Dell’s Pro Max lineup represents the company’s highest tier of mobile workstation performance, while the "Premium" add-on designates an extra level of fit and finish. The Dell Pro Max 14 Premium (starts at $2,946.91; $6,881.23 as tested) meets all of its tripartite name's promises as a 14-inch workstation. Dell focused on creating a robust, high-performance laptop for professionals who need to run demanding apps reliably on a portable machine, and it shows. The laptop also crucially contains the specific graphics capabilities and ISV certifications necessary for specialized top-end tasks that workstations are known for. If you're an independent contractor, you'll pay dearly for this system, but IT managers have access to direct sales channels to reduce costs. Regardless, the Pro Max 14 Premium packs a lot of power into a small and well-built workstation with just about every extra available. For even more power and screen real estate, look to the Dell Pro Max 18 Plus, an Editors' Choice award winner.

Configurations: A Deeply Scalable High-End Workstation

Dell’s configurator lets you select from a variety of high-end components, including up to the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H processor with Intel vPro, as much as 64GB of 8,400MHz LPDDR5x RAM, and up to 2TB of fast solid-state storage. You can also choose a sharp touch-enabled 14-inch QHD+ (2,880 by 1,800) Tandem OLED display. Dell's graphics processor options range from integrated Intel Arc Pro graphics to an Nvidia Blackwell-based RTX Pro 2000 GPU. 

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

If you choose the base configuration with a Core Ultra 7 255H, 16GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, integrated Intel Arc graphics, and an FHD+ (1,920 by 1,200) IPS display without touch, you’ll still spend $2,946.91. That's quite a lot for a 14-inch laptop that, while ISV-certified and equipped with enterprise-level security, won’t be capable of the workstation power you might require.

I've tested a high-end configuration, with everything maxed out but the storage at 1TB, which totals $6,881.23. That’s steep for independent contractors, but organizations have different channels through which they can buy these laptops in bulk for lower negotiated pricing.

Design: Solid, Unassuming, and Office-Ready

Dell didn't design the Pro Max 14 Premium to stand out. It's a dark gray laptop with a subdued Dell logo on its lid and a black zero-lattice keyboard that blends into the palm rest. The laptop's only bit of bling is LED lighting surrounding the power button, and that’s more functional than aesthetic. With such a conservative design, this workstation will fit in any kind of environment without drawing attention.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

It’s a solidly built laptop, too, as expected by its target audience and for the price. Dell used an all-metal construction, of course, and the lid, keyboard deck, and bottom chassis have zero give against even substantial pressure. The hinge is light enough to open with one hand, but just firm enough to stay put once positioned. Achieving this one-handed opening technique is still surprisingly rare among today's laptops.

As a workstation first, the 14-inch Pro Max doesn’t even pretend to be an ultraportable laptop, but it's not inappropriately large either. It’s 0.78 inch thick, which is a lot for a 14-inch laptop, but it allows for a thermal design capable of moving a lot of air to keep professional-grade components cool.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The laptop's 3.55-pound weight is hefty, but it takes up less overall space than some competitors, thanks to narrow display bezels. This additional weight compared with other laptops comes down to many factors, but one of the most significant is its cooling system. You can tell that it moves a lot of air because the fans are noticeable during heavier loads.

Dell's chassis is reasonably serviceable, with four torque screws holding the bottom cover in place. Partly due to its size, upgradability is limited, as Dell soldered the RAM onto the motherboard, but organizations should find it relatively easy to repair with 20 removable internal parts.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Finally, Dell built in its most secure and manageable solutions for businesses, including the Dell Management Portal and the Dell Trusted Update Experience. You can also select Intel chips with vPro security technology, which Dell has made a point to fully support.

