Dell 14 Plus review: Premium build and all-day battery at ₹85000, is it enough?

When I held the Dell 14 Plus in my hands, I had very moderate expectations for what appeared to be another AI laptop in the competitive ₹80,000 category. It is powered by a Ryzen AI processor with the same promises every AI laptop makes. After using this laptop for more than two weeks, I found some strong points. Let’s discuss all of them in this review while also identifying the areas that require improvement.

Dell 14 Plus: Design and build quality

The first thing that struck me when I unboxed the Dell 14 Plus was its Ice Blue aluminium construction. The chassis genuinely feels premium and sturdy in your hands; the finish on the lid is also smooth to the touch. This metallic finish is on all the sides of the laptop, including the lid, the deck and the back.

The laptop is thin with rounded edges and weighs only 1.52 kg, very comfortable to carry with or without a backpack. The hinge mechanism deserves special praise; the hinge is firm with zero wobbles on the lid. Despite the hinge being firm, the laptop can easily be opened with one finger, which is amazing.

Dell 14 Plus: Keyboard and trackpad

One area where Dell has clearly invested effort is the keyboard. This backlit keyboard with a fingerprint sensor and Copilot key feels responsive and comfortable, making it ideal for extended typing sessions. The layout is also perfect; there is a fingerprint sensor on the top right and a Copilot key to launch the Copilot assistant quickly.

If you are coming from a MacBook, you will notice the long key travel on these keys. But if you can go past that, it is a really nice and silent keyboard. The trackpad is also very basic, with a decent area and comes with clicky buttons. I prefer a glass top trackpad for a smoother experience at this price, if not a heptic one.

Dell 14 Plus: Performance and heating

At heart, Dell 14 Plus is powered by the AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 processor, which is an 8-core and 16-thread processor. With a base clock of 2 GHz with a boost of up to 5.0 GHz, this chipset can run efficiently or at full performance mode according to the requirement. Since this is a Copilot Plus PC, this chipset is equipped with an NPU to handle all the AI-related tasks efficiently and quickly.

Synthetic benchmarks suggest that this is a powerful CPU and that converts correctly in real-life usage as well. The laptop handles every task easily and multitasks seamlessly, thanks to the 16GB LPDDR5 RAM. While this CPU comes on top in single-core performance at this price, it lacks significantly in multi-core performance.

I wasn’t expecting this from an AMD CPU, but when compared to Intel Core Ultra 7 255H-powered laptops, which come at about the same price tag, it lags way behind in multicore. Even in Cinebench, I saw the same type of results.

Heating

Now for the heating, the laptop stays absolutely quiet and cool when on battery. Using the laptop while plugged in does create some heat, and the fan speed ramps up too. I kept the performance setting to Optimised in both situations and got the same results. The left half of the laptop gets hot to the touch while the right side stays cool.

What good is that as soon as you unplug the laptop, it cools down quickly, and the fan also goes back to its minimal speed. And during this heating up and cooling down, the performance stays consistent with no throttling or stutters.

Graphics and gaming

The Integrated GPU, the Radeon 860M, comes with 512GB of dedicated VRAM and 8GB shared memory. It is not the most powerful dedicated GPU I have come across in a non-gaming laptop lately, but it can handle most of the Indie games with decent frame rates.

Dell 14 Plus: Display and speakers

Dell 15 Plus comes with a 14-inch display with FHD+ resolution and a 16:10 aspect ratio. The brightness is good enough, and the anti-glare coating on the display helps with reflections, making the outdoor visibility a lot better.

The display is best for office work and multimedia consumption, but if you are planning to do some serious photo or video editing, you might find yourself wanting more from it. Although the speakers are really good, they come with Dolby Atmos and offer some depth in the close vicinity of the laptop.

Dell 14 Plus: Software, storage and connectivity

Dell 14 Plus runs on Windows 11 Home, and to my surprise, it is the cleanest version of Windows I have seen on any laptop. There are only four Dell apps installed, out of which only one runs in the background; the rest only run when you want them to. The storage is NVMe, it is PCIe Gen 4, and the speeds are great.

Connectivity options are practical if not extraordinary: two USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports with DisplayPort and Power Delivery, one USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port, HDMI 1.4, and a universal audio jack. I would have preferred HDMI 2.1 and an SD card reader.

Dell 14 Plus: Battery life

Battery life is where the Dell 14 Plus truly shines; the battery life has been amazing during my usage. I got 10 hours easily with a fully charged battery while keeping it on optimised settings. Dell’s optimisation of the Ryzen AI 7 350 chip’s power efficiency really shows here, making it a great all-day machine for casual users. Type C charging is pretty convenient too, so you can use any 65-watt USB-C charger apart from what you got in the box to charge the laptops.

​Dell 14 Plus: pros and cons

Pros

• Premium build quality
• Exceptional battery life
• Powerful AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 processor
• Comfortable keyboard
• Good thermal management

Cons

• Average display quality
• Limited graphics performance
• No Windows Hello face unlock

Dell 14 Plus: Final thoughts

Dell 14 Plus is not a headturner for its looks, features or benchmarking topping scores, but what it excels at is being reliable for a long haul. At ₹84,889, you are getting a laptop with great build quality, long battery life and decent performance. If your priorities are battery endurance, portability and reliable performance for office workflows, this laptop delivers confidently.