Dell’s Follow-Up to the XPS Laptops Is Kind of a Let Down

As a successor to Dell's XPS line, the Dell 14 Premium (DA14250) laptop is a slight disappointment. It's an excellent laptop, but falls short in a couple of areas I wish it didn't. What makes it worthwhile is its Intel Core Ultra 7 CPU, gorgeous OLED display, and long-lasting battery life.

Price and Availability

The Dell 14 Premium (DA14250) laptop is available now from retailers like Dell and Best Buy . My unit's configuration (Intel Core Ultra 7 255H CPU, Intel Arc GPU, 32GB RAM, 3.2K OLED touchscreen display, and 1TB of storage) retails for $2,049.99 on Dell when you build it custom to get the graphite color. The prebuilt models feature Platinum (a silver color). The lowest available configuration (which downgrades storage to 512GB and the display to a 2K non-touch LCD screen) retails for $1,549.99, while the highest possible configuration (Intel Core Ultra 7 265H, Windows 11 Pro, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 GPU, 64GB RAM, 2TB of storage, and 3.2K OLED display) retails for $2,709.99.

Best Buy's configuration (which is the same as mine but in the silver color) retails for $2,099.99.

A No-Fuss Design With Some Quirks

While I'd love to say I absolutely love the design of the Dell 14 Premium (DA14250), Dell made some decisions that I don't prefer. At first glance, the laptop is no frills and straightforward. The graphite color is a pleasant dark gray, and there's certainly nothing showy about this laptop, which will appeal to professionals seeking a standard, sleek build.

The back features a subtle Dell logo, the display has an integrated webcam and a dual microphone array, and the 10keyless chiclet keyboard is fairly spacious and well-laid-out. On either side of the keyboard are the integrated speakers. Besides these usual design features, though, the laptop gets weird from there.

Unfortunately, I don't at all care for the "innovative" decisions Dell made with the Dell 14 Premium (DA14250). What are these, you ask? Well, the top bar above the keyboard is an integrated touchbar (which Dell calls the touch function row). Included in this touchbar is the escape key, the volume and microphone buttons, the backlighting and brightness buttons, the display button (for using multiple displays), and the home, end, insert, and delete buttons.

Most of these buttons would traditionally be keyboard keys, and that's for a good reason. I often grumbled under my breath when I was trying to adjust the display's brightness, the speaker system's volume, or hit the escape button, because I could barely see the options. At the worst times, the backlighting on this bar would dim, and I couldn't see the options I needed, so I'd hit the wrong button. Furthermore, as a writer who uses the delete key quite often, I was very put off that this delete button didn't feel intuitive. Most frustratingly, holding down the delete button was a pain in the butt, as the key would take forever and a day to actually delete a string of text, so I'd often give up and just tap in a million times until it deleted a sentence.

Another gripe for me is the "seamless" touchpad. Dell opted to keep the touchpad completely invisible, so it looks like it doesn't exist at all. I didn't have as much problem using it to navigate, as I know touchpads are always fairly centered underneath the keyboard. However, this seems like a complete waste of money. Why on earth does anyone need an invisible touchpad? It adds nothing to the design, and quite frankly I would've appreciated some additional buttons instead of this choice. As a plus, the keyboard itself feels nicely springy and comfortable and the touchpad functions just fine.

My final complaint is the sharp corners on this thing. When I use this laptop in bed, on my lap, or at a desk, the edges and corners cut into my wrists. Instead of smoothing or rounding out the base, Dell opted to make the edges annoyingly uncomfortable. I'm not really sure why Dell hasn't rethought this design, as I can't be the only one who thinks this. I also complained about discomfort with the Dell XPS 15 from 2023 .

USB-C Thunderbolt 4 Ports Galore

This laptop has plenty of ports, thankfully, but no USB-A ports. Instead, the left side has two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, and the right side has an additional Thunderbolt 4, the 3.5mm microphone/headphone combo jack, and a microSD-card slot.

Each USB-C port has Power Deliver and DisplayPort integrated.

A Beautiful OLED Display

One of the best things about the Dell 14 Premium (DA14250) laptop is its OLED display. It boasts a resolution of 3,200 by 2,000p and a variable refresh rate with a max of 120Hz. I also appreciate that this display has Dell's InfinityEdge, so the housing doesn't take up much of the sides, making the graphics much more immersive.

The colors come through with a gorgeous vibrancy and the contrast looks just as good. Dell claims that this display covers 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, and I'm certain that's fairly accurate. This display nicely captures shades of black and gray. For instance, when watching a dark scene from the movie The Revenant , a dark forest lit by flaming torches didn't get lost in translation. What could have been a lump of murky dark grays was inside a well-balanced scene with the more subtle shades of black that sometimes get lost on other displays. Where blacks had a realistic, slightly blue tinge and shadowy grays displayed some brown undertones.

Actors like Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway looked great on this display, too, such as in the movie Interstellar . Facial features were detailed, crisp, and nuanced.

Game graphics also came through nicely. In Alfred Hitchcock: Vertigo , the contrast of colors was particularly stunning in scenes like a farmhouse, crop fields, and a cliffside sunset.

The display's touchscreen was sensitive enough to use for many actions, as well, and I regularly used it instead of the touchpad to navigate and scroll.

Great Multitasking Performance

I'm a big multitasker when I'm working, and I took the Dell 14 Premium (DA14250) to its limit to test out its Intel Core Ultra 7 255H CPU . With 32GB of RAM and 16 cores and threads, there isn't a lot that this laptop can't handle.

For more of my everyday computing work, the Dell 14 Premium (DA14250) killed it. Whether I was browsing the web, editing photos, listening to music, or researching information for articles before switching to a word processing program.

