Dell Inspiron 14 Plus (7441) review: entry-level Snapdragon

Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs continue to roll out, and so far are built around Windows on Arm running on Qualcomm Snapdragon X chipsets. Most have used the faster Snapdragon X Elite, but there’s also the Snapdragon X Plus that’s the entry-level chipset presumably aimed at less expensive machines.

The Dell Inspiron 14 Plus 7441 is the first laptop we’ve reviewed using that chipset, which hasn’t been as commonly used as the Snapdragon X Elite. Unfortunately, the combination of this chip and this laptop at this price doesn’t offer quite enough to beat its competitors.

Specs and configurations

The Inspiron 14 Plus 7441 has several configurations, starting at $1,000 for a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus chipset, 16GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and a 14.0-inch QHD+ IPS display. With this chipset, you can upgrade to a 512GB SSD for $100 more. If you choose the faster Snapdragon X Elite chipset, then you’re automatically upgraded to 1TB of storage for a price of $1,200.

These are similar prices to some other Microsoft Copilot+ laptops, including the HP OmniBook X that’s $1,250 for the same high-end configuration, but with a lower-resolution 2.2K IPS display, and the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x that’s $1,244 with a 2.8K OLED display.

The Inspiron 14 Plus 7441 has a lower entry-level price, however, only matched by the Surface Laptop 7th Edition and Surface Pro 11th Edition.

The Apple MacBook Air M3, perhaps the main competition for the new platform, starts at $1,099 with an M3 chipset, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and a 13.6-inch 2560 x 1664 IPS display. When configured the same as the Inspiron 14 Plus, the MacBook Air M3 is $1,699, making it considerably more expensive.

Design

Technically speaking, the Inspiron 14 Plus 7441 belongs to Dell’s midrange lineup. That means it’s aimed at a different crowd than the Dell XPS 13 (7345) that’s a lot more expensive. And you can tell, especially with both laptops sitting side by side. The XPS 13 feels a lot more rigid, especially in the lid. Both are made of aluminum, but the Inspiron 14 Plus 7441 just doesn’t have the same kind of solid feel. It’s a little less solid than the HP OmniBook X, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x, and the MacBook Air M3 — although the latter has some of the same kind of flexing in the lid.

The Inspiron is also the simpler and, frankly, less attractive of these competitive laptops. It has rather mundane lines and minimalist color scheme. It’s a little hard to quantify, but the Inspiron 14 Plus 7441 just seems like the outlier among a bunch of more modern-looking machines. I’ll write part of that off to the large top and bottom display bezels, not to mention that the bezels are plastic all around. That by itself makes the Inspiron seem very much like a midrange machine. It might not be entirely fair, but that’s just the way it seemed to me.

Another nod to its midrange status is the Inspiron 14 Plus 7441’s dimensions. It’s around the same width and depth as the OmniBook X, which also has a 14-inch display and similar-sized bezels, but it’s considerably thicker at 0.66 inches versus 0.57 inches. It’s also heavier at 3.17 pounds versus 2.97 pounds. The Yoga Slim 7x beats them both at 0.51 inches and 2.82 inches, while the MacBook Air 13 with a smaller 13.6-inch display is just 0.44 inches thick and 2.7 pounds.

There’s not a lot to fault in the Inspiron’s design, but it also doesn’t stand out to me among its peers. It’s a safe design, but not an impressive one.

Keyboard and touchpad

The keyboard is the typical island style with large keycaps and plenty of spacing. I found the switches to be deep enough, but a bit spongey. I didn’t get the kind of satisfying snap as with the XPS 13’s zero-lattice keyboard or Apple’s Magic Keyboard. I wouldn’t hate typing on this keyboard for long writing sessions, but I wouldn’t love it, either.

The mechanical touchpad was fine. It’s large enough, and swiping was precise with good palm rejection. But the button clicks were a bit stiff and loud. The MacBook Air M3’s haptic Force Touch touchpad is so much better, while the XPS 13’s haptic touchpad works well if you can get past its hidden edges (or, rather, you don’t go past its hidden edges while using it).

The Inspiron 14 Plus 7441 also comes with a touch display, which is welcome. There’s only one display option, so you get touch whether you want it or not.

Connectivity and webcam

The webcam runs at 1080p, which is becoming the new baseline. It worked fine, and the Neural Processing Unit (NPU) in the Qualcomm chipset runs at a fast 45 tera operations per second (TOPS) and exceeds the Copilot+ PC specification of 40 TOPS.

Right now, that means mostly support for enhanced Microsoft Studio Effects and then a few other features including Live Captions and Cocreator with generative AI functionality. The standout and highly controversial Copilot+ feature, Recall, has been postponed for now.

There’s an infrared camera for Windows 11 Hello facial recognition, as well as a fingerprint reader. Both methods worked quickly and reliably for logging in.

Performance

The Inspiron 14 Plus 7440 can be configured with either the faster Snapdragon X Elite or the slower Snapdragon X Plus X1P-64-100. We’ve reviewed several laptops with the faster version, and the Inspiron is the first built around the slower chipset.

