Dell’s new 14S laptop has the screen I want and the RAM I don’t
Today at IFA, Dell announced the new 14S, a 14-inch laptop that comes in four colors, including a pretty unusual Velvet Green. The higher-end display option is also surprisingly impressive. I’m a little less enthusiastic about the RAM, though, which is onboard and can’t be upgraded later.
Let’s get into it.
Dell
The Dell 14S comes in four distinct colorways: Linen, Dusty Rose, Washed Denim, and Velvet Green. Green laptops are pretty uncommon, no? That one really stood out to me. It’s also light enough (2.54 pounds, if you’re wondering) to throw in a bag, and its 61.2 Wh battery is a decent size. I’m not sure about Dell’s “all-day” battery life claim. It’s certainly possible, especially with the brightness turned down, but I’d be curious to see how it performs in PCWorld’s battery life benchmark.
The display options are where things get interesting here. The base configuration comes with a 14-inch 1920×1200 display with a 60Hz refresh rate and 300 nits of brightness. But you can bump that up to a 2880×1800 panel with a 120Hz refresh rate, 450 nits of brightness (you best put on some shades), and 100 percent sRGB coverage. That’s a serious display on what appears to be an otherwise ordinary mainstream laptop.
As for the internals, Dell offers a choice between the Series 3 Intel Core 5 320 and Core 7 350 processors, with 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB of PCIe NVMe SSD storage.
The RAM is the thing that’s giving me pause, though. It only comes with either 8GB or 16GB of LPDDR5x RAM. It’s onboard, so you can’t upgrade it later on. You’re basically locked into whatever you pick at checkout. 16GB is the more sensible baseline nowadays, so I’d recommend going with that configuration if you can afford it.
There’s just one problem: I’ve no idea how much the Dell 14S will cost–or when it’ll become available.
All I really know is that it’s an unusually style-conscious mainstream laptop with a very nice display option. That said, I’d advise future buyers to think carefully about the RAM before committing.
