Dell xps 14 9440 most recent XPS model presents amazing performance in a gorgeous design
Thanks to its beautiful OLED display, potent CPU and GPU, and elegant design, the dell xps 14 9440 is a great new addition to the venerable XPS range and offers the MacBook Pro 14-inch its toughest competitor yet. The XPS 14 isn’t inexpensive, though, and many would find some design flaws objectionable. Still, not many Windows laptops can compete right now overall.
Pros
Powerful new processor
Stunning 3.2k OLED
Keeps its own against the 14-inch MacBook Pro
Cons
Gets expensive quickly
Touchbar and trackpad are accessibility challenges
Battery life falls well short of the MacBook Pro
REVIEW
The Dell xps 14 9440 is maybe the best of the newest arrivals into an already legendary line of laptops thanks to its strong new processor incredible OLED display, and design that looks better than virtually any other Windows laptop available.
Starting at a rather expensive $1,499 / £1,599 / AU$2,498.60, the XPS 14 9440 lacks the dedicated Nvidia RTX 4050 GPU and OLED display thus, you will want to upgrade these two specs especially even if it will ultimately cost much more for the privilege.
To be clear, Dell XPS laptops have never been cheap; but, my suggested setup the same as the one I examined will cost almost $2,400 / £2,650 / AU$4,300. Given that this laptop will endure for years before it becomes obsolete, the hardware crammed into such a thin 14-inch form factor is more than worth the cost.
Regarding design, the XPS 14 presents a few quality-of life enhancements on its smaller relative while completely committing to the design revisions the Dell XPS 13 Plus unveiled back in 2022.
First, the down-firing speakers have been relocated up top beside the keyboard, generating significantly better sound in return for lessening the infinite edge-style keyboard of the XPS 13 Plus. This is a far superior design option, finally, and you don’t lose much in the way of important deck space.
Here, the show is truly the stunning 3.2K OLED display with super-slim bezels. This last capability is remarkable since Dell has somehow fit in a 1080p webcam. Although there isn’t a physical privacy shutter, sadly Dell has never really been interested in this.
Though the RTX 4050 isn’t nearly strong enough to keep up with the best gaming laptops, the Intel Core Ultra 7 of the Dell XPS 14 delivers strong performance across all workloads and in some cases can even match or exceed what you would get from a MacBook Pro 14-inch.
From regular computing use to 1080p gaming to moderate video creation, the Dell XPS 14 9440 is generally a great performer. Though costly, overall this is one of the greatest Windows laptops available right now.
PRICE AND AVAILABILITY
- How much does it cost? Starting at $1,499 / £1,599 / AU$2,998.60
- When is it out? It’s available right now
- Where can you get it? In the US, UK, and Australia as well.
Starting at $1,499 / £1,599 / AU$2,498.60, the Dell XPS 14 9440 is now available in Australia, the US, and the UK. You get an Intel Core Ultra 7155H processor with integrated Arc graphics, 16GB LPDDR5x memory, 512GB M.2 PCIe SSD storage, and a 14.5-inch full HD+ (1920x1200p) non-touch display for that price.
With an Nvidia RTX 4050 (30W) GPU, 32GB LPDDR5x RAM, 1TB M.2 PCIe SSD, and a 14.5-inch 3.2K (3200x2000p) OLED display, my review unit, which sells for $900 / £1,050 / AU$1,300 more, upgrades to discrete graphics.
Along with the above, you can max out your configuration with 64GB LPDDR5x RAM and 4TB M.2 PCIe SSD for $3,399 / £3,238.99 / AU$5, 999.40.
SPECIFICATION
CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 155H
RAM: Up to 64GB DDR5X
Screen Size: Up to 14.5-inch 3.2K OLED touchscreen
Storage: Up to 4TB PCIe SSD
Display: 14.5-inch 3.2K (3200 x 2000) OLED Infinity Edge Touch
DESIGN
- Gorgeous design
- OLED display is stunning
- Upfiring speakers
For better or for worse, the Dell XPS 14 does not hold back on the design decisions the XPS 13 Plus brought; nonetheless, it does make some very significant improvements to the past design revisions.