Keyboard, Touchpad, and Webcam: Unusual Keys, Effective Haptics

Dell went with its zero-lattice keyboard on this Pro Max model, which I find to be a step down from keys separated by a lattice structure comprising the keyboard deck. The keycaps are quite large, thanks to essentially zero spacing, taking up almost the entire available area. The switches are reasonably deep and snappy, and they have the light touch that I prefer. However, I've struggled getting used to the lack of more distinct keys, and so my fingers hunt more than they do on some other keyboards.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The touchpad uses a haptic motor rather than a "diving board" motorless mechanism, fitting for its premium laptop status. The haptics are quick and responsive, but the default feedback strength is too low for me. The touchpad feels much better after tuning up the haptics, but it never feels quite as on-point as other premium laptops' touchpads, and it could be a bit larger. At least Dell includes a super-sharp 8-megapixel webcam, which produces crisp image quality for videoconferencing.

Display and Audio: Spectacular Tandem OLED Screen and Excellent Sound

Dell sells this laptop with two display options. My review unit has the QHD+ (2,880 by 1,800) Tandem OLED touch screen, refreshing at up to 60Hz. The other variant is an FHD+ (1,920 by 1,200) 60Hz IPS panel without touch controls. Dell’s implementation of Tandem OLED is aimed more at improved power consumption rather than increasing brightness, as we've seen in other screens with the technology.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

This display works spectacularly out of the box, living up to most OLED panels. The screen shines reasonably bright, with dynamic colors and inky blacks. I would rather have seen a faster refresh rate, such as the 120Hz that’s increasingly more common. That would promote a more fluid user interface, and I’m surprised that Dell didn’t choose a panel with a refresh rate faster than 60Hz.

The laptop produces audio through a four-speaker setup, with two tweeters flanking the keyboard and two downward-firing woofers. The system puts out plenty of volume, with clear mids and highs, and you'll notice a touch of bass that's more than good enough for most audio duties.

Ports and Connectivity: Limited But Modern Connections

Dell fit four USB-C ports on the Pro Max 14 Premium. Two support Thunderbolt 4, and the other two support Thunderbolt 5, so the laptop is fully up to date in that respect. Dell includes a USB-C-to-USB-A and HDMI adapter in the box, but this laptop could use more specified ports like other workstations. At least Dell included a microSD card reader and a 3.5mm audio jack.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The laptop's wireless connectivity is fully up to date, with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 radios inside. Unlike some business-class laptops, this one does not include an always-connected LTE or 5G cellular option.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Performance Testing: Fast Components Built to Purpose

The Dell Pro Max 14 Premium is a workstation-class laptop intended for deeply demanding tasks, like video editing, 3D modeling, AI development, and other forms of software engineering. That requires a fast CPU like the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H, an "Arrow Lake" Core Ultra Series 2 processor with 16 cores (six Performance, eight Efficient, and two Low-Power Efficient) running at up to 5.4GHz.

This CPU doesn’t have Intel's best neural processing unit (NPU), capable of just 13 trillion AI operations per second (TOPS) compared with the 45 TOPS or more found in Intel's Core Ultra 200V and now 300H processors. This discrepancy matters less when you can tap the superior GPU for those tasks, which will be incredibly fast. Of course, using the GPU will drive up power consumption, limiting its use on the battery. 

The superior GPU in question is the Nvidia RTX PRO 2000 (8GB), a Blackwell-generation part tailored for the kinds of professional applications that workstation users tend to run. It’s not optimized for gaming, but rather meets the ISV certifications required to ensure both high performance and reliable operation.

Our comparison group includes workstation laptops of various silicon loadouts and power levels. The Apple MacBook Pro 14-Inch (2025, M5) ($2,349 as tested) represents the other side of the fence, as well as more creator-focused workstations. Next, our $4,019 HP ZBook Ultra G1a 14 configuration and the HP ZBook Power 16 G11 A ($2,629 as tested) bring AMD-driven power into the mix. Finally, the larger Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Gen 2, which we tested at $4,019, shows what two generations of silicon removed can do for a workstation with its 14th Gen Intel chip.

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. (Macs are incompatible with these tests, and so they're missing from those charts below.)

Three more tests 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 rates a PC's image editing prowess with a variety of automated operations in Adobe Photoshop 25.

