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With the Dell XPS 14, you get an Ultrabook that includes discrete graphics, a third generation Intel Core i7 CPU, and up to half a terabyte of storage, with SSD acceleration on the side. It's designed for business or home users who want as much grunt as they can get from a relatively thin and light computer, and it can even be used for a little bit of gaming in addition to media encoding tasks and typical office work. However, it's not a perfect Ultrabook; ours was affected by a couple of problems that made the notebook annoying to use during our review period.
As mentioned previously, the XPS 14 has a chassis that’s difficult to open for a regular end user, so the battery like Dell Studio 1737 battery, Dell 312-0712 battery, Dell Inspiron 1410 battery, Dell Vostro A860 battery, Dell Vostro 1088 battery, Dell Studio 1436 battery, Dell WT873 battery, Dell Studio 1435 battery, Dell Inspiron 1545 battery, Dell 451-10690 battery, Dell Inspiron 910 battery, Dell Vostro A90N battery can’t be easily replaced. It has a powerful battery though, with eight cells and a rating of 69 Watt-hours. It lasted 3hr 43min in our rundown test, in which we disable power management, maximise screen brightness, enable Wi-Fi and loop an Xvid-encoded video. This is a good result considering the very high brightness of the 14in screen (which is rated at 400 nits). You can get a lot more life out of it if you use a lower screen brightness and don’t perform many CPU-intensive tasks. We got over five hours out of it when we used the lowest brightness setting while browsing the Web, watching the odd YouTube clip, writing documents and listening to MP3 files now and then. The notebook uses the integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics when running on battery.
With a large palm rest (it’s 93mm deep) and a chiclet keyboard with mostly full-sized keys, the XPS 14 is a comfortable Ultrabook to type on. The palm rest has a very soft feel to it and is only slightly rougher in texture than the touchpad. The keys are backlight (there are two levels of intensity) and they are responsive. They do feel a little bit shallow, but we found that we got used to them the longer we typed. The arrow keys are only half-height, but they stand out from the other keys and are easy to feel for. The page up and page down keys are secondary functions of the up and down arrows and require the Fn key to be pressed — this takes more time to get accustomed to.
The touchpad is a large one at 100x72mm and it feels good to use, although its texture could stand to be a little smoother. It was responsive and accurate during our test period and it performed multi-finger gestures without any problems. Because the pad is so big, it’s great for four-finger swipes as well, so you can show the Desktop and switch between applications with swift actions. The left- and right-click buttons are concealed under the pad and they worked well for us during click-and-drag operations. However, the bottom half of the touchpad sometimes felt like it was double-clicking on its own, a bit like it was catching on something as we pressed it.
As for the screen, its 1600x900-pixel resolution is on par with other high-end Ultrabooks, such as the Samsung Series 9, and it’s extremely bright, but the problem is that its viewing angles just aren’t good enough. Vertical angles can cause dramatic changes in contrast, which means that viewing photos and watching movies on this laptop can sometimes be a pain — we regularly had to adjust the screen to get better definition in the display. That said, viewing the screen from either side was not a problem, but since we sit in front the screen and not off to the side, we deem the vertical viewing angles to be of more importance.
Another thing we noticed was a dynamic contrast issue that we couldn’t disable, either in the graphics properties or the power settings. The screen dimmed slightly whenever we switched from a predominantly white window to a mostly dark window, and then got brighter again when we switched back to the white window. It was only a subtle change, but it become very frustrating. We’ve asked Dell about it and will update this review with any possible solutions.
We feel that the Dell XPS 14 is an Ultrabook that could have been so much better than it is. It needs a screen with better vertical viewing angles (and IPS screen would be ideal) and some refinement to iron out annoying little usability issues, such as the dynamic contrast issue and the unreliable hibernation feature — it could also use a USB port on its right side. Shoving these issues to the side, we like the build quality of the unit, the input devices are comfortable to use and the performance was fast. It’s a laptop that provides good portability along with that performance and the inclusion of a Gigabit Ethernet port and TPM make it a fine choice for business users (glossy screen notwithstanding). It’s not a must-have Ultrabook, but if you’re in the market for good mobility and performance (especially for 3D graphics), then check it out.