First let us discuss top-firing speakers. Actually, down-firing speakers are quite bad. Although they may be required they are horrible each time we can get top-firing speakers on a laptop your audio experience will instantly significantly improve.
There are two hues to the outside finish: Platinum or Graphite. Everything about the finish a CNC machined metal with a glass palace rest, feels expensive.
Though not very weighty the chasis is not as light as some of the greatest ultrabooks or the LG Gram, which give portability top priority above performance.
Port wise, you have a 3.5mm combination socket, a microSD card three Thunderbolt 4 ports with power delivery and DisplayPort output.
Given its scale I’m not expecting all that much on the ports front but it’s good to see the microSD slot included as at least this allows creative workers or individuals who might have a device that saves to microSD, like one of the top drone models, some versatility.
Regarding the keyboard, there is one area that’s not very good since touch typeers used to a bit more definition will find their spot among the practically flat surface of the keys tough.
Though you’ll grow used to it, this is not the nicest typing experience I have ever had on a keyboard out of the box.
The trackpad is another main problem since it is unseen. Though at the expense of accessibility, this does give the laptop a more ‘future’ air. Likewise, the touchbar running along the top substitutes real function keys.
For me, all of these functions are well enough; yet, I can picture someone with limited vision struggle with this keyboard and trackpad.
You then come to the webcam. It’s a great feature since Dell somehow crammed a 1080p webcam inside the display panel’s limited top bezel.
In the pre-work-from- home period, it was okay; too many laptops forgo the 1080p webcam in order to keep the small bezels; today, you just cannot ignore a quality webcam.
At last, the air intake on the Dell XPS 14 comes from the side and flows out the rear via a vent under the display hinge. Although the heat management is good, under load the underside may grow hot due to their thin form factor.
Regarding Windows laptops, this is maybe among the most beautiful ones available. Though some people won’t love or even like the planar-leveled keyboard and lack of tactile function keys or clearly defined trackpad, generally speaking, especially if you’re choosing the OLED display, there is far more to enjoy here than to criticize.
Performance
- Great all-around performance
- shockingly competitive for creative work against the MacBook Pro
- amazing output and flawless gaming capability
At last we focus on the performance of the Dell XPS 14, and I can absolutely claim that it is among the greatest laptops available right now.
The Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch with M3 Pro is directly rival of the Dell XPS 14; the XPS 14 holds its own against the best Apple has to offer in for some usual creative work, terms of general performance, features better gaming performance, and even manages to fight the MacBook Pro 14 to a draw.
Although the MacBook Pro 14-inch finally provides somewhat superior multicore performance and single-core performance, the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H matched with an Nvidia RTX 4050 GPU performs admisably against one of Apple’s top processors.
Regarding general system performance, the MacBook Pro 14 with M3 Pro (11-core) did indeed score roughly 23% better in our Crossmark benchmark and roughly 12% better in the multicore performance test Geekbench 6.2.
The MacBook Pro 14-inch performs higher in 3DMark’s Wildlife Extreme and Wildlife Extreme Unlimited; the two laptops are equally matched for SSD performance.
This shouldn’t be surprising as Nvidia’s hardware can handle ray tracing significantly better than Apple’s CPUs right now the RTX 4050 in the XPS 14 pulls ahead of the GPU of the M3 Pro in Solar Bay and Solar Bay Unlimited, which are ray-tracing workloads.
Regarding creative performance, the XPS 14’s Nvidia RTX GPU will surpass almost any equivalent Apple device when it comes to 3D modeling since just about every 3D modeling application depends on CUDA instruction set, hence Apple, AMD, and Intel will always be at a disadvantage.
