JANUARY 2022 PCWorld 45Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1PROS- Sturdy construction and keyboard.
- Great performance for the price.
- Loud, punchy speakers.
CONS - Display doesn’t get very bright.
- Stiff, poorly built touchpad.
- Middling microphone quality.
BOTTOM LINE
Dell’s convertible Inspiron has high-end laptop
features for roughly $1,000, but with a few notable
downsides.
$1,049
consistent brightness level. Dell’s laptop
lasted for 11 hours and 17 minutes, which is
neither bad nor great. Outside of test
conditions, you may be able to squeeze a full
workday out of this laptop, but you’ll likely
want to pack the charger just in case.
Meanwhile, AMD’s integrated Radeon
graphics still aren’t made for serious gaming,
but I was able to eke out a session of Fortnite
at medium graphics settings and 50%
display scaling. And, of course, less
demanding games like the 2D platformer
Axiom Verge 2 worked just fine. Still, I’ve had
better gaming experiences with the Iris Xe
graphics in Intel Core i7-powered laptops
and our 3DMark Time Spy test shows that
these laptops tend to
fare better in gaming
benchmarks as well.
Overall, this Dell
Inspiron 14 2-in-1
offers a lot to like,
especially at its oft-
discounted price of
$800. It’s a sturdy
laptop with strong
performance, a
convertible
touchscreen, loud
speakers, and a
convenient fingerprint
reader. But the trade-
offs you’ll make in
pursuit of that lower
price—most notably the dim display and stiff
trackpad—might just keep you from outright
loving it.There’s a lot to like about the Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1.