Shift + Esc is also incredibly awkward when one of the keys in that shortcut isn’t a key at all.

As on the XPS 16, the XPS 14 trackpad is gigantic. It’s close to the size of the 6.8-inch smartphone screens out there. Even though it’s impossible to feel out the edges of the trackpad area, it almost doesn’t matter since it’s so large that anywhere you’re likely to touch it will still register. With excellent palm rejection and pleasing haptics, it’s a solid piece of hardware. It can be a little hard to double-click on, but double-tapping is just as viable. If Dell was going to change anything, I’d just want to see it go even wider (all the way to the sides, ideally), for more ergonomic mousing. That would be especially helpful in select cases, as XPS 14 has a tendency to ignore any swipes that start from outside the actual trackpad region, though it’s somewhat inconsistent on the matter. 

Dell XPS 14 (2024): Display, audio