Though depending on the app you’re using, Apple’s specific encoding engine might be determinative; XPS 14 manages to encode a 4K movie into 1080p roughly 7% faster with Handbrake 1.7.
If you’re a creative pro working in film and video you’ll know which tools play best with Apple and which lean toward Nvidia so which is better will come down to the tools you’ll finally need to employ.
Lastly, averaging 1200p gaming performance on Max settings the Dell XPS 14 performs better than the MacBook Pro 14 generally. in performance and memory impact set to max, the XPS 14 does around 62% better in Civilization VI getting almost 90 fps at 1200p.
The XPS 14 in Total War: Warwick III gets around 40 fps, around 25% more than the 32 fps of the MacBook Pro 14-inch. The MacBook Pro 14-inch scores a win only in Shadow of the Tomb Raider it gets 48 fps at 1200p on top settings, whereas the Dell XPS 14 only gets 47 fps a major drawback.
This has no bearing on the DLSS upscaler of the RTX 4050, which, depending on the settings you choose can drive the XPS 14’s fps far higher than that. Apple MetalFX is developer-dependent and not a lot of games have it as an option hence this is a great advantage for the XPS 14 that, for right now at least Apple’s greatest MacBook fails to counter.
Ultimately, then, the Dell XPS 14 manages to go toe-to–toe with the old MacBook Pro 14 and generates some quite significant gains in the process.
Battery life
- Back here, sweetheart, is Intel Evo.
- Charges to full in less than ninety-minutes.
For years, Intel CPUs have not had very excellent battery life. Intel Evo was a big deal back in 2020 one of its main qualifying criteria was surpassing 9 hours of battery life on a regular battery test. Intel Evo faded away for a few years as Intel went through Alder Lake Raptor Lake and Intel Alder Lake all of which had generally poor battery life (even on an ultrabook).
With the 12th-gen Intel Alder Lake laptop CPUs released in 2021 battery life on Intel laptops absolutely sank.
Intel seems to have refocused itself on better battery efficiency rather than pumping electrons into maximum performance now with the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H.
With a nine-hour 35-minute battery life on our own web browsing test the Dell XPS 14 benefits significantly more than the six or seven hours these laptops were obtaining only a year or two ago.
The XPS 14 still struggles with extra weight to attain more than seven hours of battery life on PCMark 10’s Modern Office battery test; the PCMark 10 Gaming battery test ran for almost one hour 50 minutes before shutting down.
These are a far cry from what Apple is able to pull off with the MacBook Pro 14-inch, which lasted roughly 17 hours 32 minutes in our battery tests, but knowing where Windows laptops have been in the past couple of years, I would gladly accept a laptop that can run a full workday without a charge.
Get the Dell XPS 14 9440 if….
You want a Windows laptop to show solid performance
For a productivity laptop, the Core Ultra 7 155H and RTX 4050 are rather strong components; the XPS 14’s performance gains much advantage.
You want for excellent battery life
Although we’re not talking about MacBook Pro degrees of battery performance, this laptop gets far better than almost any other Windows laptop from the last few years.
Purchase it only if….
You want generally the best performance
Though they are strong components, the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H and Nvidia RTX 4050 are not the most powerful ones you could find even at this price.
You are working on a budget
Starting at $1,500/£1,600/AU$3,000, this is hardly a cheap laptop.
Conclusion
- The Dell XPS 14 9440 impresses with its powerful performance, stunning OLED display, and sleek design, making it a strong contender in the premium laptop market.
- Despite its high price tag and some design quirks, it stands out as one of the top Windows laptops available today.
- The inclusion of Intel’s Core Ultra 7 155H processor and Nvidia RTX 4050 GPU delivers excellent performance across various tasks, including creative work and gaming.
- Battery life, while improved over previous models, still falls short compared to competitors like the MacBook Pro 14-inch.
- Overall, if you’re looking for a Windows laptop with exceptional performance and a beautiful display, the Dell XPS 14 9440 is a compelling choice.
