The recently rebranded Dell Premium line carries on the long-running XPS laptop legacy with a new name, but it aims for the same target audience. The Dell 14 Premium (model DA14250, starting at $1,549.99; $2,049.99 as tested) is a luxe ultraportable for independent contractors and well-to-do civilians on the go, with a sleek design, a sharp display with a higher-resolution OLED option, long battery life, and hyper-modern inputs. The Intel Core Ultra 7 H-series processor ensures fast performance for everyday and office tasks. However, both the base model and our configuration are expensive for the power you get and for the component set. Dell sells a discrete-GPU option to make this a media-editing machine for creative users, which adds to the already significant cost. While the Lenovo ThinkPad X9 14 Aura Edition isn’t quite as fast, its lower price for a similar feature set is more palatable, considering the two ultimately serve the same users. It remains our Editors’ Choice award holder in the category.

Components and Configurations: Core Ultra, OLED, and Upgrades

The new brand name does what it says on the tin: This is a premium ultraportable laptop, with a high cost of entry and high-end touches throughout. You could also consider the 16-inch variant of this system, the Dell 16 Premium, but we treat them as separate products, primarily due to the differences in cost and performance. This review is entirely focused on the 14-inch version.

While upgraded configurations really get expensive, even the entry model costs $1,549.99. (It’s worth noting that Dell often has a discounted sale price listed on its site, which changed over the course of this review, sometimes on a day-to-day basis.) The base model contains an Intel Core Ultra 7 255H “Arrow Lake” processor, 16GB of memory, a 512GB SSD, and a 120Hz 2K non-touch display. That’s a little pricey for those core parts, but much of the cost pays for the laptop’s high-end materials and hardware features. 

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

You can customize the Dell 14 Premium considerably, while our review configuration sits between the base and top possible configurations. The memory bumps up to 32GB and 1TB, respectively, plus the screen upgrades to the 120Hz 3.2K OLED touch option for $2,049.99. 

Dell has more upgrade options than this across the board: a better Core Ultra 7 265H CPU (though no Ultra 9 tier), up to 64GB of memory, up to 2TB of storage, and even an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 discrete GPU option. Adding a GPU and any other additions could turn this laptop into a media editing- and content creation-ready ultraportable, while our configuration is a bit more modest. However, the RTX 4050 is the entry-level GPU from Nvidia's last generation, so the power would be limited. 

The performance section later will demonstrate exactly how quick the parts in our model are; unfortunately, I can’t speak to the GPU since we weren’t sent that model. But for the base model and our configuration, if you’re just running over the specs on paper, I would eye this machine more for everyday and moderate office productivity rather than seriously demanding workloads.

Design: The Super-Slick Ultraportable of Tomorrow

Despite the new name, this laptop carries on the modern XPS redesign that first debuted in 2023. This means a flush keyboard, an invisible touchpad, and a touch-based LED function row. These key aspects are built into a metal chassis that, as always, feels high-end and goes a long way to justifying the higher cost. It’s super slim at 0.71 by 12.6 by 8.5 inches (HWD), though the materials add up to a heavier weight than usual for this size (3.66 pounds). Still, the Dell 14 Premium is super compact, feels feathery enough to carry around, and makes a fitting commute partner for throwing in a bag or carrying in one hand.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Since they aren’t brand-new anymore, I don’t need to go in-depth on each of these design aspects, but they have positives and negatives. The design has a certain cool factor, with the seamless touchpad and LED touch row, in particular, lending a hyper-modern look to the laptop. 

Functionally, the keycaps are well-made and large, though your muscle memory may take some retraining since the spacing is different from a regular lattice keyboard. I like the LED function row (which you can swap between media commands and function keys), though I could see some users missing the analog buttons. It will depend mainly on personal preference.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

I could say the same for the touchpad, too. Its edges aren’t physically demarcated, but it’s large enough that anywhere you’d likely tap, touch, or pan is within its bounds. While it’s generally responsive, occasionally I felt a bit less certain my tap or press was registered than on a traditional touchpad, even if it usually was. I’m unsure how much this adds to the laptop beyond a sleeker look. All of these aspects help the Dell 14 Premium stand out visually, if nothing else.