The Pro Max laptop competed well enough in these benchmarks, taking the lead in storage performance, though it didn't win first place in any other test. Dell's laptop notably traded blows with the MacBook Pro, beating it out in HandBrake and edging closer to it in the other CPU-intensive benchmarks. HP's ZBook Ultra G1a 14 proved the strongest on almost all fronts, thanks to its top-end AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395 processor, save for Photoshop. That test remains the Macs' domain, though all of these machines could absolutely run the app without issue. These results confirm this Pro Max laptop's place in the pecking order: It’s not the fastest available, even as priced and configured, but it's a fine performer.

Graphics Tests

We challenge all systems’ 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 next pair, Steel Nomad's regular and Light subtests, focuses on APIs more commonly used for game development to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. Last up, we turn to 3DMark Solar Bay to measure ray-tracing performance.

Only the M5 and Ryzen AI Max chips in this lineup could get away with any association with computer gaming. Still, this laptop's Nvidia RTX Pro 2000 is not a gaming processor, and it outstripped the M5 every chance it got. Dell's more modern, but less memory-stacked, GPU fell well behind the ZBook Ultra G1a's AMD Radeon 8060S integrated graphics processor (IGP) in several benchmarks. (This IGP has access to gobs of system memory, which clearly helps a lot.) Regardless, the Lenovo workstation's dedicated GPU made mincemeat of the whole comparison set with its 12GB of video memory and advanced graphics resources.

Workstation-Specific Tests

First, we measure workstation performance with SPECviewperf 2020 (version 3.1), which renders, rotates, and zooms in and out of solid and wireframe models at 1080p resolution. The three subtests represent PTC's Creo CAD platform, Autodesk's Maya modeling and simulation software for film, TV, and games, and Dassault Systèmes' SolidWorks 3D rendering package.

Next, we run an automated PugetBench extension in Adobe Premiere Pro that tests real-world video editing tasks like live playback, file export, and high-res encoding with different codecs, processing and decoding different types of source media, and applying GPU-accelerated special effects.

Finally, we also use PugetBench for Creators to test DaVinci Resolve Studio 18 video editor performance on systems suitable for that challenging app. As with Adobe Premiere, these automated tasks and features push the CPU and GPU, letting us gauge real-world media creation speeds. (Some systems could not produce results for one or more of these benchmarks, so they've been omitted from those charts. Likewise, we have not included results for Blender, because of issues with that test on this system.)

These are the scenarios that Dell designed its Pro Max laptop line to excel in, though this laptop's silicon combination helps it compete with, not overtake, the comparison group in these tests. For instance, Dell's laptop notably outpaced the fiery ZBook Ultra in the Premiere Pro test, but HP's workstation reasserted itself in the SPECviewperf benchmark. Meanwhile, the larger ThinkPad ran away with the show here.

You can certainly find faster workstation performance, and possibly for less money, from some of these competing systems, but you have to consider the portability factor. The 14-inch Pro Max's primary advantage is in stuffing this kind of speed into a compact 14-inch package. If you need a laptop with a dedicated GPU for demanding work that’s reasonably easy to carry around, then look to this Pro Max laptop for exactly that.

Battery Life and Display Tests

We test each laptop and tablet's battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness set to 50% and audio volume set to 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 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 14-inch Pro Max has a 72-watt-hour battery, which is about average for its size. Usually, OLEDs use more power than today’s low-power IPS displays when displaying bright content, but Dell has mitigated that somewhat with its Tandem OLED implementation. With such power-hungry components inside, the laptop's 13-hour battery life was unsurprising. This result was not the worst by a long shot—looking at you, ZBook Ultra—but don't forget the power adapter at home. 

Dell's Tandem OLED panel provided excellent display quality across the board. It shone reasonably bright in our testing. The panel's color coverage was nearly perfect, save for AdobeRGB, which has been historically difficult for laptop screens to fully master. AdobeRGB and DCI-P3 are particularly important gamuts for visual media work, and this laptop's OLED can definitely handle those tasks.