The only blip I noticed was, occasionally, Photoshop was slow to load, even when I didn't have many other programs idle. It was also sometimes a bit slower than I used to in the editing process.

Testing the Intel Core Ultra 7 255H processor's true multitasking power, I had at one time a blistering combination of programs open. Included was Spotify (which was actively streaming), Photoshop with a photo in the queue, the Steam and Xbox apps both installing games, ChatGPT running idle, Slack running, and several browser tabs.

I expected more of a problem than I ran into, honestly. Instead, the Dell 14 Premium pretty much handled it with as much finesse as possible. Key problems included sluggish movements in a Google Docs browser tab and Photoshop taking a couple of minutes to load photos. Not too shabby, and most people won't try to run that many programs at one time (it's frankly a bit unhinged). This CPU has more than enough power for the average Joe who works from home or needs a solid business laptop.

Disappointing Gaming Performance, but Okay for Casual Games

The GPU is where I would, personally, fork over more money for an upgraded configuration of the Dell 14 Premium (DA14250) laptop. To make this laptop more affordable for some, the lower-priced configurations come with an Arrow Lake IGP (integrated graphics processor) instead of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050.

Unfortunately, my experience with this GPU wasn't great for gaming, despite the fact that Arrow Lake recently got a speed boost . My configuration was fine for playing more casual games with low to moderate resource requirements. For moderate resource requirements, I kept the graphics settings on low.

If you opt not to upgrade the Dell 14 Premium to the NVIDIA GPU, keep in mind that casual games are about all you'll do here. The upgrade to the RTX 4050 is an extra $100 on Dell's website. For me, that cost would be worth the return, and I'd expect a performance more similar to past Dell laptops with NVIDIA GPUs, such as the Dell XPS 17 .

I was able to play some casual games with low resource requirements, such as Island of Mara and Alfred Hitchcock: Vertigo , well. Other casual games, like Disney Dreamlight Valley , also played smoothly. While playing Dreamlight , I saw ranges from 60 to 115fps with graphics settings on high to ultra. That's sort of where the pleasantness stopped, though.

This GPU simply cannot handle newer games with heavier resource requirements (and nor should you expect it to). Still, I tried just to see what would happen, and got dismal results. Grounded 2 (the preview version), Avowed , and Control: Ultimate Edition were unplayable—there was laggy panning and the FPS was in the absolute gutter.

In short, this configuration isn't great for gaming unless you want to stick to games like Stardew Valley or older titles that don't hog all the juice from the Intel Arc GPU.

The Speakers, Camera, and Microphones

Despite its quad speaker system with a total of 8W (2W main with two channels, 2W tweeters with two channels), the Dell 14 Premium leaves me unimpressed in terms of audio. Overall, this speaker system puts out a great level of volume, but the sound quality isn't quite there.

Present is my usual complaint with subpar laptop speakers—a slightly boxy quality to the sound and a dismal lack of bass that leaves the audio sounding imbalanced. This boxy sound is much worse at higher volumes. The sweet spot seems to hover somewhere around the 60 to 65% volume mark, where the boxy sound is less noticeable and the imbalances in sound aren't as detectable.

Going above 70% makes the trebles and mids too strong as I strain to hear any bass. I noticed this in several different genres of music and while streaming movies. I could hardly make out the acoustic guitar parts above Jonah Kagen's vocals in God Needs the Devil or Later Now's instrumentals above the rest of the mix in Begging in a Tailored Suit , for instance. When switching to music with a more gutsy sound, I was jarred by a different problem. Currents' song Better Days had a grating quality, as the electric guitar came through sounding way too harsh.

This is all to say, these speakers disappointed me. They're serviceable for streaming movies and playing games, but I skipped listening to music on this laptop after testing the audio.

The 1080p FHD RGB-IR camera is average, but good. When on video calls, I came through nice and crisp with just a slightly grainy appearance. The webcam handles dim lighting scenarios fairly well, but nothing above average.

The quality of photos is nice as well, though not as crisp as selfies taken with your average smartphone, of course, as this webcam only outputs 2MP pictures.

As for the microphones, the dual array setup does an excellent job of capturing my voice and keeping it at the forefront (though at times I wish they could capture a bit more volume). Even when I was somewhere extremely noisy, my voice came through loud and clear. In some instances, however, the integrated IntelliGo noise reduction was a bit heavy-handed and made my voice sound too muffled. I bypassed noise cancellation for video chatting, and I think most people would prefer this to get the clearest sound out of these microphones.

Microphone Test on the Dell 14 Premium (DA14250) Laptop in a Noisy Environment

Microphone Test on the Dell 14 Premium (DA14250) Laptop in a Quiet Environment

Excellent Battery Life

The Dell 14 Premium (DA14250) has an excellent battery life, partially thanks to the efficiency of the Intel CPU. I used the laptop in Balanced and Best Power Efficiency modes the most, and averaged a 0.23% drain per minute, which is about 13% per hour. When I used Best Performance mode, it was closer to a 23% per hour drain, depending on how heavily I was using the laptop.

The charging rate was also great, with about a 0.90% gain per minute, resulting in a 54% charge boost in an hour.

Should You Buy the Dell 14 Premium (DA14250) Laptop?

The Dell 14 Premium (DA14250) laptop is a great buy for a specific clientele. Professionals who want a 3.2K OLED display, an outstanding CPU, and excellent battery life will love this laptop.

However, the Arrow Lake IGP isn't fantastic. If it were me, I'd upgrade to the NVIDIA GPU. Its other faults include a disappointing speaker system, odd design choices, and an uncomfortable build. If you can overlook those things, this laptop is still a solid choice. If you can't, I'd go with a competitor and peruse our best laptops lineup.