To begin with, the Snapdragon X Plus has 10 cores (six performance and four efficient) compared to the Snapdragon X Elite with 12 cores (eight performance and four efficient). The Snapdragon X Plus runs at up to 3.4GHz, the same as the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 and X1E-80-100 that we’ve reviewed in some other laptops. Like the X1E-80-100, the Snapdragon X Plus doesn’t have a dual-core boost.

Also like the entry-level Snapdragon X Elite, the Snapdragon X Plus has the slower Adreno GPU that runs at up to 3.8 teraflops (TFLOPS) compared to the 4.6 teraflops TFLOPS for the fastest Qualcomm chipsets. That means its graphics performance will be less.

In our benchmarks, the Inspiron 14 Plus 7441 was noticeably slower than the other Copilot+ laptops we’ve reviewed so far. It was also slower than the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H machines and more in line with the Lenovo ThinkBook 13x Gen 4 running the slower Core Ultra 5 125H. The Inspiron was also slower than the Apple MacBook Air M3. And strangely enough, of all the new Windows on Arm laptops I’ve reviewed, the fan on the Inspiron 14 Plus 7441 spun up more often and was louder, even though its performance wasn’t as good.

Overall, I’d say the Inspiron is good enough for most productivity users, but it’s not the fastest laptop and some power users might find it too slow. Certainly, it’s not fast enough for creators or games, but really none of these laptops with integrated Adreno or Intel Arc graphics are, either. And note that I’ve only reported on native benchmarks here. Performance in benchmarks that run via emulation will be slower, and the same goes for any applications that don’t run natively.

Battery life

The Inspiron 14 Plus 7441 has 54 watt-hours of battery capacity, which is a little on the low end for 14-inch laptops. But it also has an IPS display, which is more efficient than the OLED display you’ll find on the Yoga Slim 7x and the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge 16.

Given the lesser performance of the Snapdragon X Plus, I was expecting to see better battery life — although I’m not sure Qualcomm makes that claim. Although the Inspiron did about as well in our video-looping test (or at least similar to other Copilot+ laptops), it was behind in our web-browsing test. It was behind the Intel Meteor Lake laptops in our comparison group as well, which was a surprise. It lasts longer than most Intel laptops that average around seven or eight hours in this test, but not a lot longer.

But, in the very demanding Cinebench 2024 battery test, it lasted a bit longer than the other Qualcomm laptops. That implies more efficiency under load, which would be an argument for the chipset over the X Elite.

Ultimately, the Inspiron 14 Plus 7441 has good battery life, but it’s a bit disappointing given the chipset’s slower overall performance. And once again, the MacBook Air M3 is the longest lasting when you’re doing actual work — and not just when really pushing it.

Display and audio

Dell offers one display option with the Inspiron 14 Plus 7441: a QHD+ (2560 x 1600) IPS panel. That’s plenty sharp, but the refresh rate of 60Hz is starting to seem a little slow. While that’s not too surprising for a $1,000 laptop, the Surface Laptop 7th Edition offers a 120Hz refresh rate at that same price. Subjectively, the display looked fine though, with more than enough brightness, good colors, and decent blacks.

My colorimeter confirmed my impressions. Brightness was very good at 513 nits and contrast was outstanding for an IPS display at a 2,200:1 contrast ratio. Those obliterate our old baselines for quality IPS displays of 300 nits and 1,000:1 contrast ratio, and frankly, most recent IPS panels are a lot better. We’ll need to update our baselines.

Colors, though, were closer to the traditional IPS average at 100% of sRGB, 76% of AdobeRGB, and 75% of DCI-P3, while accuracy was excellent at a Delta-E of 0.93 (less than 1.0 is indistinguishable to the human eye). This is a solid display.

While I’m a fan of OLED displays, there’s a cost in power consumption that presents a potentially significant trade-off. In the case of the Inspiron 14 Plus 7441 that already doesn’t perform as expected (although still very well), I don’t think most buyers will miss an OLED option.

Audio duties are performed by four speakers, two upward-firing and two downward firing. They put out plenty of sound, enough to fill my home office, with clear mids and highs. Bass wasn’t impressive though, so while audio was good, I wouldn’t put it into the top tier among 14-inch laptops. The MacBook Pro 14 with its six-speaker setup and force-canceling woofers maintains its dominance here.

Less performance without a payback in battery life

The Snapdragon X series of chipsets is supposed to offer significantly improved battery life in Windows laptops. To an extent, it does. The Inspiron 14 Plus 7441 does have better battery life than most — but not all — Intel Meteor Lake laptops. While I haven’t run into any applications that literally won’t run on Windows on Arm, some run in emulation and are slower than on Intel. So, there’s always the chance for incompatibilities.

But when you compare it to other Snapdragon X laptops, the Inspiron is harder to recommend. Its most direct comparison is the Surface Laptop 7, which is a better laptop on the whole, despite offering the same chip and specs at the same price. Meanwhile, other Snapdragon X Elite laptops like the HP Omnibook X offer a better overall package for nut much more cash, even if its starting price isn’t quite as low.