Dell’s display doesn’t leave as much to discuss, but it is a sweet screen. The 3.2K OLED option is incredibly sharp and vibrant, and touch support is a plus for interested shoppers. The maximum brightness doesn’t come off incredibly bright (rated at 400 nits, while the non-OLED option shines at 500 nits), but it’s hardly dim, either. Overall, the display is a highlight, and even fitting a 14.5-inch panel (rather than the usual 14 inches) into this chassis helps it feel roomier and more usable.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Finally, for connectivity, this is an all-USB-Type-C device for peripherals and video-out options, with two such ports on the left and one more on the right. All three of these ports support Thunderbolt 4 and power delivery. The laptop charges through USB-C, so one of these will often be occupied, but this isn’t unusual for thin laptops, especially at 14 inches. The right edge also holds a microSD card slot and headphone jack. 

For wireless connectivity, the Dell 14 Premium features Intel Killer Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. The laptop also includes a 1080p webcam, which had fantastic clarity in my testing. The video clarity is super sharp and handles different levels of room lighting well.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Performance Testing: Enough Pep for Your Step

I put the Dell 14 Premium through our usual test suite to gauge what level of performance you can expect from the thin-and-light laptop. I then compared the results with the following laptops.

The Apple MacBook Pro 14-Inch (2024, M4) ($1,949 as tested) is the leading Mac alternative to this laptop, coming in near the Dell's configuration price with a similar build quality and form factor. The HP OmniBook X Flip 14 ($1,529.99 as tested) is priced near Dell’s base model and serves as a 2-in-1 alternative. Finally, a pair of Lenovo laptops: the Yoga Slim 9i 14 Gen 10 ($1,999.99 as tested) is an equally premium alternative, while the Lenovo ThinkPad X9 14 Aura Edition ($1,519.01 as tested) is more affordable without dropping many of the same advantages.

Productivity and Content Creation Tests

Our primary overall benchmark, UL's PCMark 10, puts a system through its paces in productivity apps ranging from web browsing to word processing and spreadsheet work. Its Full System Drive subtest measures a PC's storage throughput. Three more tests we rely on are CPU-centric or processor-intensive: Maxon's Cinebench 2024 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene; Primate Labs' Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning; and we see how long it takes the video transcoder HandBrake 1.8 to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution. Finally, workstation maker Puget Systems' PugetBench for Creators gauges a PC's image editing prowess with a variety of automated operations in Adobe Photoshop 25.

The Dell 14 Premium was pretty quick on these tests on average, even if not always the fastest in the group. It traded blows with its Windows competitors, while the MacBook was usually on top. Our unit's 32GB of memory helped elevate its multimedia chops, but this system still fell beneath the tier of true content-creation laptops, better suited to everyday tasks and moderate office work. 

I should note that, even though I’ve compared the two and our overall recommendation falls with the ThinkPad X9 14 Aura Edition for price considerations, the Dell 14 Premium is faster. While they fall into the same general 14-inch premium ultraportable tier, part of the sizable price difference is due to the storage and display in our configuration rather than performance—the Dell’s H-series chip outpaced the Lenovo’s “Lunar Lake” 226V processor across the board. If you’re looking for something closer to the MacBook Pro performance tier, or you would configure some of the other specs to get closer to the base model’s price, the Dell may be the better choice for you.

Graphics Tests

We challenge each reviewed system’s graphics with a quintet of animations or gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark test suite. The first two, Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K), use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. The second pair, Steel Nomad's regular (4K) and Light (1440p) subtests, focus on APIs more commonly used for game development to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. A fifth test, Solar Bay, emphasizes ray-tracing performance.

As mentioned earlier, you’d want to upgrade your model with the discrete GPU option when ordering if you need real graphics muscle. These results were satisfactory for integrated graphics—better than some of its counterparts on some tests, and worse on others—and not quite as powerful as Apple’s M4. Light gaming and low-grade editing tasks are possible on this system, but don’t expect it to swap in for a Windows content creation machine or a well-equipped MacBook Pro model if that’s your intended use case.

Battery Life and Display Tests

We test each laptop's battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.

To gauge display performance, we also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).

The Dell’s battery life wasn’t a chart-topper like some here, but it’s long enough to qualify as all-day battery life for work and entertainment. You won’t be looking for an outlet soon after a full charge, though you can find longer-lasting options if battery stamina is one of your top concerns.

The display numbers were solid, though the lesser brightness I noticed was somewhat reflected here. The maximum level is decent, but the output clearly scales non-linearly toward 100%. Anything around 50% actually looked fairly dim and didn’t stack up too well against the other laptops.